Jack turned to find Hope at the door. Her hair was a mess of blond waves. She was breathless and sweaty. Wide eyes were on Rachel.
He started toward her, but she ran past to the bed. “I knew it!” she cried, breaking into an excited smile. “I knew something was happening, only I didn’t know which way it would go.” She hugged Jack, jumping up and down, then gave Rachel a big, smiling, smacking kiss on the cheek. When she straightened, she breathed out a satisfied sigh and looked triumphantly from Jack to Katherine and back.
Jack felt as though he ought to scold her, but he couldn’t figure out what for. It was Katherine who finally cleared her throat and said, “Uh, Jack, maybe you should call the school before they call the cops, and tell them she’s with you?”
KATHERINE had to return to work, Jack had to call his lawyer, and Hope had to put several more braids in Rachel’s hair. By the time she announced she was hungry, Jack was starved. He took her to lunch in downtown Monterey and returned to the hospital in time to open more gifts from Victoria—cotton nightgowns, perfume and powder, and no less than a dozen CDs, all symphonies. They had moved Rachel back to a regular room, where Jack promptly fell asleep with his head on the bed near her hand. When he woke up, it was time to get Samantha. He talked with his lawyer again while the girls were busy with Rachel, then he told Rachel about dissolving the firm. He drove the girls back to Big Sur, cooked dinner, and went to the studio.
Samantha worked with him for a while before heading off to make calls. Jack was relieved enough that she was back to normal to let her go. Hope continued to work by his side until he finally sent her to bed. They had framed another six pictures that night. Twelve were done in all. They couldn’t do much more until Jack finished painting.
He chose a canvas depicting a great egret spreading its wings for takeoff. His task was to fill in the murky dusk of the Florida Everglades against which the white bird was poised. He had barely taken up palette and brush when Hope returned. She wore a T-shirt that reached her knees and nothing on her legs and feet.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
She nodded. Her hands were linked behind her. She looked like she just wanted to hang around. So Jack started talking about the canvas. He told her why he mixed certain colors and showed her the effect of different brushes.
She watched what he did, nodded, said the kind of distracted “Uh-huh” that suggested her mind wasn’t on it. After a few minutes she began wandering around the studio. He watched her make one leisurely turn, then another. Each time, she stopped at the desk backed against the wall.
“Hope?”
She shot him a smile that was a little too bright, shrugged, and moved on. But she was back in the same spot three minutes later.
He set down his things and went to the desk. His laptop was there, closed. Several shop drawings lay under it, but they wouldn’t interest her. They didn’t interest him. He had only planned to study them later as a concession to his lawyer, who suggested that he complete as much of the firm’s work as he could until a dissolution agreement was signed.
“What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?” he asked.
She spoke quickly, barely opening her mouth. “There’s other stuff here. I’m not supposed to know.”
“What stuff?”
“Sketches.”
“Where?”
She made an offhand gesture toward the desk. “Behind.”
From where Jack stood, he saw nothing. Only when he leaned over to where the desk hit the wall did he see the edge of something wedged behind. Dragging the desk forward, he removed a slim portfolio. He set it down with care, remembering the last time he had opened a surprise portfolio. Then he had learned about a child he had lost.
With some trepidation, he opened this one—and was suddenly back in life drawing class, sitting with Rachel, drawing nudes. She had used charcoal on thick ivory rag. The view was a rear one—hips, torso, shoulders, head. Without a face it might have been anonymous. But that was his shape, his hair, his scar at the back of the elbow, all drawn with such feeling that the sorrow of things lost rushed through him.
He paused. The scar was from a runaway piece of scaffolding. It was six months old. Rachel had seen it and commented on it once when he had come for the girls.
Wishing that she was right there right then, he turned from one sheet to the next to the next. Some had been done with charcoal, others with watercolor. Some had features as distinct as his profile, others were as faceless as the first. But her voice spoke, answering his question in each and every one.
Is the feeling there? Or gone? Katherine hadn’t answered because Hope arrived. Hope must have heard.
She had given him a gift, but by the time he turned to thank her, she had gone.
chapter twenty-one
JACK SHOULD HAVE been used to being woken by the phone, but he jumped as high as ever when it rang Tuesday morning at dawn.
He reached it on the first grab. “Yes?”
“Mr. McGill?” The voice was authoritative. “This is Janice Pierce. I’m one of the residents—”
“What happened?” he cut in, sitting up.
“Rachel is starting to move.”
He was utterly still for a second. Then he dared breathe, but barely. “She’s waking up?”
“Not exactly. She’s moving her fingers and toes.”
“Moving them how?”
“Wiggling. It’s spontaneous. Not in response to commands. We call it ‘lightening,’ as in limbs that have been dead weight becoming lighter. Typically, it starts from the outside and moves in. It definitely boosts her GCS score.”
“Which means?”
“She may be starting to wake up.”
“May be,” he repeated, wanting to hope, but Rachel had moved before. He had seen her blink, flinch, whatever.
“It doesn’t always lead to full awakening,” she said. “This could be as good as it gets. But it’s more than we’ve had so far. We thought you’d want to know.”
THE GIRLS had heard the phone and were beside him even before he hung up. He told them what Janice had said. Within five minutes, they were dressed and in the car.
The air outside was moist. Fog floated in pale gray bands through the woods and over the narrow road. Sitting higher in the new car than he had in the old, Jack should have been able to see more, but anything too distant was a blur.
As he turned onto the highway and picked up speed, he struggled not to get carried away. He had read enough to know that comatose responses were unreliable. The movement might end before they reached the hospital, having been nothing more than the last little spasms in limbs that would never move again. Or this kind of movement could go on forever, never spreading beyond fingers and toes.
Still, his hopes edged up along with the sun behind the fog.
WHEN THEY arrived, Rachel was propped on her left side. There was no sign of movement. Pillows held her in place. She lay as still as ever.
Fearful, Jack eased lank blond hair back from a face that was growing thinner by the day. “Hi, Rachel. Hi, angel. They told us you’re moving. Can we see?”
“Hi, Mommy.” Hope crowded in beside him. “It’s me. We didn’t even have breakfast; we just came here first.”
“Move, Mom,” ordered Samantha.
“She won’t move if you tell her like that.”
“Come on, Rachel,” Jack coaxed. “Sun’s coming up. It’s gonna be a nice one. That’s poetic, don’t you think?”
“There,” Samantha cried, pointing at the sheet. “Her foot.”
Jack moved the sheet away. When there was nothing, he tickled her sole.
Hope said a worried “That always makes her laugh.”
“How can she not feel it?” Samantha asked.
“She’s still comatose,” Kara said as she joined them. “The movement isn’t conscious. It usually comes in waves, brief periods of activity alternating with periods of rest.”
“Ah!” Jack cried, victorious. �
��Her ankle jerked!”
“I saw it!”
“Me, too!”
Energized, he straightened. “What do we do now?” he asked the power-pearl lady. “How do we get her to do more?”
“Keep doing what you’ve been doing. Something’s working.”
KATHERINE was coming out of the shower when the phone rang. The mirror was covered with steam, but she wrapped herself in a bath sheet before she passed.
“She’s starting to move,” Jack said without preamble and went on to describe what he’d seen. “It could be nothing or the proverbial last gasp, but I don’t want to let anything go that might help. I thought I’d call her friends and get them in here. Bombard her with stimulation. Can you give me numbers?”
Katherine’s first instinct was to make the calls herself. Then she took a slow, understanding breath and went for her address book.
Five minutes later, she returned to the bathroom. The mirror was clearing from the bottom up. She loosened her towel, figuring that this would be easy as pie with her face obscured. She could be more objective that way, less emotional. Rachel was moving right along. She should, too.
But … not yet. Opening the medicine chest wide so that the mirror faced the wall, she quickly slathered her body with cream and put on a bra and a blouse. Covered up, she relaxed. She reached for panty hose and let excitement about Rachel erase every negative thought.
JACK called the numbers Katherine gave him, plus others he found in the phone book. He called Faith Bligh. He called Victoria, then remembered a message that she had left for him. She was in either Chicago or Detroit, he couldn’t remember which. He settled for leaving a message on her machine in New York.
When Cindy came to bathe Rachel, he drove the girls to school. Then he turned around and drove back to Big Sur. Having lined up successive visits by Dinah, Charlie, and the bridge player, Bev, he knew that Rachel would have stimulation until he returned. Between now and then, he had something urgent to do.
The sun was making short shrift of the fog, unveiling a day as full of color as any Jack had seen. The farmland flanking the road just south of Carmel was green with lettuce and artichoke; the hills beyond were wild mustard yellow. Granite outcroppings on the shore side of the road were a richer gray, almost slate under an emerging blue sky. Beyond rock, the ocean was kelp-green, then aqua descending into a deep, dark charcoal blue. The sky was endless and new.
Turning off the highway at Rachel’s road, he felt the glow of familiarity. Oak, sycamore, redwood, even scrub chaparral—all substantial, all thriving. He climbed from the car that was really a truck and stretched, smiled, filled his lungs with air so clear that his body tingled. Inside, the phone began to ring. Hopeful, terrified, he rushed to get it. “Mr. McGill?”
“Yes.” He didn’t recognize the voice, but the hospital had dozens of doctors.
“My name is Myron Elliott. I’m a developer. I want to talk business.”
Jack felt an instant letdown. “What business?”
“I heard about your break with David Sung. I wanted to approach you before others do. My company specializes in building resorts. We like the designs you did in Montana. If you’re wondering how we saw those, the answer is a spy, but I won’t dwell on that, because I understand that your time is short. We talked with David a month ago, but the price he quoted was, well, ridiculous. I was hoping you’d be more flexible.”
Totally aside from the fact that Jack didn’t want to be thinking business, he was mildly put off. “Why would I be?”
“You may be joining another firm or going solo, but in either case, you need to establish your name quickly. We’re not as big as the group doing Montana, but we’re getting there. We won’t overpay, but we’ll pay. We’ll also offer you more than one project. That would take a load off your mind, wouldn’t it?”
It certainly would, if assuring a steady income was his major concern. It was definitely a concern. But major? “Uh, look, I’m not sure I can think about this right now. I’m in the middle of a family emergency. If you give me your number, I’ll get back to you.” He wrote down the number on the flap of an envelope on the counter.
“We’d like to move ahead on this immediately,” the man said. “When will I hear from you?”
Jack pressed thumb and forefinger to his brow. “Today’s Tuesday. Give me a week?”
“Can you make it sooner? I need to know if we’re in the ballpark. If we are, we’ll hold off on seeking other bids until we see something from you.”
Jack felt a gnawing in his stomach. The man was right. He needed work. A group that promised more than one job would give him instant security. But a resort? “Friday. I’ll call you Friday.”
“Good. Great. Talk with you then.”
Jack hung up feeling uncomfortable. He didn’t want to be thinking about this now. But at some point he had to. According to his lawyer, David was claiming, as his, every prospective client that hadn’t yet been signed. Jack could take him to court. Those clients had been developed on Sung and McGill time. They should be split half-and-half.
Did Jack have the stomach for a court case? No. Did Jack want those clients? No. He wanted a smaller, more humane practice. That was all.
Tearing off the phone number, he stuffed it in his pocket and went to work. He moved in and out of the house like a man possessed, carrying framed canvas after framed canvas to the car that was, thankfully, a truck. When twelve were carefully stacked around foam buffers, he closed the hatch and drove right back to Carmel and P. Emmet’s.
Ben was waiting. They quickly carried the pieces inside and stood them against a wall not far from the three paintings already there. Ben’s excitement was obvious. He hadn’t expected there would be so many new ones. What kept Jack waiting nervously were the man’s thoughts about what he saw.
Ben moved in, hunkered down before one, moved on to the next, moved back.
When Jack couldn’t bear the suspense, he said, “Well? What do you think?”
“I think she’s brilliant,” Ben said. “She captured everything I wanted her to. These have the same feeling as the bobcat pups. She listened, she heard, she did.” He darted Jack a glance. “Nice job with the frames.”
Feeling validated and exuberant, Jack grinned. “Thanks.”
WHEN KATHERINE got a midmorning cancellation, she had her receptionist move the two appointments following it to the afternoon, and headed for the hospital.
Cindy was with Rachel, slow-talking as she exercised her limbs. Katherine stood silently, watching in vain for movement. But Cindy was smiling. “Watch.” She took a pen from her pocket and pressed it against Rachel’s thumbnail. She pressed harder. Rachel pulled her thumb away.
Katherine’s heart raced. “Do it again,” she said. The movement had been so small, she wanted to make sure it was real.
Cindy pressed with the pen, and there it was, a tiny recoil.
Katherine clapped her hands together, put them to her mouth, and beamed. She was enough of a realist to know they had a long way to go. Reponse to pain was bottom-line basic, but it was a step beyond the random movement begun earlier that morning, far and away the best thing they had seen in two whole weeks.
JACK was at the hospital by noon, staking out a bedside spot. By two he regretted making so many calls. Rachel had a steady stream of visitors, but he wanted to be alone with her. When he imagined her opening her eyes, he wanted to be the first thing she saw. Wanted to be the only thing she saw. Wanted her to know that he had been there more than anyone else.
It was juvenile. But he was getting nervous. Charcoal sketches might suggest she still loved him; same with framed pictures stashed in a drawer. But the fact remained that she had chosen to leave him. He understood now why she had. It was his job to show her that things had changed.
So he sat beside her and talked with the friends who came. He kept track of her movements, looking for the little more that suggested she was coming further out of the coma. She continued to do small thi
ngs with fingers and toes, occasionally twitching an ankle, elbow, or knee, but there wasn’t anything new until that evening. He was helping the night nurse turn her when she moaned. When they repeated the motion, she repeated the moan. Then she settled into silence.
They were small sounds, but his heart soared. He called the girls, who were back in Big Sur after dinner with Katherine. He called Katherine, who had returned to Carmel. He kissed Rachel’s pale cheek and told her that she was wonderful, that she was strong, that she could do it, and he waited.
The expectancy was so strong and his adrenaline flowing so fast that he didn’t think he would feel tired. But nights on end of moonlighting in Rachel’s studio and catching precious few hours of sleep took its toll. He was dead asleep in his chair by the bed when the night nurse came to turn Rachel again.
There was no moan this time. Nor was there motion. Jack would have been discouraged if the nurse hadn’t been able to evoke the thumbnail response. It was still there, that recoil.
“Go home,” she urged. “We’ll call if there’s any change. Once she wakes up, she’ll need you even more. You should be rested for that.”
Jack wasn’t so sure about the needing-him-even-more part, but he liked the way it sounded, and the girls were alone. He drove home.
HE FELL into bed at eleven and slept straight until Hope shook his shoulder. His eyelids were heavy. With an effort, he raised one.
“We’re taking the bus,” she whispered.
He came awake fast then, startled to see that it was light, and late. “No, I’ll get ready,” he said, pushing himself up, but his head was nearly as heavy as his eyes.
“Sleep longer,” Samantha said from the door. “I called the hospital. She’s doing the same stuff, but she isn’t awake. They promised they’d call when she is.”
Jack wanted to get up anyway, but he made the mistake of putting his head down for one last minute after the girls left. He was asleep in seconds.
He slept for another three hours. When he woke up, he called the hospital. Rachel hadn’t come any further, but she hadn’t regressed. They were pleased.
Coast Road Page 33
