“Lena says she can stay as long as you would like and, if she has to leave, Michael can take over.” I didn’t respond. “She sounds very nice.”
“Yep.”
He watched me. “Are you okay?”
I looked at the floor. “My daughter is in a coma, I think my nose is broken, and I’m about to have every policeman in Philadelphia after me. How could it be any better?”
The train stopped at the next station, and a few more people drifted on and sat down. He looked at me but didn’t say anything until a few stops later. There were a lot of other people on the car now, and his voice was low. “I need to go to the museum and help with the installation this evening.”
“I understand.”
He waited a moment. “I can cancel the whole thing.”
“No.” I smiled, but there was no joy in it. “One of us should be doing something constructive, don’t you think?”
He smiled back, but at least his had some warmth.
I abandoned him at City Hall and took a regional rail line over to University City and the hospital. It was getting late in the afternoon, and all I could think about were the hours that had been ticking by with no improvement, lowering our odds with every passing minute.
It was clouding up to the west, and it looked like there might be a few showers in the evening. There was another street person at Convention Avenue, and I gave him the jacket. There were a few blood spots on it and it fit like a blanket, but he seemed happy. I thought about giving him the hat, but it was growing on me.
When I got to the fifth floor, Lena and Dr. Rissman were waiting for me in Cady’s room; Lena was the first to speak. “She moved.”
I couldn’t trust my ears. “What?”
“She moved her leg.”
Rissman was next. “She reacts to environmental stimuli. There’s still no eye response, but this is very, very good.”
All the heat came back to my face, making my nose throb even more, and I looked around for a place to sit. I collapsed on the nearest chair and looked at Cady. Lena was crying by the bed and trailed a hand down to my daughter’s foot. Her leg moved, and the sounds erupted from my throat. “When?”
Rissman was kneeling by my chair, and he looked at the wall and the floor before again finally settling on my left shoulder. “About five minutes ago. What happened to your nose?”
I leaned back. “I get nosebleeds.” I looked at Cady. “She’s going to make it.”
“Let’s not get too carried away; she’s moving, and that gives us a lot better odds than before…”
I looked at him, at the silver bristles of his hair, even if he wouldn’t look at me. “Hell, yes.”
He nodded. “I just don’t want you to jump to any conclusions; this is a long road, and at any given time it could just stop.”
I took a deep breath. “I like the odds better now.”
He patted my shoulder as he stood. “Well, they are certainly better than before.” He smiled a shy smile at Lena’s shoulder. “I’m going to run another series of tests in about an hour, which means the two of you will be looking at an empty bed for the majority of the evening.” He glanced back to me, making eye contact for only a second. “I think you should go home and get some rest.”
We shared a taxi to Old City, where she dropped me off at Cady’s place. I tried to give her some money, but she wouldn’t take it. She handed me my hat, and I popped it on over the Phillies cap. I’m sure I was a pretty sight. Before the cab pulled away, I remembered to ask. “Did you call Henry?”
“I left a message.”
“Thank you.”
“Speaking of messages, you’ve got a lot of them on her answering machine. I hope you don’t mind that I listened to them, but I thought it would help if I copied them all down for you on a note pad. It’s by the phone.”
“I guess I need to call Wyoming.”
I stood on the Bread Street cobblestones where we had taken our walk. It seemed like decades ago. Night and the city-I found myself wanting to ask her in but realized that the poor woman had a life of her own. “Thank you again.”
She leaned forward, looking up through the half-light of the cab. “It wasn’t anything.” She ran her fingers through her hair, and I was still amazed at the bluish gloss.
“Yes, it was. I don’t know if I could’ve gotten through last night without your help, let alone today.” I could see her eyes half closed in pleasure, like a cat being stroked. The smile was there, a soft and easy smile. I didn’t want her to leave without some arrangement to meet again. “How about lunch tomorrow?”
“Deal. I’ll meet you at the hospital?”
I nodded and closed the door. The driver was doing some of his paperwork, so we waited for a moment on either side of the window, and I had a strange twinge of something as she looked at me again. I extended my hand; she sat there watching me as the taxi started off down Bread, took a left on Quarry, and disappeared.
The skies were looking more threatening, and I wasn’t sure if it was thunder I was hearing in the distance or the train on the bridge. I turned and walked to Cady’s door, reached above the junction box, and pulled down a note with the key. Lena had filed it so that it would now operate smoothly in the lock. I opened the door and was immediately mauled by Dog.
I gave him the ham that had been left over from Lena’s picnic basket and figured I could always get a couple of hamburgers from Paddy O’Neil’s-me too, for that matter. There was a menu, which gave me the luxury of phoning in my order. I opened the fridge and there was a six-pack of Yuengling, so I popped a bottle out and drank it while I looked for the bathroom. I took a shower and got out some clean clothes from my duffle, which I’d left next to the sofa. There was a clock on the microwave that told me I still had three and a half hours before Cady would be back in the ICU, so I got the pad from beside the phone and read the numerous and assorted messages from practically everybody in the Cowboy State. Most of them were from Ruby and Vic, but there were also ones from the Ferg, Lucian, Sancho, Double Tough, Vern Selby, Dorothy, Lonnie Little Bird, Brandon White Buffalo, Dena Many Camps, Omar, Isaac Bloomfield, and Lana Baroja.
There were no messages from Devon Conliffe.
I shuttled the dark thoughts toward the back of my mind and placed the notebook on the glass coffee table. I had been here two days and hadn’t called anybody. I wasn’t sure if word had gotten back to Absaroka County through the Moretti network, the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, or the Philadelphia Police Department, but I had a lot of explaining to do. I suppose I had been waiting till I could give some sort of hopeful prognosis and, now that Cady had given even an involuntary response, I should call.
I looked at the phone but just didn’t have the energy. I took a deep breath, lay back against the pillows on the sofa, and placed my cowboy hat over my eyes. Dog jumped on the couch uninvited and, after what seemed like a long time, we were both asleep.
I’d been dreaming a lot lately, and there were always Indians in my dreams, so it wasn’t surprising when I could see them from the corners of my eyes. I could feel the wind, the kind we get on the high plains that’s only a notch or two below hurricane force. I was leaning into the gale at the edge of some bluffs near Cat Creek. It was hard to focus; my eyes were thin slits with tears streaming from the sides. I turned my head a little and could see a Cheyenne brave who instructed me to lift my arms by raising his own. He wore a fringed and beaded war shirt with the bands of blue and white seed beads running up the arms, and I could make out a parfleche medicine bag painted red and black with the geometric wind symbol.
The old Indian half smiled, brushing an arm toward my face and forcing me to concentrate on what was in front of me. I glanced at the horizon as the lightning flashed like the seizures in Cady’s brain and swept across the sky in a silent electrical storm. I looked down into the canyon, and a chill shot from my spine like a fuse; there was nothing below us for at least three hundred feet.