"No, no, he's reaching out, reaching back. Please, let me stay."
"But . . ."
"Please, a little while longer. I have to keep talking to him!"
"I must ask you to lower your voice," she said. "There are other patients, all critical, here."
"I'm sorry."
"The regulations for visiting in ICU are five to ten minutes for immediate family every hour on the hour," she repeated in an authoritative monotone.
"Go get the doctor," I demanded, spinning on her. "I definitely felt my brother's finger move, and it was no nerve reaction."
"Get him!" I insisted. She saw the fire in my eyes and bit down on her lower lip. Furious herself, she pivoted and marched back to the nurses' station. I sat down again and immediately began to talk to Pierre. "I know you can come back to us, Pierre. I know you don't want to be in this horrible hospital room with these horrible people any longer than you have to. Listen to me. We need you. I want you to wake up so Mommy can come home. I promise you, as soon as I leave here, I'll try to find her if you'll open your eyes. Please do it, Pierre. Jean wants you to help Mommy too. I'm sure he does."
I stood up and leaned over the bed to wipe the strands of hair off his forehead the way Mommy always did. Then I brought my lips to his ear and softly sang the old Cajun lullaby Mommy had often sung to him and Jean when they were little. As I sang, I heard footsteps behind me.
"Mademoiselle?"
I turned to see Dr. Lasky.
"You will have to obey the hospital rules. You work here as a nurse's aide, I understand, so you should know how important it is that we all—"
"Pierre moved his finger, Doctor. I felt it. If I can stay with him longer . . ."
"We have to let the nurses do their work and—"
I felt Pierre's fingers move again and cried out. When I turned back to him, his eyelids fluttered.
"Pierre," I said. "Show them. Show them."
His lids fluttered harder and, like eyes that had been closed for centuries, slowly opened.
"Go get Dr. LeFevre," Dr. Lasky ordered the nurse. She hurried away.
I continued to stroke Pierre's hand, cajoling him. "Come on, Pierre. That's it. Try. Come back to us." His eyes remained open.
"That's good," Dr. Lasky muttered behind me. "Hello, Pierre," I said. "Are you feeling better? Do you want to go home soon?"
He turned his head slowly toward me. I saw his lips moving, so I bent down to bring my ear close. He was just putting out enough breath to be heard in a whisper.
"Get Mommy," he said. "Make her come home."
"Oh, yes, Pierre. Yes. I will." I hugged him. "He spoke to me, Doctor!"
"Excellent," Dr. Lasky said and turned to greet Dr. LeFevre, who was rushing toward us. I stepped back as the two of them examined Pierre, and then I decided to go out and get Daddy. I found him in the cafeteria, hovering over a cup of coffee. When I told him the news, his eyes brightened and his face re-gained some color. The two of us hurried back.
Afterward, outside in the corridor, with Daddy and Dr. Lasky at my side, Dr. LeFevre asked me to repeat what I had said and done to get Pierre's reaction. She nodded as she listened.
"You must get your mother home to him soon," she said. "If not, he could relapse again, and I'm afraid each time that happens, he will retreat deeper and deeper inside himself until he becomes irretrievable. Do you understand?"
"Yes," I said and looked at Daddy, who just nodded, a look of terror in his eyes.
"With the diuretic working, we've at least stemmed the threat of acute renal failure for the time being," Dr. Lasky said. "But what happened before can certainly happen again," he cautioned. Neither doctor wanted to leave us with false hope. Their words, although realistic, were as sharp as darts.
Daddy and I returned to Pierre to reassure him we were going to find Mommy and bring her to see him as soon as we could. He listened and then closed his eyes. He was just sleeping now. The great effort to claw his way up and out of the grave his mind was constructing around him had exhausted him. We left him resting comfortably.
"What if Ruby doesn't return, Pearl? What if she never returns?" Daddy asked as we drove home from the hospital.
"She'll come back. She has to."
"Why? She doesn't know what's happening. We can't find her; we can't get a message to her." He shook his head. "If she doesn't come back, poor Pierre . . ."
"We'll sit and we'll think of what else to do, Daddy. We'll find her," I promised, although for the moment I hadn't the slightest idea what we should do next.
The doctors' words lingered like bruised and angry clouds waiting to drop a storm over us. Pierre remained on the brink of oblivion, and we were helpless.
Mommy wasn't there when we returned home, and there had been no phone calls from her or from anyone in the bayou. Daddy phoned Aunt Jeanne and explained the situation. She promised to send out everyone she could and make as many phone calls as she could to people in the area. She said she would contact the police up there for us, too.
"If we don't hear anything tonight or tomorrow morning, we should search for her again, Daddy," I said.
"Search where? We went to the shack and to Cypress Woods. I have no idea where else she might go up there. That part of her life is like a fantasy to me. For all I know there are places and people she never mentioned or that she did mention but I don't remember. You know all of her grandmère's friends are gone. What can we do . . . ride around the back roads, searching the swamps?"
"That would be better than just sitting here, wouldn't it?"
"I don't know, Pearl." He shook his head. "I don't know. What if we go up there, get lost on some back road, and she calls here? No, all we can do is wait."
Neither he nor I had much of an appetite for dinner, but we sat and nibbled. All of the servants were quiet, their faces worried. The house had a funereal atmosphere. No one closed a door hard; everyone tiptoed through the corridors and spoke in whispers. There was no music, no radio or television, just the constant ticking of the grandfather clock followed by its hollow, reverberating gong to announce the passage of time, the flow of minutes without any word from or of Mommy. When Daddy and I gazed at each other, we thought but didn't speak the same thought: back in the hospital, Pierre was waiting, teetering on a tightrope above the dark chasm of gloom that would swallow him and lock him up forever in unconsciousness and finally death. I felt sure that in his mind he saw death as a doorway beyond which Jean stood, waiting.
Neither Daddy nor I knew what we would do or say when we returned to him. He would open his eyes hopefully, expectantly, not see Mommy beside us, and close those eyes again, perhaps forever. We were both terrified of taking the chance, and yet it was hard to keep from visiting him. The longer we stayed away, the deeper his skepticism would become.
Daddy spent some of the evening in his office talking to friends, getting advice. None suggested anything more than what we had already done, and none could understand why Mommy would have run off; but of course few if any of them knew her background and why she had come to believe she was the cause of our trouble.
I wanted to stay awake as late as I could to hear the phone ring, hopefully with news of Mommy, and to keep Daddy company, but when I lowered my head on the sofa and closed my eyes, sleep seized me so quickly I could have been the one in a coma. The next thing I knew, I heard the bong of the grandfather clock declare it was three in the morning.
I sat up slowly, rubbed my eyes, and listened. The house was dead quiet. The lights in the corridors had been turned down low. I was surprised Daddy hadn't come in to wake me and send me up to my bed.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and got up to check on Daddy. The desk lamp in his office was still on, but he wasn't there. I saw that he had done some drinking. The bottle of bourbon was open, and there was a partially filled glass beside it. Thinking he had gone up to bed, I climbed the stairs. My legs felt as if they were filled with water. Every step was an effort. When I got upstairs, I saw that Daddy's bedroom door was open, so I went to it and peeked in.