Jack didn’t arrive home until eleven o’clock. The flight back to Columbus was uneventful but he’d said an emotional good-bye to Mike at the airport. After dropping his luggage in the entranceway, he strolled into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and reached for a beer.
It was unseasonably warm and he decided to go out on the balcony. From the tenth floor, he had a great view of the Ohio State University campus and the Short North. He realized his involvement with GNS was far from over. To the contrary, it was just beginning. In the weeks and months to come, there would be scientific papers to write, lectures and seminars to attend and dozens of meetings with state and federal medical agencies.
He thought his mind would still be racing with the events of the past few weeks, but it wasn’t. He stared out beyond the lights of the city. His view seemed infinite. The scattered clouds were made silvery by the vibrant light of the moon. He took a slow sip of the beer, and for the first time in a long while, it seemed he was able to take a breath without feeling it catch.
Three hundred and fifty miles away from where Jack stood, Connie Recino sat beside her daughter in the intensive care unit at Illinois Memorial. It had been four days since her surgery and just over twenty-four hours since she had received the strep preparation.
Catching herself in a yawn, Connie quickly smothered it with a cupped hand. She gazed back at Maggie. Even though she was heavy-lidded from complete exhaustion, Connie suddenly became wide eyed when she saw her daughter’s lips moving as if she were trying to speak. She craned her neck forward and set her gaze squarely upon Maggie’s face. It took her only a few seconds to be sure—Maggie was trying to speak. Connie reached over to the bed control and raised the intensity of the overhead lights. It took only a few more seconds more for her to realize her daughter was mouthing the word mother over and over again.
Choking back a sea of tears, and speaking to Maggie as if she were three years old, she whispered, “Welcome back, angel. I love you.”
Two days later, Maggie was sitting in a chair watching television and brushing her hair. When her husband walked into the room three months earlier than she expected, she dropped the brush. A few seconds after it hit the floor and long before she could have pushed herself out of the chair, he was kneeling at her side, gently pulling her head to his chest.