Where I'm Calling From

began its descent. The orderlies stood at either end of the gurney without saying anything, though once one of the men made a comment to the other in their own language, and the other man nodded slowly in response.
    Later that morning, just as the sun was beginning to lighten the windows in the waiting room outside the X-ray department, they brought the boy out and moved him back up to his room. Howard and Ann rode up on the elevator with him once more, and once more they took up their places beside the bed.
    They waited all day, but still the boy did not wake up. Occasionally, one of them would leave the room to go downstairs to the cafeteria to drink coffee and then, as if suddenly remembering and feeling guilty, get up from the table and hurry back to the room. Dr. Francis came again that afternoon and examined the boy once more and then left after telling them he was conning along and could wake up at any minute now. Nurses, different nurses from the night before, came in from time to time. Then a young woman from the lab knocked and entered the room. She wore white slacks and a white blouse and carried a little tray of things which she put on the stand beside the bed. Without a word to them, she took blood from the boy’s arm. Howard closed his eyes as the woman found the right place on the boy’s arm and pushed the needle in.
    “I don’t understand this,” Ann said to the woman.
    “Doctor’s orders,” the young woman said. “I do what I’m told. They say draw that one, I draw. What’s wrong with him, anyway?” she said. “He’s a sweetie.”
    “He was hit by a car,” Howard said. “A hit-and-run.”
    The young woman shook her head and looked again at the boy. Then she took her tray and left the room.
    “Why won’t he wake up?” Ann said. “Howard? I want some answers from these people.”
    Howard didn’t say anything. He sat down again in the chair and crossed one leg over the other. He rubbed his face. He looked at his son and then he settled back in the chair, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.
    Ann walked to the window and looked out at the parking lot. It was night, and cars were driving into and out of the parking lot with their lights on. She stood at the window with her hands gripping the sill, and knew in her heart that they were into something now, something hard. She was afraid, and her teeth began to chatter until she tightened her jaws. She saw a big car stop in front of the hospital and someone, a woman in a long coat, get into the car. She wished she were that woman and somebody, anybody, was driving her away from here to somewhere else, a place where she would find Scotty waiting for her when she stepped out of the car, ready to say Mom and let her gather him in her arms.
    In a little while, Howard woke up. He looked at the boy again. Then he got up from the chair, stretched, and went over to stand beside her at the window. They both stared out at the parking lot. They didn’t say anything. But they seemed to feel each other’s insides now, as though the worry had made them transparent in a perfectly natural way.
    The door opened and Dr. Francis came in. He was wearing a different suit and tie this time. His gray hair was combed along the sides of his head, and he looked as if he had just shaved. He went straight to the bed and examined the boy. “He ought to have come around by now. There’s just no good reason for this,” he said. “But I can tell you we’re all convinced he’s out of any danger. We’ll just feel better when he wakes up. There’s no reason, absolutely none, why he shouldn’t come around. Very soon. Oh, he’ll have himself a dilly of a headache when he does, you can count on that. But all of his signs are fine.
    They’re as normal as can be.”
    “It is a coma, then?” Ann said.
    The doctor rubbed his smooth cheek. “We’ll call it that for the time being, until he wakes up. But you must be worn out. This is hard. I know this is hard. Feel free to go out for a bite,” he said. “It would do you good. I’ll put a nurse in here while you’re gone if you’ll feel better about going. Go and have yourselves something to eat.”
    “I couldn’t eat anything,” Ann said.
    “Do what you need to do, of course,” the doctor said. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you that all the signs are good, the tests are negative, nothing showed up at all, and just as soon as he wakes up he’ll be over the hill.”
    “Thank you, doctor,” Howard said. He