Winter Moon

"There never are."
        

CHAPTER SIX
        
        ..The cubicle, one of eight, had large windows that looked into the staff area of the I.C.U. The drapes had been pulled aside so the nurses could keep a direct watch on the patient even from their station in the center of the wheel-shaped chamber. Jack was attached to a cardiac monitor that transmitted continuous data to a terminal at the central desk, an intravenous drip that provided him with glucose and antibiotics, and a bifurcated oxygen tube that clipped gently to the septum between his nostrils.
        Heather was prepared to be shocked by Jack's condition-but he looked even worse than she expected. He was unconscious, so his face was slack, of course, but the lack of animation was not the only reason for his frightening appearance. His skin was bone-white, with dark-blue circles around his sunken eyes. His lips were so gray that she thought of ashes, and a Biblical quote passed through her mind with unsettling resonance, as if it had actually been spoken aloud-ashes to ashes, dust to dust. He seemed ten or fifteen pounds lighter than when he had left home that morning, as if his struggle for survival had taken place over a week, not just a few hours.
        A lump in her throat made it difficult for her to swallow as she stood at the side of the bed, and she was unable to speak. Though he was unconscious, she didn't want to talk to him until she was sure she could control her speech.
        She'd read somewhere that even patients in comas might be able to hear people around them, on some deep level, they might understand what was said and benefit from encouragement. She didn't want Jack to hear a tremor of fear or doubt in her voice-or anything else that might upset him or exacerbate what fear and depression already gripped him.
        The cubicle was unnervingly quiet. The heart-monitor sound had been turned off, leaving only a visual display. The oxygen-rich air escaping through the nasal inserts hissed so faintly she could hear it only when she leaned close to him, and the sound of his shallow breathing was as soft as that of a sleeping child. Rain drummed on the world outside, ticked and tapped against the single window, but that quickly became a gray noise, just another form of silence.
        She wanted to hold his hand more than she'd ever wanted anything. But his hands were hidden in the long sleeves of the restraining jacket.
        The IV line, which was probably inserted in a vein on the back of his hand, disappeared under the cuff.
        Hesitantly she touched his cheek. He looked cold but felt feverish.
        Eventually she said, "I'm here, babe."
        He gave no sign he had heard her. His eyes didn't move under their lids. His gray lips remained slightly parted.
        "Dr. Procnow says everything's looking good," she told him. "You're going to come out of this just fine. Together we can handle this, no sweat. Hell, two years ago, when my folks came to stay with us for a week? Now, that was a disaster and an ordeal, my mother whining nonstop for seven days, my dad drunk and moody. This is just a bee.sting by comparison, don't you think?"
        No response.
        "I'm here," she said. "I'll stay here. I'm not going anywhere. You and me, okay?"
        On the screen of the cardiac monitor, a moving line of bright green light displayed the jagged and critical patterns of atrial and ventricular activity, which proceeded without a single disruptive blip, weak but steady. If Jack had heard what she'd said, his heart did not respond to her words.
        A straight-backed chair stood in one corner. She moved it next to the bed. She watched him through the gaps in the railing.
        Visitors in the I.C.U were limited to ten minutes every two hours, so as not to exhaust patients and interfere with the nurses.
        However, the head nurse of the unit, Maria Alicante, was the daughter of a policeman. She gave Heather a dispensation from the rules. "You stay with him as long as you want," Maria said. "Thank God, nothing like this ever happened to my dad. We always expected it would, but it never did. Of course, he retired a few years ago, just as everything started getting even crazier out there."
        Every hour or so, Heather left the I.C.U to spend a few minutes with the members of the support group in the lounge. The faces kept changing, but there were never fewer than three, as many as six or seven,