Same Time Next Summer

by Holly Jacobs

  The arrangements were in place to transfer Emma to the rehab facility tomorrow. Carolyn refused to look at it as a defeat. They’d simply find a new normal there, as well. She’d still be with Emma, and Emma would still be with her.

  “We’ll be fine,” she said aloud. “I’ll be able to bring more of your things to your new room. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  She eyed Emma’s stuffed dog, sitting in the corner of her bed on top of her daughter’s blanket. Did Emma have any inkling that they were there?

  As she gently touched her daughter’s face with the cloth, Emma’s eyelids fluttered. Just the merest hint of movement. The first independent movement she’d seen in four weeks.

  Carolyn’s heart started to race and her stomach clenched in fear that she’d only imagined the movement. “Emma? Emma honey, it’s Mommy. Come back to me, sweetie. You can do it. Come on, honey.”

  Nothing.

  “Emma?” Still nothing.

  She felt as if she’d had a rug yanked out from under her. She’d probably just imagined it. Knowing that tomorrow Emma was going to move, she was clutching at straws. No matter how much Caro tried to convince herself that the move from the hospital to the rehab center didn’t mean anything, in her heart she knew it did.

  People in a hospital got better.

  Emma was going to be admitted to the long-term floor at the center. And long-term, no matter how much Caro tried to convince herself otherwise, meant for life.

  “That’s okay, honey,” she said, reassuringly. “You take your time. I’m not giving up on you.”

  It was the same promise she’d been making since that awful call. Tears were gathering in her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them fall.

  She’d thought her will would be enough to make her marriage with Ross work, and it hadn’t then, either.

  She stopped a moment to wipe her eyes. Enough. This kind of thinking wouldn’t do Emma any good. She resumed her daughter’s bath, finding the cadence of it. Emma’s arms, her hands…

  “When you were a baby, I’d put you in a small tub in the sink and we’d do this. You loved the water and would fuss when your bath was over. They have the same type of soap here that I used on you then. I love the smell. It’s—”

  Carolyn stopped. Emma hadn’t just fluttered her eyelids, she’d blinked.

  Carolyn froze, and then realized she was holding her breath. She exhaled, then slowly inhaled, but tried not to blink herself, not wanting to miss it if—

  There. Emma’s eyelids moved up, then down, with slow deliberance.

  “Emma, honey, I’m here. I’m here.” She grabbed the call button and rang for the nurse. In a fluid motion, she straightened Emma’s gown and pulled the sheet back up. Her bath could wait. Everything could wait. A few seconds later, the door opened, and she expected to see Ann-Marie, the sweet day nurse, standing there, but instead, even better, it was Stephan.

  “She blinked,” was all she could think to say.

  “Blinked?”

  He hurried to the other side of the bed. “You’re sure?” He stared at Emma intently.

  “More than once,” Caro told him. “Come on, Emma. Uncle Stephan’s here. Give him a blink to say hello.”

  Together they waited, watched. Barely breathing. Stephan reached across the bed and placed his hand on top of Carolyn’s, both of them resting a hand on Emma.

  “Come on, baby,” Carolyn coaxed. “You can do it. I know you can. Blink for Uncle Stephan.”

  Emma blinked again.

  “There’s our girl,” Stephan said, and gave a loud whoop, the kind he used to give as they ran, chasing shadows.

  They’d been chasing a shadow for the last few weeks, and this time, against all odds, they’d caught it.

  Carolyn had been warned that there wouldn’t be a miracle—that Emma wouldn’t sit up and start talking all at once. But for today, moving her eyelids was enough.

  Her daughter had blinked.

  The enormity of it hit her, and she hurried to Stephan and threw herself into his arms. “Thank you.”

  “Hey, Emma’s the one who blinked.”

  “But you believed in her, in me.” She kissed him then. At first it was the kiss of a friend saying thank you, saying without words, thank you for staying by me when the rest of the world abandoned me. Thank you. But slowly it changed and altered into something more, something deeper.

  The door of the room opened, and Carolyn peeked around Stephan and saw Ann-Marie.

  She pulled back from Stephan, and shared the news. “She blinked.”

  “Blinked?”

  Carolyn nodded. “More than once. I don’t expect her to carry on a conversation yet, but it’s a good sign, right? I know it’s just the first of many.”

  She needed Ann-Marie to confirm that this was Emma coming back to her. She desperately needed the reassurance.

  Ann-Marie took a small reflex hammer from her pocket and hurried to Emma. Carolyn was accustomed to this ritual. Small taps here and there, then the hammer was flipped, the cap removed and the—she didn’t have a technical term for it, and simply thought of it as the pokey-thing was exposed and a whole new series of here-and-there pokes were administered.

  Ann-Marie hmmed to herself as she continued testing, then she hmmed again.

  A knot of anticipation wound tighter and tighter in Carolyn’s stomach. She held Stephan’s hand as if it were a lifeline. “Would you care to interpret your hmms for us lay people?”

  Ann-Marie up looked and she smiled. “There’s an improvement.”

  “A minuscule improvement, or a marked improvement?”

  “You know I’m no doctor, and we’ll all have to wait for his assessment, but—” she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper “—a marked improvement in my non-doctor-type opinion.”

  Carolyn turned to Stephan and hugged him as the knot in her stomach relaxed.

  “This is good news,” Ann-Marie continued. “All the signs point to the fact that Emma is coming out of her coma.

  “Let me page Dr. Westley. You two go back to whatever it was you were doing when I came in here.” She winked at them and made a point of closing the door as she left.

  “About what we were doing…” Carolyn started.

  But Stephan was back at Emma’s side. “The doctor’s on his way, sweetie. You’re going to have to show off a bit for him, if you think you can.”

  Emma’s eyes stayed open a moment longer than it took to blink as Stephan went on talking to her. For a moment, Carolyn simply watched the two of them. There were occasions in her life she’d always hold on to. This was one of them.

  She memorized the scene, tucked it away and moved to stand by Stephan. “Hey, honey, you’re doing good.”

  She could swear Emma had looked at her.

  “She blinked?” Dr. Westley said as he entered the room.

  Carolyn nodded. “Emma, can you blink just one more time for Mommy?”

  Emma did. The doctor didn’t say a word. He just nodded, more to himself than to her, then he repeated all the tests Ann-Marie had just done. Grunting to himself, making notes on the chart.

  “So?” Carolyn asked when she couldn’t stand his silence any longer. “What do you think?”

  Dr. Westley had shot from the hip from the beginning, telling her what was going on, even when he told her things she didn’t want to hear. Now, she needed to hear him say that she wasn’t overreaching, that Ann-Marie was right and this was a significant improvement.

  “She’s rousing. I can probably get the insurance company to extend her stay here a while longer. We’ll need to watch her. As she emerges we can test her swallow reflex and if that improves, we may be able to remove her G-tube.” He paused. “But Ms. Kendal, I want you to be realistic—”

  Carolyn shook her head. “I don’t have to be. You were realistic enough for both of us when you told me to put her away, to give up hope. I chose to ignore you and your realism then, and I think I’ll just continue to ignore you and
all forms of realism now. Emma is coming back. That’s what I’ll go on believing, and you can do your pessimistic-doctor routine all by yourself.”

  He started to say something, but she held up her hand. “I know, it will be a long road and nothing like a miracle or movie of the week. I also know there are no guarantees about how far she’ll come back, that there’s a chance she won’t be the little girl I remember. I know the odds still aren’t great, but they’re better than they were yesterday and I’ll take them.”

  Dr. Westley shook his head. “There’s no talking sense to you. After a month, you’d think I’d have realized that.” Despite his gruff tone, she was pretty sure she caught the hint of a smile, crinkling around the edges of his mouth and eyes.

  “I’ll be by later to check on her.” He turned and left the room.

  “She’s coming back,” Carolyn said to Stephan. “I wanted so much to believe it, but…”

  “I never saw any signs of doubt.”

  “Doubt? Doubts. There were so many.” She could admit it now and there was a relief in saying the words.

  “So, now what?” Stephan asked. “It seems like there’s something more we should do, but I don’t know what.”

  “We wait. We keep on doing what we’ve been doing and wait. Taking care of her. Talking to her.” For the first time in a month, Carolyn felt—she dug through her long-ago “words of the week”—jubilant, elated, ebullient….

  Ann-Marie came in and interrupted her attempts at finding more synonyms. “Here’s Emma’s lunch.”

  “I’ll take care of that.” Carolyn opened the bag of nutritional supplement. “It’s not exactly a cheeseburger, sweetie, but when you’re better, you’ll have all the fun food you want.”

  TWO WEEKS LATER, Stephan watched as Carolyn sat on the side of the bed, talking to Emma.

  Stephan had known Caro in many ways. As a childhood friend, as a summer infatuation, as an adult friend, part of a couple. But watching her go about caring for Emma, regaling her daughter with stories, cheering each little eyelash flutter, and practically throwing a party when Emma opened her eyes, took his breath away.

  Emma began responding not just to pain but to any touch, and she was keeping her eyes open more and more frequently. Her gaze wasn’t focused, but it was a positive sign.

  Stephan hated going back to Detroit, but knew that he couldn’t go on without being in the office. His father was more cooperative than Stephan had thought he’d be. Maybe it was that his father was mellowing with age, or maybe it was that he knew Carolyn and Emma. But either way, he’d been nothing but accommodating.

  Although, spending even those few days in Detroit would be torture, worrying about Carolyn, knowing she wasn’t getting enough rest without him there to help.

  They’d become a team. He relished that partnership.

  They worked together exercising Emma’s limbs, feeding her, bathing her, telling her stories from their youth. “…and after we watched that contest on Put-in Bay, we started arguing about which of us could have won it. Your mom said, ‘I can so eat as many hot dogs as you, Stephan Foster,’ in that all-superior voice she used. So, we cleaned all the hot dogs out of my mother’s fridge—and there were tons since that’s what my brothers and I liked best—then we decided to eat them cold, thinking they’d go down faster than if they were hot. Now, I don’t suggest trying anything like that when you’re better. We both were sick as dogs.” He paused. “Sick as hot dogs, as it were.”

  Carolyn groaned. “That was bad, Stephan. So bad. And I can’t believe you’re telling Emma such gross fabrications. Don’t you listen to him, Emma. Your mother was far too demure to be caught shoving hot dogs down her throat until she threw up.”

  “Demure? Not hardly, Kendal.” When she threw a mock punch, it took everything in him not to pull her into his arms and kiss her.

  Stephan spent an inordinate amount of time trying not to think about kissing Carolyn again, but no matter how hard he tried, the thought kept recurring anyway.

  During the day he managed to focus on other things, but in the evening, when the hospital slowed down and everything got quiet, they’d sit side by side and he’d put his arm around Caro. Just that, a practically platonic embrace. Although, he was pretty sure that he could spend the rest of his life like that, simply holding her.

  It had been almost two weeks since Emma’s now-famous eye flutter, and the doctor had been right, things were progressing slowly.

  But as Stephan looked over at Carolyn holding Emma’s hand, her expression altered before his eyes. She was radiant, as if she were about to burst.

  “Watch.” She squeezed Emma’s hand purposefully three times in a row. Nothing happened. “Stephan, I think she squeezed it back before.” She turned her attention to her daughter. “Emma, honey, I love you.” She squeezed Emma’s hand again three times.

  Suddenly, Stephan saw Emma squeeze her mother’s hand three times in a row.

  “Stephan, she can hear me. It’s not just her squeezing, she’s telling me she loves me.”

  His confusion must have shown because she went on, “It’s been something we’ve done since she was little and she’d hold my hand. I’d squeeze three times, it means I love you. I—” squeeze “—love—” squeeze “—you—” squeeze.

  She squeezed Emma’s hand again. “I love you, sweetie.”

  Emma squeezed in return.

  “You try it,” she told Stephan.

  He walked around to the other side of the bed. “Hey, Emma. It’s Uncle Stephan. I’ve been here with your mom for a month now. I just want to say that I love you, too.” He squeezed her hand, and Emma squeezed back.

  “I’ll get the doctor.” He started to release Emma’s hand, but the little girl held fast and he couldn’t bear to pull away.

  Carolyn saw what happened and smiled, even as tears streamed down her face. “Why don’t I just ring for the nurse, and Uncle Stephan and I will just stay here with you?”

  “And we’ll tell you all about our plans. Soon, you’re going to a new hospital where they’re going to help you get better. You’ll have to work real hard, and when you’re done, you and Mommy will come out to Heritage Bay in the summer. We’ll all be there, and we’ll go down to the water. We’ll take my dad’s boat out, just like last year on your birthday.”

  No matter how busy work was, how crazy his life was, Stephan always tried to go to the cottage for Emma’s birthday. He knew he was just her godfather, but he felt a special connection to her.

  He’d brought her into the world and it seemed right that he’d be part of the annual celebration of that event.

  “Do you remember? Your daddy had to work, so your mom and I took you out on the boat. We went fishing. Your nose got burned, despite all the sunblock your mom kept putting on you. We caught some perch and then cooked them for dinner. You kept asking if they were good, but you wouldn’t try one. You ate fish sticks instead. Your grandma and grandpa were there. Do you remember? We’ll do that again this summer. Same time, same place. But you’ve got to keep working.”

  The nurse came in and Carolyn burst out, “She’s responding to commands. The doctor said that would be a big milestone. Watch.

  “Emma, honey. I love you. Can you tell me you love me, too?” Carolyn squeezed, and Emma reciprocated.

  Ann-Marie moved closer, working around Carolyn when it became apparent that she wasn’t going to release Emma’s hand.

  “Emma, honey, I’m Ann-Marie, your nurse. We’ve talked before, but I’m not sure if you remember. But I need you to listen to me. Can you close your eyes?” Slowly, Emma’s eyelids closed, then reopened.

  Ann-Marie shone a penlight she’d pulled from her pocket into Emma’s eyes. “Sweetie, can you lift your leg?”

  It didn’t go far, but Emma’s left foot perceptibly moved up off the mattress.

  “Can you move your other leg?” The right foot twitched, but didn’t lift.

  “I know neither of you wants to let go, but may I se
e her hands a minute?”

  Stephan released his hold, and Carolyn did, as well, though more hesitantly. “Emma, honey, I’m holding your hands now. Can you squeeze my hands for me?”

  Emma did, and Ann-Marie didn’t look nearly as pleased as Stephan thought she should.

  “Is there a problem?” Stephan asked when it became apparent that Carolyn wasn’t going to.

  Ann-Marie frowned. “There seems to be weakness on her right side.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’ll let the doctor know and he’ll probably do more tests, but for now, just enjoy the fact your daughter’s coming back to you. To be honest, Emma—” Ann-Marie gently placed Emma’s hands back on her bed “—I don’t think you had a choice but to come back. Your mom wasn’t going to let you go. I’ll be back later.”

  Ann-Marie bustled out the door.

  “See, Emma, you’re getting better every day. Your uncle Stephan and I are so proud of you. Soon we’ll all be at Heritage Bay and…” Carolyn started to spin a tale of what they’d do during the summer, but though her voice was bright and chipper, Stephan could see the concern in her eyes. Not wanting to interrupt her story, he nodded toward the door, and held up a finger saying he’d be back in a minute.

  He didn’t bother asking Ann-Marie. He just hurried to the lounge and called his doctor friend, Paula, whose number he’d long since memorized.

  She returned his call ten minutes later, between patients, and listened as he outlined what the nurse had said.

  “If there was damage to the left side of her brain, whether just the trauma from the accident, or a stroke, it could result in weakness on her right side. And because the speech center is on the left side of the brain, there might be some other ongoing problems. That’s what the doctor will be looking at, what sort of damage, how extensive, so they can decide what sort of long-term impact it might have on Emma.”

  “Long-term. But she’s waking up.”

  “Stephan, I’ve told you, and I know Dr. Westley has said, that even if Emma came out of the coma, there could be, and probably will be, long-term implications. Over two million Americans suffer traumatic brain injuries, TBIs, every year. Hemiparesis is common. There are a host of other problems that patients can also suffer. We could go over each and every one, or you can wait and see. That’s the best. Each case is so individual, especially when the patient’s a child. You can’t worry about that now. All you can do is what you’ve been doing, helping her recover as much as she can.”