by Holly Jacobs
He opened his eyes and spotted the ring. He thought about obeying Caro, but wasn’t sure he could swim the distance to the yellow-and-red ring that was floating just a few feet away.
“Stephan, dammit, swim. If you don’t go grab that ring, I’m going to jump in and come get your scrawny ass, then I’m going to tell everyone what happened, that a tiny girl had to save you.”
It wasn’t the thought of Carolyn telling anyone, but rather the thought of her jumping in that made him try to swim and grab for the life ring. He missed, but as he sank into the deep, cold water, his hand connected with the rope that tied the ring to the boat. It grazed his wrist, and without thinking, his hand closed around it, holding on to it with what little strength he had left.
Stephan was a good swimmer. He’d grown up on Lake Erie, spending every summer on its shores at his family’s small cottage in Heritage Bay. But today, he’d been clowning around and when he’d jumped into the water, he’d done a flip, hit his head and his usual grace in the water had escaped him. He’d panicked, pure and simple.
He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d gone under, but he seemed much farther from the boat than he should be. He didn’t know if he’d swum the wrong way, or if he’d hitched a ride on some current, regardless, the boat seemed too far away to contemplate.
Yet, as he held on to the rope, he suddenly knew it would be okay. Carolyn had thrown in the life ring, she held the other end of the line. She’d pull him back.
He was safe.
He kicked with all the force he could muster, trying to help. Caro was such a thin girl. Even though she was fourteen now, she was still so petite. She couldn’t possibly weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet, however, she pulled the rope quickly and confidently, bringing him to the boat’s ladder.
“You’re going to have to climb up yourself.” She looked over the edge and their eyes met. “Come on, Stephan. So you’ve got a small cut on your forehead, and so what if you breathed in a gallon or so of water. You’re here now, at the ladder, so climb your lazy ass up here.”
Carolyn always had such a gentle vocabulary, the fact she was swearing told him how afraid she was. And knowing Caro was afraid was enough of a jolt to make him continue trying. The ladder seemed insurmountably high, but he reached for the bottom rung.
“Come on, Stephan.”
He wished he could tell her to shut up, just to leave him alone. He was tired. He was cold and his chest hurt. But yelling at her would take energy he didn’t have. He’d wait and yell tomorrow.
Slowly, with the speed of a very old man, he climbed.
“Come on. It’s only a few more steps.”
He made it close enough for her to grab his T-shirt. She held on with a death grip, pulling, making the last bit of his climb easier.
Stephan found himself on the deck of the fishing boat, coughing and gasping.
Caro sat down next to him. He expected her to start hollering at him for being a show-off, for being stupid. Instead, she just sat there and started crying with the same fierce gusto she did everything else.
Despite the fact he was hacking up his lungs, piece by piece, he was aware of her sobs.
“Caro?” he gasped in between spasms.
She looked up, then unexpectedly, reached out and slapped his chest. “Don’t you ever, ever scare me like that again, Stephan Foster. That was the dumbest thing you ever did. And believe me, you’ve done plenty of dumb things, but this time, you could have died, and how would I have felt if you did? I’d have lived the rest of my life stricken with inconsolable grief.”
He smiled, despite the fact he felt sort of sick to his stomach. Carolyn Kendal didn’t sound like any other kid he’d ever met. She sounded more like an English teacher than a ninth-grader.
“Stop smiling,” she scolded, sounding even more teachery. “You took ten years off my life with that stupid stunt.”
“That would make you four, and you wouldn’t be able to yell at me like this if you were only four.”
“You…” She paused looking for a word, but obviously couldn’t find one because she ended her sentence with a frustrated growl. “You sit there and don’t move. I’m taking us home.”
“You can’t drive the boat.”
“If you can drive it, I can drive it. How hard can it be?”
He knew what she actually meant, that he was dumb as a rock, so how hard could driving the boat be if he could do it? Normally, he’d have taken offense, but he couldn’t seem to find the energy right now.
She headed toward the front of the boat.
“Hey, Caro?”
She turned, her curly brown hair going wild in the damp breeze, her freckled face smudged with the evidence of her sobbing.
“Thanks.”
She shrugged. “You’re not so bad…for a boy.”
Then in case he took that as too much of a compliment, she stuck out her tongue. Despite his exhaustion, he smiled. Caro had long since become too mature for something like that.
Stephan sat, attempting to regain his breath. He’d learned to swim in the lake, but he’d never had a close call like he’d had today. “You saved me.”
“Hey, all I did was throw you the ring, you saved yourself.”
He shook his head. Even at fifteen, he knew, Carolyn Kendal had indeed saved his life.
NOW, OVER TWENTY YEARS LATER, Carolyn recalled every second of the mind-numbing horror she’d felt when she’d thought Stephan was drowning. She could smell the lake, feel the sun on her back.
He’d been so stupid, such a cocky, thought-he’d-live-forever sort of boy. She’d been so afraid as she watched him surface on the lake’s choppy water, blood welling from a deep gash on his forehead. He choked and sank again and again. She felt such profound relief when she realized he was on the boat, and she knew for sure that he was all right.
“I remember it,” Carolyn assured him. “You were showing off. Thinking you were untouchable. Always feeling you had to prove yourself.” She paused. “You never had to, at least not to me.”
“Maybe I did—do—need to prove myself to me. What I remember most about that day was you denying that you saved me.”
He’d embarrassed her that day with the claim, and two decades later, it still embarrassed her. She shrugged. “I just threw you the ring. You saved yourself.”
“Carolyn, I came tonight to return the favor. I’m throwing you a ring. All you have to do is grab on to it.”
“But I’m not the one drowning. Emma is. And I’ve got to stay here and help.”
“But Carolyn, the doctors say—”
“No. Don’t bother. You don’t need to tell me, I’ve heard it from everyone. Hell, even my ex has told me how each day Emma stays like this the odds of her coming out get worse, and that even if she comes out of this coma, she’ll never be the same. She won’t be my Emma. But Stephan, as long as she’s not giving up, neither am I. This is me trying to hold on, this is me supporting my daughter. As long as there’s the slightest chance, I’m not letting go.”
“Then we’ll both throw her a life ring, and hold on to her until she can pull herself back out of wherever she is.”
Stephan took Caro’s hand and she clung to it, feeling buoyed and more hopeful that somehow her family and the doctors were wrong. That Emma was going to be okay.
Somehow, Caro would see to it.
CHAPTER TWO
STEPHAN KNEW SLEEPING was out of the question, so he spent the night dividing his attention between Emma, whose small body seemed unnaturally still, and Caro, who slept curled on the small couch opposite the bed.
He hadn’t seen Emma in months. Most of the time, each visit had brought about a sense of amazement as he was confronted by how much she’d grown. Looking at her motionless body dwarfed on the adult-size bed tonight, he was struck with how truly tiny she was.
He held his goddaughter’s hand and turned to check on Caro. Her brown hair was shorter than he remembered it. He knew better than to mention to her
that the cropped cut only added to her pixie-like appearance. She’d always taken her lack of height as some personal slight by the cosmos.
When they were young, he’d called her Elf, whenever he wanted to annoy her. Right now, his elf was a wreck. Hours ago, she’d fallen so deeply asleep that he’d been able to lift her from the chair and settle her on the couch without her waking. Maybe in the morning he could convince her to go home to shower, change, and possibly even take a nap in her own bed.
Her family seemed to think Caro would listen to him. He hadn’t been so sure. Carolyn Kendal Adams only listened to people when it suited her, when their opinions coincided with her own. Her vigil at the hospital was a prime example. Everyone—from the doctors to her family to her friends to her ex-husband, Emma’s father—had told her that it was useless. Odds were, Emma wasn’t coming back from this. Yet, Carolyn turned a deaf ear.
He heard her stir and turned.
She started awake and froze, cocking her head to one side, as if she were listening for something. Her eyes sought out Emma, then slowly moved to him. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“I fell asleep on you. I think in mid-sentence.”
He smiled, because that’s exactly what she’d done. He’d been telling her about business, more to fill the empty space than out of any delusion that it made for a scintillating story. “I think you can convince me to forgive you.”
She looked to her daughter again; her expression reflected such raw emotion, love, guilt, hope, desperation, all mixed until there was only pain remaining. “No change?”
He shook his head. “The nurses switched shifts a half hour ago. The new one tried to kick me out. Told me only family was allowed.”
“Oh, Nurse Hatchet?” Caro made an attempt at a smile, but it was lacking. “Her last name’s really Hatch, but I think Hatchet is more suitable. She’s a stickler for the rules. My being here 24/7 breaks a lot of them, which means she disapproves. I get a lot of sniffs and dirty looks when she comes in. Although, I’m sure she’s justified, after all, she’s only doing her job and I am breaking the rules,” she hastened to explain.
He couldn’t help but smile back. That was his Caro, always trying to put the best spin on people’s actions.
“How did you get her to let you stay?” she asked. “A mother breaking the rules is one thing, a godfather is another.”
“I told her I was Emma’s uncle. I thought it sounded more convincing than telling her I was just Emma’s godfather.”
“There’s no just about it,” Carolyn assured him. “And if you made Nurse Hatchet an offer she couldn’t refuse, it might help convince her to back off.”
He could tell she was trying to fall into their usual banter. “Caro, you don’t have to try and convince me you’re all right. You’re not a good enough actress.”
“Sorry. I’ve worked so hard to convince my family, to convince Ross that I’m fine, that it’s become habit.”
“Well, you don’t have to try with me. You don’t have to be anything but yourself, you never did.”
“Listen, Stephan, I appreciate your coming, but you don’t have to stay. I don’t know how long I’ll be here. And given the weather this last week, it might be better to go now, rather than wait until later on in the day. I don’t want you driving back in the dark.”
“Hey, I don’t have anything better to do.”
She shook her head. “Liar.”
“It’s the truth. There are other things I maybe should be doing, but none are more important than this.”
She stretched, then stood. “You’re such a schmoozer, Foster.”
“It’s why the law firm pays me the big bucks.” He added, “It’s all taken care of. I’m here for you. Work will be there when I get back.”
Carolyn walked to the side of Emma’s bed, fussing with the sheet, and studying her daughter, as if to reassure herself that she was all right.
He watched her as she did so, and realized she looked better. More like herself. “Carolyn, I—”
A doctor interrupted, walking into the room without knocking. He neglected to address either of them as he made a beeline to the end of the bed, grabbed the chart and studied it for a moment.
Carolyn took Emma’s hand, as if she needed to protect her daughter from this man. Stephan moved around the bed and stood next to her, wanting nothing more than to put an arm over Caro’s shoulder to support her, but he held off.
The doctor flipped through various pages, studying them intently, before looking up.
Stephan noted that the man still didn’t make eye contact with either of them. He just focused at some indistinct point on the wall behind them and said, “You’re the parents.” It was a statement more than a question.
Stephan didn’t have a chance to respond before Caro simply said, “Yes.” Then, “Dr. Westley, this is Stephan.”
The doctor gave an absentminded nod. “I see that you’ve asked for a second opinion. Do you have a doctor in mind, or would you like me to recommend one?”
Stephan glanced at Caro, then offered. “I have a friend in Detroit. Could you send Emma’s records there?”
“Just give the nurse the information and I’ll see they get sent to the doctor today.” He paused, finally meeting Stephan’s eyes. “He’s—”
“She,” Stephan corrected. Paula had told him how often patients came into Dr. P. Patterson’s office and were shocked to find “he” was a “she.” Age-old stereotypes didn’t die easily, she said. He felt obliged to stand up for her now.
“She’s going to tell you the same thing I’ve told your wife, the odds of the patient coming out of this grow slimmer with every day that goes by.”
“Stop,” Carolyn said. “Out to the hall. Emma doesn’t need to hear this.” Her tone allowed for no argument. She stormed out the door.
Stephan and the doctor followed. Once they were safely away from Emma’s room, Carolyn shut the door.
Dr. Westley seemed annoyed at Carolyn’s attitude. Stephan could almost see the older man bristle and draw himself up as he said in his most condescending tone so far, “Let me put this in lay terms for you. The patient’s brain was severely damaged in the accident. Imagine a canned ham. It’s fitted, snugly into the protective tin. But if you shake it, it can jostle against the sides. That’s what happened to the patient. Her brain was jostled. It’s bruised, torn and swollen. One of the bleeds caused a small stroke and there’s no way to be sure what the extent of that damage was. The only thing she has going for her right now is that she’s breathing on her own. She’s in a deep coma, not responding to pain, there’s no gag reflex and she’s being fed by a G-tube. There’s been no significant improvement in the last two weeks, not since she was brought into the E.R.”
Dr. Westley’s expression softened. He’d been so matter-of-fact, so down-to-business, he could have been speaking about a car with mechanical problems. Now, there was compassion on his face and his tone was sincere. Both said that no matter how hard he tried to maintain professional distance, he had real emotions tucked away somewhere. “The nurses tell me you haven’t left the hospital since you arrived, Mrs. Adams.”
“It’s Ms. Kendal,” she corrected dully. “And they’re right, I haven’t. My family brought me clean clothes, and I’m staying here, at my daughter’s side.”
“Ms. Kendal, staying here day in and day out isn’t going to help. This isn’t like a movie of the week. The patient is not going to wake up and dramatically—just in time for the end credits—be fine. If she comes out, and I do mean if, it will be a slow process. The odds are that even if the patient does begin to emerge from the coma, she may never make it all the way out. Patients live for years, for decades, like this—alive, but not really. If she beats the odds and comes out you’ll find the patient won’t be the same little girl…” He just shook his head no.
“Emma,” Carolyn said.
“Pardon?”
“You keep calling her she, or her or the patient. Y
ou’re trying to depersonalize her, and I won’t let you. She’s not just a chart, something you can file away when you’re done. She’s not a statistic, something to be compared to other patients you’ve had in the past. She’s a little girl. My little girl.” Carolyn’s voice caught. “Her name is Emma.”
Stephan wished he could do something, anything, to make this easier on Carolyn.
Dr. Westley drew a deep breath and conceded. “Emma. If Emma makes no progress soon—something, anything to justify keeping her here—we will have to talk about where Emma should go.”
“It’s only been two weeks.”
Stephan could hear the panic in Carolyn’s voice and he reached out and brushed his hand against hers, offering it in case she wanted to take it, but not forcing the issue. She ignored it, her focus totally on the doctor. “She just needs more time.”
“Ms. Kendal, your insurance won’t cover her here much longer. We’re pushing it to the limit as it is because she’s so young. With brain injuries it’s hard to predict the outcome for anyone, especially with children. Their brains are still developing and they’re more resilient, but without some progress, we won’t be able to justify extending her stay. There are good nursing homes in the area that can provide long-term—”
Stephan glanced at Caro’s pale face, as she stood rigid, hands fisted. She’d heard all she could. “Doctor,” he said, using a brisk no-nonsense tone he’d perfected at his job, “I think that’s enough for now.”
The doctor’s bristles were back. “It’s not enough. Your wife needs to understand the realities of the situation—”
Stephan interrupted him again. “You were very clear, doctor. We both understand. I’ll have my friend’s office contact you about sending those records over. And I’ll see to it Carolyn goes home for some rest. But I’ll stay here with Emma while she does. Someone will be with her 24/7.”
“Fine. I just hate those damn movies where the patient sits up and says, ‘Mama,’ and immediately they’re back to who they were before the brain trauma. I need you both to have realistic expectations if Emma ever does come out of this coma. And that’s a big if.”