The Friendship Pact

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  By Saturday I was a basket case of highs and lows. Danny’s mom and stepdad had been there all week. They were staying at our place, bringing me changes of clothes and makeup from home so I could shower in Danny’s bathroom. They were planning to return to Kentucky in the morning. Mom and Daddy were flying in tomorrow. Once word got out on Facebook that Danny might be waking up and that this could perhaps be escalated if he heard voices he recognized, most of the old gang had started coming by. Other than Danny’s parents, and Jake, of course, no one stayed long. But I didn’t have a single moment alone with him all day. This morning, though, I’d asked that we be left alone, just for the doctor’s appointment.

  Excitement and fear were eating me alive. In jeans, a Wesley sweatshirt and tennis shoes, I paced as I waited for Danny’s chief neurologist, Dr. Gordon, to arrive. We had a ten o’clock appointment.

  It was hard not to talk nonstop to my still-unconscious husband, but I wanted to wait for Dr. Gordon. I wanted to show him something. Or rather, to see if he noticed.

  At five after ten, he walked through the door. Alone.

  “Hey, Danny, it’s Dr. Gordon. How are you today?” he asked, as always. The doctor’s gaze was shrewd, assessing. I was never quite sure what he was looking for, but he seemed to get messages from Danny that completely passed me by.

  He picked up Danny’s wrist, feeling for his pulse.

  “Any change?” he asked me. He’d been in touch with the nurses Thursday and Friday, but hadn’t been back in.

  “Yes,” I said. “At least I think so.” I held my breath. The doctor blinked, looked down and then turned around.

  “Say something else,” he said.

  “Danny, I love you so much.” There were tears in my eyes and he could probably hear them in my voice. But his life was resting on moments like these. I’d been up all night waiting to hear the doctor’s opinion...

  Danny’s leg moved.

  The doctor focused his gaze on me again. “He’s responding to the sound of your voice.”

  “I know.” I’d told the nurses. And others. Everyone but Danny’s parents thought I was seeing things that weren’t there. Hoping too hard. I’d had as many looks of pity the past few days as I’d had hugs of congratulations. “He moves his leg when he hears me talk.” Unless I was doing so incessantly. Then, it was my theory, he just listened.

  “He moved his leg?” Dr. Gordon glanced back toward the bed. “Not that I saw.”

  My heart dropped. Shit. But the doctor had said...

  “His pulse rate escalated,” Dr. Gordon said. “Each time you spoke.”

  My pulse escalated, too. Probably off the charts. I started to get dizzy and sat. “I’m right then? He is responding to me?” My voice was only a whisper. It was the most I could manage.

  Dr. Gordon’s nod was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen.

  * * *

  It was Sunday. Bailey had her and Mattie’s things packed. She was ready to call the bell desk to have her car brought around and her bags loaded up. They had a long drive ahead of them—ten hours because she’d failed to leave the day before, choosing to spend the time with Mattie in a children’s museum downtown.

  She picked up the hotel phone. Put it back down.

  She’d promised Richard Mayer her answer by Sunday. Her cell phone was in her purse. An easy grab. Mayer had given her his home number. Like he expected her to be needing it more than once.

  She found his contact listing and pushed Call, rehearsed thank yous and words about what an honor his offer had been running through her mind. She’d get the rejection over with quickly, like ripping off a bandage—the faster you did it, the less it hurt—and then she’d take her son and be gone without anyone from her personal life ever knowing she’d been there.

  “Yes, Bailey, I’ve been awaiting your call,” Richard said instead of hello. Which threw her off course. Her lines had definitely been rehearsed to follow hello.

  “My wife and I would like to invite you and your son over for a little celebration this afternoon,” he continued, “say around four? We’ve invited a few friends, and we’ll have some appetizers and drinks. Vivian will be here to watch Mattie. We’ll send a car for you.”

  Vivian, the sitter who’d been with Mattie all week. A nice woman. Divorced. About Mama Di’s age, with twin sons in college...

  “That is...you are accepting our offer, aren’t you? We were hoping you’d be willing to start tomorrow. The Maple case, the one you worked on last year, is back and we thought—”

  “My things are in Boston.”

  “We can have someone pack them up for you. Or, if you’d rather start in another week, we can probably hold the Maple case...”

  “No, no.” She wasn’t taking the job. “No, that’s fine. I can start tomorrow.” Had she really said that? She had a job in Boston to return to. But any junior lawyer could handle her cases. Or she could handle them from here—all except court appearances—until they found someone else.

  “Good. Great! So shall I send a car for you this afternoon?”

  “Yes, that would be very nice.”

  “We’ll see you around four, then.”

  He’d hung up. But Bailey was still standing in the middle of the hotel suite that was apparently going to be her home until she could find something else, her phone to her ear.

  What the hell had she just done?

  * * *

  Jake was at the center every night that next week. When he’d first walked in Sunday night while my folks were there, I wanted to die. But he hugged them both and chatted with them the same way he always had. Before I knew it, he and Daddy were sitting in the chairs beside Danny’s bed, talking sports, including Danny in the conversation to a point that brought tears to my eyes.

  “It’s okay to cry, you know,” Mom had said. I nodded. But kept myself under control.

  Mom and Daddy stayed until Wednesday evening, spending the days with Danny while I was at school, but there was no further change in him, and seemingly no reason for them to be there. Daddy had obligations in Florida and off they went.

  Then it was just Jake and me. I’d had a visit from Dr. Gordon shortly after I’d arrived on Thursday afternoon.

  “What’d he say?” Jake asked, sitting in one chair beside Danny’s bed while I occupied the other later that evening. What I really wanted to do was climb into bed with my husband and go to sleep. I’d done that a couple of times the week before, when I’d spent the night at the center.

  “He’s in a responsive but not fully conscious state and could remain like that forever,” I said, staring at my husband to see if there was any reaction to my words.

  Care, Danny, dammit. Find the desire to come out here with us. Fully here.

  “Did he give you any indication what he thought the chances were?”

  “Nope. He also said he could gain full consciousness and be severely brain damaged.”

  “Which we already knew.”

  Yep. We had. From the very beginning. I didn’t believe it, though. “If he’s severely brain damaged, he wouldn’t have been capable of caring that I was so upset that night.”

  The night he’d finally moved. The night he’d cared enough to start his journey back to us.

  The night after I’d had sex with his best friend.

  “You’re making too big a deal of it,” Jake said. I knew what he was talking about. Almost as though he’d read my thoughts. But truthfully, that thing I’d done...being unfaithful to my one true love...was always there, in the back of my mind.

  I didn’t say anything in response to his comment. I wasn’t going to discuss this with him.

  “Bailey said something once that’s been coming back to me all week.”

  I didn’t care. Didn’t want to know. But I looked at him—directly—for
the first time in over a week.

  “She said you hold yourself to extremely high standards. Like you have to be perfect for those around you.”

  Well, she was wrong. Which went to show how much of a fantasy I’d been living in all the years I thought Bailey Watters and I were Siamese twins of the soul. Hard to believe I’d ever been that naive. That immature.

  “She said that one of her biggest hopes for you was that someday you’d forgive yourself for being human.”

  My whole body stiffened. As if Jake had hauled off and punched me in the back. I wanted to deny any correlation between his words and my life. To know that they did not resonate in any way. To reject them outright. I looked at Danny, certain that if he was conscious, he’d laugh and tell Jake he was nuts.

  But Danny wasn’t laughing. He was just lying there. Staring at me.

  His blue eyes were clear, but serious, and just as—

  “Danny?” “DANNY!” I couldn’t think. Couldn’t comprehend. “Danny!” I was on the bed with him. Hugging him. Crying. Laughing. Sort of aware that his door had opened. That others were standing there. Aware of Jake on the other side of the bed, close, but distant, too.

  “The doctor’s on his way.” I heard Aimee’s voice. Briefly wondered why she was still there.

  “Dr. Gordon,” I said, raising myself up to gaze into my husband’s beloved eyes. “You’ll like him,” I told Danny. Grinning and sobbing, too. “Oh, my God, Danny...”

  My voice broke as he blinked. Closed his eyes. And apparently went back to sleep.

  Only later did it occur to me that he’d never said a word.

  Chapter Thirty

  Bailey was sitting on the king-size bed she was sharing with her sleeping son, her laptop on her knees, when Jake called. Her heart did not leap. She was suffering a case of nerves due to the fact that at nine the next morning, she was to appear before her ex-stepfather in court.

  “Hello.” He was married. He was married. He was married.

  “He woke up.”

  Bailey’s laptop tipped over as she jerked forward. “What? Danny? Oh, my God!”

  “Kora and I were just sitting here talking, and next thing I know she’s screaming and crying and Danny’s lying there staring at her.”

  “You’re at the center?”

  “Yeah, out in the hall. I...he was awake for at least five minutes, Bail.”

  The emotion choking him choked her up, too.

  “What did he say? How is he? Oh, my God.” She was up off the bed. Feeling she had to do something.

  “He didn’t say anything. Listen, I have to get back in there. The doctor’s with him now. I just...”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll call you later.”

  Kora would be losing it. So many emotions and nowhere to go with them. She’d be having trouble thinking straight. Who had her back?

  “Give them my love...”

  “I will.” He wouldn’t. They both knew that. And if it wouldn’t help Kora, she didn’t really want him to.

  “Give Jenna my best, too.”

  “Sure,” he said. But she knew he wasn’t going to do that, either.

  And at the moment, it didn’t even matter. Pacing the hotel suite, she looked out the high-rise window at the Pittsburgh skyline, picturing the roads she’d take to be where Kora was right now.

  Danny was really coming back. Kora would have her husband back. Her life.

  A miracle.

  An answered prayer.

  She couldn’t comprehend it.

  * * *

  Danny slept for two solid days after that first sign of full consciousness. I was in despair, afraid that those moments of staring into his eyes were the only ones I was going to get. I went to work on Friday because I had to. Not just for the money, but to stay sane. But I spent my nights at the center. I talked to Danny incessantly. Until my throat hurt. About our high school days, asking him if he remembered the time we cut class to steal a rival school’s mascot. About the first time he’d kissed me, when I’d driven up the mountain—my mountain—to show him my favorite spot. About our wedding and his job. About college football. Anything to pull him back out again. I didn’t discuss William Daniel. Or his sterility. I didn’t talk about Bailey. Or anything else I thought could send him further away from me.

  Through it all, he just lay there, his feeding tube taped to his face. They took him to therapy. There was no response.

  But when Dr. Gordon visited on Saturday and asked me to speak to Danny while he monitored his pulse, there was a definite reaction.

  I cried myself to sleep that night.

  Then on Sunday morning, as I sat with Danny, grading papers, there he was, staring at me again. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t smile. But his eyes followed me as I moved around him. He was awake for almost ten minutes that time.

  And the time after that, it was a little longer. Mom and Daddy were flying in. Both of Danny’s parents and their spouses had already come to visit and were staying in town.

  Jake came every day.

  Our Facebook page was off the charts with comments and well-wishes, though I only knew this from Jake. He’d started posting there for us. I hadn’t been on Facebook since the accident.

  On Tuesday, Mom was waiting for me outside Danny’s door as I arrived from school. “What?”

  “He talked!”

  “What!” And I’d missed it? “What did he say?”

  “He asked the nurse for some water.”

  I pushed into the room, where my father sat beside a sleeping Danny. “Water?” After a year and a half of silence, my husband asked for a glass of water?

  “Yeah, and then he was asleep again before she could get it for him,” Daddy said.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off Danny. I’d believed for so long. Hoped for so long. And then started to lose hope...

  “Danny?” I went to him. Kissed him full on the lips. “I love you, sweetie,” I told the sleeping man I’d shaved before I’d left for work that morning. Was he really going to recover? Were we on our way to a better place?

  “Love you, too.”

  I jumped back. He was looking at me. So serious. The love of my life. And a stranger, too.

  I had no idea what to say to him.

  His eyes closed, and I was saved from having to figure it out.

  * * *

  Jake called Bailey almost every night. She’d stay up, waiting for his call. And would take it in the living room portion of the suite, to remind herself that Jake had no place in her bedroom.

  He gave her minute-to-minute updates on Danny, which were helping to keep her sane as she prayed and hoped and sent vicarious strength that probably wasn’t even wanted.

  Mama Di called, too. Bailey felt terrible for pretending she was still in Boston, but for some reason, she let Kora’s mother continue to think she was out of town. As though her absence from their lives, particularly at this critical time, was due to distance, not rejection.

  Danny was conscious a lot of the time now. He participated in his physical therapy. He was showing weakness, though not full paralysis, on his right side. He talked, but only one thought at a time. He didn’t hold conversations. Jake was certain that he followed them, though. The doctor wouldn’t confirm the theory.

  Mama Di said Kora was exhausted. That the roller coaster ride of hope and fear, of progress and setbacks, of Danny’s unusual and out-of-character highs and lows were taking a huge toll on her.

  The odd thing, which occurred to Bailey the second week after Danny woke up, was that never once had she considered the fact that this man they were all rooting for was the father of her child. She’d only been thinking of him as Kora’s husband. In terms of Kora.

  Because that was the reality the
y’d chosen to create.

  But one night, after Jake had relayed the fact that Danny was pretty confused, couldn’t remember the day of the accident at all, and had other memory gaps that might or might not be permanent, it finally dawned on her that he could, at some point, try to lay claim to her son again. As he had that last day.

  Strangely, the idea didn’t scare her. At all. What did she have left to lose? In some ways it would be a huge relief to have her secret revealed. Its heaviness had become almost more than she could bear.

  Yet she couldn’t stand the idea of hurting Kora again. Hurting her more. She’d only ever wanted to be a blessing in her friend’s life.

  She asked Jake about Jenna each time he called, to remind herself who they all were now. To forget who they’d been. Jake’s wife was gone far more than she was home and had not yet accompanied him to the center to visit Danny.

  Every night he asked about Mattie. She gave him vague responses. Same with her job.

  Until that night, almost three weeks after Danny woke up, when he told her he was going to be in Boston and wanted to see her and Mattie again. Just for an hour. Maybe lunch. Or an afternoon snack. Whatever they could work out.

  He knew where she’d lived. If he went by, he’d see the sold sign that had, according to Delores, gone up a couple of days before.

  “I’m, uh, not in Boston,” she told him, standing at the big window in the living room. She never pulled the curtains. Couldn’t stand to block out the city that held every memory she’d ever had of love and joy-—or lock herself in with all the bad ones.

  She also hadn’t told anyone in Pittsburgh, outside of work, that she was back in town.

  “You’re traveling?” Jake sounded surprised. And not all that pleased, either. “What about Mattie?”

  “He’s with me.”

  “I won’t be there until next week,” he said. “When do you return?”

  “I’m...not returning.”

  “You moved?” Surely she’d mistaken that hurt tone in his voice. They were nothing to each other anymore.

  Just friends. That was why they’d broken up. So that they could be lifetime friends and never enemies.