“Guess what?” I asked.
Instead of answering me, Dog said, “Call Doctor Ingram’s office. It’s in my address book.”
It took me a second to realize that I still held Dog’s phone in my left hand. I didn’t need to look in the address book—I knew Luke’s number. His exchange recognized my voice and put me through to his cell.
“Leslie? Are we still on for this afternoon?”
I’d accidently pressed hands free. His voice, sounding as if he was in his car, broadcasted in the room.
“Luke, can you come over now? Sebastian’s awake and talking.”
Seconds of silence passed. “We’ve talked about this, Leslie,” he cautioned. “The damage was too extensive …”
Dog intervened. “Something has happened, Doctor Ingram. Sebastian is talking, though it’s a little confused, and I’m seeing the return of some motor skills.” He glanced down at Sebastian’s hand in his.
Sebastian’s eyelids drooped again.
“Please, Husband—don’t go back to sleep,” I begged. “Wait till Luke gets here.”
I felt certain if he slept again, he’d never wake. I’d read studies of those waking from comas and then returning to them. That seemed far crueler than remaining in a coma.
“Please come now, Luke,” I said. “I …we can’t wait till this afternoon.”
“Of course,” Luke said. “I’m a few blocks from my office so it should take me about fifteen minutes to reach your place.”
“Thank you.”
He must have heard my voice trembling, because he added, “This may not be anything, Leslie. Don’t get your hopes up.”
Only dead air after that. I handed the phone to Dog. I hadn’t felt hope in so long, I’m not sure I’d recognize it.
“What do you think, Dog?” I slipped my hand gently around Sebastian’s left hand, remembering how swollen and purple it’d been after the accident. Now it looked almost normal.
Don’t get your hopes up, I reminded myself.
Dog shook his head. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Go,” Sebastian said.
“Never.” I mustered as much cheer as I could. “We’re staying, Husband. Get used to it.”
Sebastian didn’t look at me. His eyes remained fixed on Dog. Something terrible occurred to me, and I replayed each movement and response Sebastian had made since saying “Kill troll.” I forced myself to stop analyzing. Till Luke arrived, I would allow the teensiest sliver of hope.
I left Sebastian and Dog only once—to tell Mrs. Timmons what had happened and that Doctor Ingram was coming over. Clasping her hands, she said fervently, “Thank you, Jesus.”
I tried warning her as Dog and Luke had warned me, but with a grin that nearly split her face, she said, “Girl, don’t rain on my parade. Maybe the news will be bad later, but I’m listening to only good news now.”
Then she frowned at my purple robe. “Honey, what are you wearing? Get dressed proper before that doctor comes.”
I hurried to the bedroom and threw on the first thing I found—a black T-shirt and faded jeans, ran a brush through my hair, and sprayed on an orange blossom scent.
When I returned to Sebastian’s room, Mrs. Timmons had taken over the reading chair, her hand on Sebastian’s foot, and quietly hummed What a Friend We Have in Jesus. I recognized the tune—she sang it while baking.
Sebastian still faced Dog, who now leaned against the bureau, wearing what Kat called his diagnostic face: unreadable as an Abishag but less serene and more objective. When I resumed my spot on the bed, Sebastian didn’t turn to me. I felt niggling doubts again. When I heard Luke’s car arrive, I hurried to get the door.
He gently touched my arm as he brushed past me. I stood in the bedroom doorway as he checked Sebastian swiftly, waving the light in his eyes as Dog had done, listening carefully and dispassionately to Dog’s recital of what Sebastian had said and how he’d lifted his hand.
He frowned at the list of words, repeating them slowly, looking at Sebastian who remained silent. My husband’s gaze still fixed on Dog, tracking him when he moved.
“You sure he said ‘Kill troll?’”
Dog nodded. “And ‘die, broke, deal, guess, and go.’”
“That doesn’t make sense to me,” Luke said. “You all know him better than me—does it make sense to you?”
“Boy just woke from a coma,” Mrs. Timmons said comfortably. “You want him to be talking sense right away? Give him time.”
“Cents. Dime.” The sheet had ridden up, and Sebastian’s voice sounded muffled.
Luke’s eyebrows rose. “That was remarkably clear. Was Mr. Crowder an accountant?”
“He’s rhyming,” I said.
Everyone turned to me, everyone but Sebastian whose gaze remained on Dog.
I explained, “When I said ‘Head’s will roll,’ Sebastian rhymed with ‘Kill troll.’ When Dog called me ‘Les,’ he said ‘Guess.’ When Mrs. Timmons just now said ‘sense’ and ‘time,’ he said ‘cents’ and ‘dime.’”
I swallowed. “He’s still vegetative, isn’t he?”
CHAPTER NINE
Before leaving, Luke—Doctor Ingram—made arrangements to transport Sebastian to the medical center for tests. He paused at the open door and smiled. He had three doctor smiles. This one I liked least and saw the most. Perfunctory comfort. While Sebastian was in ICU, I needed more. He’d been the specialist, and I remembered the smile as I struggled to understand what had happened to Sebastian.
Two weeks ago as he left Sebastian’s room, I gave him two of Mrs. Timmons’ orange pecan muffins. His gaze moved from the bag to my face. His professional smile shifted too.
“You do take time off, yes?” He sounded abrupt.
Not sure what he was asking, I shrugged. “I pick up groceries sometimes. My friend Jen and I meet for breakfast a couple of times a week. It’s not hard work taking care of my husband.”
“Do Abishags take time off from being wives?”
Inwardly, I sighed. Everyone was curious about Abishags.
“No, Doctor Ingram, we are completely committed to our husbands.” I paraphrased one of the 89 rules in the Abishag Wife’s Handbook.
For the first time, he smiled naturally, something not practiced in message or duration. Not gifted in reading natural smiles, I felt a moment of uneasiness.
He took the muffins. “Call me Luke and thanks for the muffins.”
Since then, he’d taken me out to lunch twice, mostly to talk about Sebastian’s progress. I think he wanted to give me a break, which was very kind of him. After both of our outings, Kat grilled me about our conversation, word for word. I don’t think she liked Luke Ingram.
Now I said to his professional smile. “I know. I shouldn’t hope.”
He hesitated and then gave me the smile of guarded optimism. “Perhaps a little hope now wouldn’t go amiss, but remember the damage to both his body and brain is extensive. Even if he were to live, he wouldn’t be the Sebastian Crowder you knew.”
“None of my husbands were.” Abishags only married human shells who had reached their expiration date.
“I’ll see you at the hospital when I have Sebastian’s test results. Are you free Friday for lunch?”
“Maybe.” I wasn’t listening, wishing he’d leave. I wanted to check on Sebastian and talk with Dog about this development.
“Leslie?”
Hoping he’d take the hint, I opened the door. “Yes?”
His lips twitched. “I’ll talk to you after the tests then.”
I didn’t wait to see him exit the front courtyard as I usually did. I shut the door and hurried to Sebastian’s room.
I almost growled with frustration seeing Sebastian’s eyes shut again.
“Did he say anything else?” I whispered
Dog glanced up from his medical book and shook his head.
Mrs. Timmons patted Husband’s hand and rose ponderously from my reading chair. “He fell asleep right after you left.
If you’re going to the hospital with him, I’ll make an early lunch.”
She hugged me tightly, and I relaxed in her nutmeg-scented embrace. “I have a good feeling about this, sweetie.”
As soon as she left, I clapped my cheek. “We gotta tell Kat.”
“I called her,” Dog said. “She was with Dobbins at the Palos Verdes house. She wanted to come back, but I told her to continue on as usual today. I’ll go with you to the medical center—to translate the medical jargon if you need it.”
“Thanks, Dog.” I frowned at the clock. “What happened to Connor?”
“I called him earlier and asked if he’d take the evening shift.”
I grimaced. “You’re gonna be exhausted.”
“Interns are always exhausted. You should take a nap before lunch. It’ll be a long day, and you still have night duty after that.”
As I shut the blinds in my room against the morning light, it suddenly hit me. If Sebastian wasn’t comatose, would I still be warming his bed?
***
I had coffee with a grilled tuna sandwich and apple slaw, but it only dented the cone of fatigue weighing me down. Dog went with Sebastian in the ambulance while I followed slowly in my Kia Soul. Tina gave it to me for a wedding present. Dog finished the driving lessons that Sebastian had started over the summer. I still drove about ten miles slower than everyone else and parking lots terrified me.
I lost three parking spaces to demon drivers before nabbing one that took four tries to center the Soul exactly. After checking in, I joined Dog in the waiting room.
Dog and I talked very little. He mostly slept in his seat. Tonight he had a 12 hour shift in a hospital 35 minutes (with no traffic) from the townhouse.
I should have been working on my “gratitude attitude,” something Florence Harcourt said was critical to our Abishag persona. Three of the 89 rules in the Handbook detailed reasons to be grateful: every day that our nearly dead husband lingered for their families and friends, our Abishag presence offering peace and comfort to the comatose, and the release his day of passing would bring. I always added Dog and Kat to my gratitude list. For every husband, they’d had been there for me. Dog was there for me now, napping in a chair too small for his brawny frame.
With my thoughts knotted over what could be happening with Sebastian, gratitude wasn’t even in the room. My attitude congealed in a very different latitude.
During three hours of testing, I saw Sebastian twice. The first time he never opened his eyes. I held his hand and watched his chest rise and fall. The second time, his eyes opened for less than a minute. His gaze skated past me and stopped at the doorway as if waiting for someone else to enter. When his eyelids closed, I cried till they wheeled him away.
A lifetime ago, Kat had numbered the reasons she knew Sebastian would ask me to marry him. When you’re in the room, he only looks at you.
“Maybe he wants you,” I said drearily to Dog in the waiting room. “Back at the house, he kept looking at you when he rhymed.”
Dog tipped out the last of the coffee Mrs. Timmons packed for us into two cups. He passed one to me and a snickerdoodle cookie. The smell of it reminded me of the first plate of cookies she gave me when Thomas was my husband.
“Or what you’re seeing now are random synapses firing,” Dog said gently.
I wiped my streaming eyes. “You don’t think he’s better?”
“Better in what way?” Before I could respond, he squeezed my wrist. “I’m not thinking anything till we get the test results.”
While waiting for Luke to return with the results, I thought about two things. I had nothing better to do than obsess while Dog slept.
First, I’d heard rumors about nearly dead husbands waking since becoming an Abishag. We called them a Lazarus. My brain ran wild thinking about Sebastian rising from his deathbed. Despite what Luke, Doctor Ingram said, could Sebastian wholly recover? Would he be angry that I’d married him? I had only Kat’s belief that he planned asking me.
What if he was Sebastian for a short while and then reverted to his comatose state again. Or died. I saw a movie where that happened. My grandparent’s tangerine tree did that. Rarely bore more than two or three fruit every year. Then one winter, twenty-seven tangerines covered the tree. It withered that summer. Grandpa said trees did that—produced a glorious crop before dying.
Maybe I would have a few, bittersweet days to say good-bye to Sebastian.
More likely this “rising” would be nothing more than another phase of his comatose state. He would rhyme occasionally, his hand would move in mine, his eyes would open to stare at Dog and not me. I would watch him die slowly over long months, maybe years. I would give my husband comfort and peace, and guard myself against hope. An Abishag wife to the end.
The second thing I considered while waiting for Luke—before becoming an Abishag wife, I rarely cried. Now I bawled like a baby. What had happened to me?
To stop myself from fretting further, I cleaned out my purse, balanced my checkbook, and gave the rest of Mrs. Timmons’ cookies to three little kids waiting with their dad while their mom had an ultrasound.
When Luke appeared, we were alone in the waiting room again. Dog stirred when I stood, my knees shaking. Luke’s face was serious, none of his practiced professional smiles evident.
“This is just preliminary ...” he said.
I clasped my hands tightly together, his pause wrecking havoc in my stomach.
A smile fleeted across his face too fast to read. “Mr. Crowder’s physical condition has improved. Initial blood panels are in range and his vital organs—heart, kidneys, liver—are no longer deteriorating.” He passed the lab results to Dog. “We’ll need to run further cognitive tests but the initial results are promising. His EEGs are showing more activity than last month, and his reflexes are better. He spoke twice to a technician and once to the neurologist, still rhyming, still tracking what they said. The neurologist is guardedly optimistic that we may see more improvement.”
I sat abruptly. Dog said something, but I couldn’t hear him for the blood rushing in my ears. I’m certain that he only warned me against expectations, but I didn’t need the warning. I’d heard Luke clearly: “guardedly optimistic,” “better,” and “no longer deteriorating.” He said nothing about a full recovery.
But he said nothing about Sebastian dying either.
CHAPTER TEN
“Have you called Florence Harcourt?” Kat asked a week later.
“Abort,” Sebastian said. A spasm of frustration crossed his face.
I agreed with Sebastian. I didn’t need to deal with the director or the lawyers at the Abishag agency. Too soon to know if this wasn’t a last tangerine harvest.
At least that was my reason and the same reason I hadn’t called his mother either.
“I sent my weekly report yesterday.” I busied myself sorting Sebastian’s underwear from the laundry basket so Kat couldn’t read my face.
“No do wrecking.” I saw another spasm of frustration in Sebastian’s clenched hands. Interesting that he’d shifted his attention from the flash cards Kat held to the laundry basket. He still didn’t look at me and gave the others only brief looks. His unrelenting focus on Dog had been getting on my nerves. I was glad Dog worked at the hospital this weekend.
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘wrecking,’ Sebastian,” I said. The therapist had encouraged us to speak directly to him and prod him to make himself clear. I put his socks and boxers in the bureau, and smiled at him. “Are you tired of the flash cards? You want to take a break?”
“Five minutes more,” Kat said. She was tougher than me. She flipped to a picture of a tree. “What’s this?”
“Bore,” he said. Even knowing he was rhyming with Kat’s “more,” I agreed that these exercises were boring. His mouth worked, and he spat out. “Tris.” She hid the card in her lap and then held it up without saying anything.
He exhaled. “Tree.”
Seven days after his firs
t word, and he improved daily. He stayed awake longer though still tired quickly. He strung words together although we rarely understood them. When we didn’t speak, he seemed to speak more clearly on his own. Listening to us speak seemed to trigger the rhyming.
He could move his fingers and toes but couldn’t hold a pencil or a fork and couldn’t stand. This present state would only make his mom cry so I decided to wait a little longer before telling her. No worries about her calling me or the doctor about Sebastian. She hadn’t with her father either. Tina lived in denial and let others handle the details.
“The agency employs you,” Kat said. “Legally you’re in a gray area.”
No kidding. Marriages may endure for better and for worse, but the Abishag agency contracts marriage only for worse and never for better. I thought about calling Jen for advice but decided she might feel obligated to tell Florence as she worked for the agency too. At the moment, procrastination seemed my best friend.
Kat continued gently, “There may be a question whether you’re still his wife or not.”
“Not,” Sebastian said explosively.
We both stared at him. He stared at the laundry basket in my arms.
Kat’s face cleared. “I don’t think Sebastian wants you doing his laundry, Les.”
Sebastian nodded, a jerky movement of his head but definitely up and down. Another first, another tangerine.
I set the basket down. “Okay. I won’t do it.”
I would have promised him anything at that moment, even if he didn’t look at me, his attention still on the laundry.
Kat broke in. “Someone’s gotta do your laundry till you can do it yourself, Seb. Three more minutes with the flash cards.”
I took the offending basket to the laundry room, my eyes dripping again.
***
After a nap and lunch, the phone rang. I forgot to check the incoming call number of the house phone.
I cringed when I heard my mother’s voice, rigid with anger and breathless with relief, assault my ear. “Leslie. About time you answered. Your father’s worried sick. Why haven’t you returned my calls?”
An Eggshell Present: An Abishag’s Fourth Mystery (Abishag Mysteries Book 4) Page 5