Winter Moon

then the corner of his gray lips. "Yeah, but you're my fuck-up," she said.
        "Thirsty," he said.
        "Sure, okay, I'll get a nurse, see what you're allowed to have."
        Maria Alicante hurried through the door, alerted to Jack's change of condition by telemetry data on the cardiac monitor at the central desk.
        "He's awake, alert, he says he's thirsty," Heather reported, running her words together in quiet jubilation.
        "A man has a right to be a little thirsty after a hard day, doesn't he?" Maria said to Jack, rounding the bed to the nightstand, on which stood an insulated carafe of ice water.
        "Beer," Jack said.
        Tapping the IV bag, Maria said, "What do you think we've been dripping into your veins all day?"
        "Not Heineken."
        "Oh, you like Heineken, huh? Well, we have to control medical costs, you know.
        Can't use that imported stuff." She poured a third of a glass of water from the carafe. "From us you get Budweiser intravenously, take it or leave it."
        "Take it."
        Opening a nightstand drawer and plucking out a flexible plastic straw, Maria said to Heather, "Dr. Procnow's back in the hospital, making his evening rounds, and Dr. Delaney just got here too. As soon as I saw.the change on Jack's E.E.G, I had them paged."
        Walter Delaney was their family doctor. Though Procnow was nice and obviously competent, Heather felt better just knowing there was about to be a familiar face on the medical team dealing with Jack.
        "Jack," Maria said, "I can't put the bed up because you have to keep lying flat. And I don't want you to try to raise your head by yourself, all right?
        Let me lift your head for you."
        Maria put one hand behind his neck and raised his head a few inches off the thin pillow. With her other hand, she held the glass. Heather reached across the railing and put the straw to Jack's lips.
        "Small sips," Maria warned him. "You don't want to choke."
        After six or seven sips, with a pause to breathe between each, he'd had enough.
        Heather was delighted out of all proportion to her husband's modest accomplishment. However, his ability to swallow a thin liquid without choking probably meant there was no paralysis of his throat muscles, not even minimal.
        She realized how profoundly their lives had changed when such a mundane act as drinking water without choking was a triumph, but that grim awareness did not diminish her delight.
        As long as Jack was alive, there was a road back to the life they had known. A long road. One step at a time. Small, small steps. But there was a road, and nothing else mattered right now.
        While Emil Procnow and Walter Delaney examined Jack, Heather used the phone at the nurse's station to call home. She talked to Mae Hong first, then Toby, and told them that Jack was going to be all right.
        She knew she was putting a rose tint on reality, but a little positive thinking was good for all of them.
        "Can I see him?" Toby asked.
        "In a few days, honey."
        "I'm much better. Got better all day. I'm not sick any more."
        "I'll be the judge of that. Anyway, your dad needs a few days to get his strength back." bring peanut-butter-and-chocolate ice cream.
        That's his favorite.
        They won't have that in a hospital, will they?"
        "No, nothing like that."
        "Tell Dad I'm gonna bring him some."."All right," she said.
        "I want to buy it myself. I have money, from my allowance."
        "You're a good boy, Toby. You know that?"
        His voice became soft and shy. "When you coming home?"
        "I don't know, honey. I'll be here awhile. Probably after you're in bed."
        "Will you bring me something from Dad's room?"
        "What do you mean?"
        "Something from his room. Anything. Just something was in his room, so I can have it and know there's a room where he is."
        The chasm of insecurity and fear revealed by the boy's request was almost more than Heather could bear without losing the emotional control she had thus far maintained with such iron-willed success. Her chest tightened, and she had to swallow hard before she dared to speak.
        "Sure, okay, I'll bring you something."
        "If I'm asleep, wake me."
        "Okay."
        "Promise?"
        "I promise, peanut. Now I gotta go. You be good for Mae."
        "We're