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It was real. Somehow. Impossibly.
It wasn’t drugs, or her brain injury, or wishful thinking. It was real.
Twenty-nine
The next day was an endless series of medical tests: Tully was poked and prodded and zapped and X-rayed. It surprised her—and everyone else—how quickly she was improving.
“Are you ready?” Johnny said when she’d finally been discharged.
“Where is everyone?”
“Preparing for your homecoming. It’s a pretty big deal. Are you ready?”
She sat in a wheelchair by the room’s only window, wearing a helmet in case of a fall. Her reflexes were a little impaired and no one wanted her landing on her head.
“Yeah. ” She had trouble finding words sometimes, so she kept her answers simple.
“How many of them are out there?”
She frowned. “How many of what?”
“Your fans. ”
She gave a sigh. “No fans for me. ”
He crossed the room and came up beside her, turning her wheelchair toward the window. “Look more closely. ”
She followed the direction of his glance. A crowd of people stood in the parking lot below, huddled beneath brightly colored umbrellas. There were at least three dozen of them. “I don’t see…” she began, and then she saw the signs.
WE ? U TULLY ?!
GET WELL TULLY
UR GIRLFRIENDS NEVER GAVE UP!
“They’re for me?”
“Your recovery is big news. Fans and reporters started gathering as soon as word leaked. ”
The crowd blurred before Tully’s eyes. At first she thought the rain had picked up. Then she realized she was remembering all that she’d gone through in the last few years and crying for this evidence that she hadn’t been forgotten after all.
“They love you, Tul. I hear Barbara Walters wants an interview. ”
She didn’t even know what to say to that. It didn’t matter anyway; Johnny was on the move. He grabbed the chair’s rubberized handles and wheeled her out of the hospital room. She gave one last thoughtful look as she left.
In the lobby, he stopped and set the brake. “I won’t be long. I’ll just send your fans and the reporters on their way. ”
He positioned her against the wall, with the lobby behind her, and went through the glass pneumatic doors.
On this late August afternoon, a light rain drizzled down even as the sun shone. This was what locals called sun breaks.
As Johnny came forward, cameras pointed at him, flashes blinked on and off. The signs—WE ? YOU TULLY ?; GET WELL; WE’RE PRAYING FOR YOU—lowered slowly.
“I know you have been apprised of Tully Hart’s miraculous recovery. And it is miraculous. The doctors here at Sacred Heart, especially Dr. Reginald Bevan, gave Tully exceptional care and I know she’d want me to thank them for her. I know she’d want me to thank her fans, too, many of whom prayed for this recovery. ”
“Where is she?” someone yelled.
“We want to see her!”
