The nurse had lifted Jonathan’s left arm from beneath the mass of blankets and was studying an IV in the crook of his elbow. “I’m going to have to move this soon,” he said, giving her brother an almost paternal pat. Then he turned to smile at Juniper. “Your dad is a seasoned pro at this, but you should know that Jonathan tires really easily and might drift in and out. It’s nothing to be concerned about. Also, he obviously can’t talk around the breathing tube, but there’s a marker board on his table if he wants to use it.”
Juniper glanced at the small table on wheels beside Jonathan’s bed. The bed was in the middle of the room, presumably so that doctors and machines were afforded full access for his care, and the table had drifted off to the side, far out of Jonathan’s reach. It struck Juniper that without the marker board, he was rendered utterly speechless. She felt a wave of panic at the thought. But Jonathan didn’t seem to care. He didn’t reach for the board or acknowledge the nurse’s departure or make any move to communicate with Juniper at all.
It’s Law’s fault, Juniper thought. If he wasn’t here…
But Juniper didn’t know if Jonathan would behave any differently if she was alone. She studied her brother on the bed and understood that Law was right: something had happened. Jonathan was changed. Maybe it was his fall through the ice, but Juniper felt like it had to be much more than just that, because there was one word that came to mind when she looked at her brother: hollow.
Juniper decided to ignore the fact that her stepfather was in the room. She went to stand over Jonathan’s bed, where she could hear the whoosh of the air being pumped into his lungs and look straight into his sunken eyes. He watched her move closer and didn’t look away when she leaned over the side of his bed to lay a sisterly kiss on his warm forehead. His skin felt feverish beneath her lips, just slightly, and dry as paper. Juniper feared if she blew, he would disintegrate in a cloud of dust before her eyes.
“Hey there,” she whispered. “I’m so glad you’re awake.”
For the first time since she had arrived in his room, Juniper wasn’t confused about how Jonathan was feeling. His eyes filled instantly, and tears slid down his temples. Her mother had warned her about this, about how ECMO patients were often intensely emotional when they woke: crying or feeling angry or hopeless. But it was hard to watch Jonathan cry all the same. It felt wrong to see her baby brother—who acted like her big brother—so reduced. He was strong and protective and always in control. Not like this. Juniper had seen him cry just a handful of times in her entire life, and it killed her to see his tears now.
“I have about a million questions,” she said. “But I’ll save them all until I can buy you a beer and some hot wings.”
That earned Juniper a small smile that was nothing more than a crinkling around his eyes.
“My treat.”
Another brightening of his eyes. It was painful to watch him try to smile around the breathing tube, but the starburst of laugh lines at his temples made her heart lift. Juniper wanted to keep that smile coming, to remind Jonathan that life was beautiful and he wanted to be a part of it. Even though she longed to ask him why he was on the lake that day, why he had her necklace in his pocket, and what exactly happened that summer, this urge took precedence, and Juniper tucked her hair behind her ears and leaned forward to keep finding ways to make him smile.
“You look like a million bucks, Jonathan. Seriously. Never better.”
He laughed a little, and then convulsed. Jonathan was choking on the breathing tube, and as he gagged, he began coughing furiously. Juniper felt a flash of dread and cast around frantically for the emergency call button. Why weren’t alarms going off?
“It happens all the time,” Law said from his seat near the foot of the bed. “It’ll pass.”
“He’s choking!”
“It’s a reflex. He can’t actually choke because there’s a breathing tube down his throat.”
Law sounded frustratingly dispassionate, but the experience was unnerving. The coughing fit left Jonathan exhausted, and in the wake of new visitors and choking on his own breathing tube, it was apparent to Juniper that he had already reached the end of what he could handle. As she watched, Jonathan blinked, and it was a long moment before he opened his eyes again.
“You need some rest,” she said, trying to bite back her disappointment. Her expectations had been unrealistic. There would be no heart-to-heart, no answers today. Jonathan was still hooked up to ECMO. He had a very long road ahead of him. Scariest of all, he was a shell of the man he had once been.
Juniper leaned over to say goodbye, to make eye contact one last time before she let him drift off and rest. “Get some sleep,” she said, touching Jonathan’s face with the very tips of her fingers. “We’ll talk later. We’ve got lots of time.”
He looked at her, and then his eyes widened in shock. Jonathan tried to lift his head from the pillow, but he couldn’t.
“What?” she whispered, keenly aware that Law was just behind her. Something was really upsetting Jonathan, and she desperately wanted to know what. “What’s wrong?”
Jonathan’s eyes cut hard to her chest and back again. When he did it once more, Juniper looked down. Her necklace had fallen loose from her shirt and was dangling in the air between them.
“This?” She touched it briefly, and when he tugged his chin down in affirmation, she slipped it back into the loose collar of her sweater. “Officer Stokes found it. It was—”
Jonathan silenced her with a look.
“What do you want?” Juniper whispered.
He pointed to the marker board and she went behind his bed to grab it. There was a blue dry-erase marker stuck with Velcro to the top, and Juniper pulled it off and uncapped it, then handed it to Jonathan. When she held up the board for him, he wrote a single word in a shaky hand.
Dad.
Juniper felt herself deflate. “He’s right here, Jonathan. He’s been here the whole time.” To Law she said, “He’s asking for you.”
Lawrence lifted himself with some difficulty. At seventy-five, he was aging quickly, rapidly pulling away from his much younger wife simply because his knees and shoulders, even his mind, were tired from wear and tear. Still, he pushed himself to his feet and shuffled over to stand on the opposite side of the bed from Juniper.
He hovered there awkwardly for a moment, but then Law reached out and rubbed Jonathan’s arm with his own gnarled hand. It was just a few seconds of contact, but it affected Juniper in a way she hadn’t thought possible. Those arthritic fingers touching Jonathan with such unexpected tenderness was almost her undoing. Juniper blinked back sudden tears. She didn’t know Law had it in him.
“I’m here,” Law said, his voice thick. “I’m right here.”
As Juniper watched, Jonathan studied his father’s hand on the blanket. But he didn’t look at Lawrence’s face. And instead of saying anything to him, instead of using the marker board to communicate what Juniper believed had to be an important message, Jonathan turned his face toward her, away from Lawrence, and very deliberately closed his eyes. Tears leaked from beneath his lashes and dampened the starched pillowcase.
After the ventilator had pushed a few breaths into Jonathan’s lungs and he didn’t stir, Juniper caught Law’s gaze. “What was that all about?” she asked quietly.
There was something fragile in Lawrence’s look, but she could tell he was hurt, too. He sniffed once, hard, and then walked away from the bed as quickly as he could manage and yanked open the door.
“I told you he wasn’t himself,” Law said over his shoulder. “That’s not my Jonathan.”
CHAPTER 20
THAT NIGHT