Where I'm Calling From

away.”
    “Who’s calling?” she asked.
    “I don’t know who, just somebody with nothing better to do than call up people. You go on now.”
    She shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’m fine.”
    “Really,” he said. “Go home for a while, and then come back and spell me in the morning. It’ll be all right. What did Dr. Francis say? He said Scotty’s going to be all right. We don’t have to worry. He’s just sleeping now, that’s all.”
    A nurse pushed the door open. She nodded at them as she went to the bedside. She took the left arm out from under the covers and put her fingers on the wrist, found the pulse, then consulted her watch. In a little while, she put the arm back under the covers and moved to the foot of the bed, where she wrote something on a clipboard attached to the bed.
    “How is he?” Ann said. Howard’s hand was a weight on her shoulder. She was aware of the pressure from his fingers.
    “He’s stable,” the nurse said. Then she said, “Doctor will be in again shortly. Doctor’s back in the hospital. He’s making rounds right now.”
    “I was saying maybe she’d want to go home and get a little rest,” Howard said. “After the doctor comes,” he said.
    “She could do that,” the nurse said. “I think you should both feel free to do that, if you wish.” The nurse was a big Scandinavian woman with blond hair. There was the trace of an accent in her speech.
    “We’ll see what the doctor says,” Ann said. “I want to talk to the doctor. I don’t think he should keep sleeping like this. I don’t think that’s a good sign.” She brought her hand up to her eyes and let her head come forward a little. Howard’s grip tightened on her shoulder, and then his hand moved up to her neck, where his fingers began to knead the muscles there.
    “Dr. Francis will be here in a few minutes,” the nurse said. Then she left the room.
    Howard gazed at his son for a time, the small chest quietly rising and falling under the covers. For the first time since the terrible minutes after Ann’s telephone call to him at his office, he felt a genuine fear starting in his limbs. He began shaking his head. Scotty was fine, but instead of sleeping at home in his own bed, he was in a hospital bed with bandages around his head and a tube in his arm. But this help was what he needed right now.
    Dr. Francis came in and shook hands with Howard, though they’d just seen each other a few hours before. Ann got up from the chair. “Doctor?”
    “Ann,” he said and nodded. “Let’s just first see how he’s doing,” the doctor said. He moved to the side of the bed and took the boy’s pulse. He peeled back one eyelid and then the other. Howard and Ann stood beside the doctor and watched. Then the doctor turned back the covers and listened to the boy’s heart and lungs with his stethoscope. He pressed his fingers here and there on the abdomen. When he was finished, he went to the end of the bed and studied the chart. He noted the time, scribbled something on the chart, and then looked at Howard and Ann.
    “Doctor, how is he?” Howard said. “What’s the matter with him exactly?”
    “Why doesn’t he wake up?” Ann said.
    The doctor was a handsome, big-shouldered man with a tanned face.
    He wore a three-piece blue suit, a striped tie, and ivory cufflinks. His gray hair was combed along the sides of his head, and he looked as if he had just come from a concert. “He’s all right,” the doctor said.
    “Nothing to shout about, he could be better, I think. But he’s all right. Still, I wish he’d wake up. He should wake up pretty soon.” The doctor looked at the boy again. “We’ll know some more in a couple of hours, after the results of a few more tests are in. But he’s all right, believe me, except for the hairline fracture of the skull. He does have that.”
    “Oh, no,” Ann said.
    “And a bit of a concussion, as I said before. Of course, you know he’s in shock,” the doctor said.
    “Sometimes you see this in shock cases. This sleeping.”
    “But he’s out of any real danger?” Howard said. “You said before he’s not in a coma. You wouldn’t call this a coma, then—would you, doctor?” Howard waited. He looked at the doctor.
    “No, I don’t want to call it a coma,” the doctor said and glanced over at the boy once more. “He’s just in a very deep sleep. It’s a restorative measure the body is taking on its own. He’s out of any real danger, I’d