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He squeezed her hand. “I guess I know why you didn’t tell me. But it hurts, Mike. Jesus, it hurts and I don’t know what to do with all of it. ”
He leaned toward her. “Did you ever love me, Mike? How can I go on without knowing the answer to that question?
“I guess I shouldn’t even ask,” he said. “I should have seen it in your eyes, should have known somehow that you were always comparing me to someone else. God knows I had the experience to see it, so why didn’t I? And how could I ever measure up to Julian True?”
She blinked.
Liam gasped, squeezing her hand so hard it should have crushed the fragile bones. “Mike … can you hear me? Blink if you can hear me. ” With his other hand, he hit the nurses’ button.
Within seconds, Sarah came bustling into the room, already out of breath. “Dr. Campbell, is she—”
“She blinked. ”
Sarah came closer to the bed, studying Mike first, and then Liam.
Mike lay perfectly still, her eyes sealed shut.
“Come on, Mike. Blink if you can hear me. ”
Sarah checked each machine, one by one, then she moved to stand by Liam. “I think it was a reflex. Or maybe—”
“It wasn’t my imagination, damn it. She blinked. ”
“Maybe I should call for Dr. Penn. ”
“Do it,” he said, without looking up.
He let go of Mike’s hand for just long enough to hit the play button on the tape recorder. Music swept into the room, songs from the Tapestry album by Carole King.
Liam held her hands again, both of them this time, talking to her, saying the same thing over and over again. He was still talking, begging, when Stephen came into the room, examined Mike, and then quietly left.
Liam talked until his throat was dry and there were no more pleas left inside of him. Then he slumped back down into the chair and bowed his head. Please God, help her.
But deep inside he knew. It hadn’t been God who’d helped Mikaela blink. It was a name, just that after all these weeks, just a simple name. When she heard it, she responded.
Julian True.
She is floating in a sea of gray and black … there is the smell of something … flowers … a music she can almost recognize.
She longs to touch the music, but she has no arms … no legs … no eyes. All she can feel is the thudding beat of her heart. Fast, like a baby bird’s, and she can taste the metallic edge of fear.
“You should have told me. ”
It is the voice she’s come to know, soft and soothing, and she knows that somewhere, sometime, she knew it, but here there is no before, there is no now. There is just the dark, the fear, the helpless longing for something….
“Julian. ”
Julian. The word seems to sink deep, deep inside her; it makes her heart beat faster, and she wants to reach for it, hold it against her chest.
Julian. In the black rubble of her life it is connected to another word, one she remembers.
Love.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, Rosa was finishing the last of the breakfast dishes when the phone rang … and rang … and rang. Frowning, she went to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up for Dr. Liam to answer it.
In the other room, the answering machine clicked on, and Rosa was momentarily stunned to hear her daughter’s voice. For a split second, she felt hope … then she realized it was only the recorded message.
