“She’d left us, too,” Madeline reminded him. “None of that matters now. I’m thinking about his intrinsic rights as a father, regardless of what he signed. The situation has changed.”
“But she’s still our daughter,” he said. “She might not know us, but we have to protect her. He’d only rile her up. You know he would. That’s what the bonehead does.”
“You just don’t want him involved at all.”
“Correct.”
I watched, intrigued. I’d never seen an argument like this between parents. It seemed so calm, with no one throwing anything or yelling. I kept expecting Madeline to give in like Ma would, but she didn’t. She just waited, firm and civil, like a blade.
Diego looked at me. “Do you have an opinion?” he asked.
I balked. Yes?
Diego gestured impatiently. “Fine, Madeline. Do what you want.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I think the news would be best coming from you.”
“I don’t want him under my roof.”
“He’s not coming under your roof,” Madeline said. “He’s just getting some information. I’ll feel better when he knows. You can text him. Do you have his number?”
“Of course,” Diego said, and poked at his phone for a minute. Then, “There. Done. Happy?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
I reached again for Madeline’s phone and switched to a notepad app. It took ages with my slow thumbs, but I typed: What happened to me?
Madeline sat up straight. “Look what she’s typed, Diego. She doesn’t remember.”
Diego glanced at the phone and then peered thoughtfully at me. “Where to start,” he said slowly. “You were in a motorcycle accident. This was last August, August twenty-second, the night before you were supposed to leave for college. You had a fight with your boyfriend Tom, and you borrowed his motorcycle. It was raining, and you hit a wet curve and flew thirty feet into a gully. You had a helmet on, but still. That was six months ago. Your doctors kept on saying we had to wait and see. You’ve been in a coma ever since.”
Six months. From September, that put us into February. I’d lost more than three months since I was at Forge, but Althea’s coma had lasted even longer.
“You broke your shoulder and your arm and three ribs,” Madeline said. “They’re healed now. We thought you might miscarry at first, but you didn’t. We flew in different experts. We consulted with the top neurologists.”
“None of it made a difference. They tried to be optimistic, but when pressed, not one of the doctors could say you’d get any better,” Diego said. “We finally decided in December to hire a team of nurses and bring you home, where you could be comfortable.”
“Where you could have your horse and your dog nearby,” Madeline said.
“That was hard,” Diego said.
“Yes,” Madeline agreed softly. “That was hard.”
A rolling cart went by outside in the hall. All this time, they’d watched their daughter day after day, overseeing her care, waiting while her bones healed and her fetus grew, and wondering when or if she would ever wake up. My heart ached for them.
“Remember Christmas?” Diego said. “The cherry cobbler?”
“Yes,” Madeline said, with a misty smile. “And the crèche camels Javier put on her bed?”
Enough of this. I looked down to type some more.
I want to go home.
I spun the phone on the table so it faced them. Madeline and Diego both leaned near enough to read it.
Diego cleared his throat. “I’ll call the pilot and tell him to fire up the jet,” he said.
“Diego, please,” Madeline said.
“You saw what she wrote, Madeline,” he said. “Let’s get her out of this place. We’ve got plenty of good doctors back in Texas now that she’s out of the woods.”
“She’s not out of the woods,” Madeline said. “Dr. Fallon’s the expert. We’re not leaving here until she says it’s safe for Althea to go.”
Diego lifted both hands. “If Dr. Fallon’s so smart, why didn’t she tell us Althea could type?”
My laugh came out as a weird, hiccuppy sound that startled me. Madeline and Diego both looked shocked, and then they laughed, too.
“Was there ever a sweeter sound?” Diego asked.
Madeline nodded. “But we’re not leaving, Diego. It’s too soon.”
Go home, I typed again.
Madeline hitched her chair nearer, swiveled my table out of the way, and took my hand.
“Try to understand,” she said. “Every expert we talked to said, in so many words, that your case was hopeless. You had no reasoning or thinking ability left. But you could breathe on your own. You had your baby growing. I couldn’t get past the idea that some of you still existed inside somewhere. Some tiny spark. Some memory. And then we heard about Dr. Fallon.”
I frowned, remembering. I’d looked up Dr. Fallon myself. She donated money to Forge, and I’d read about her clinic, never guessing that I might end up here myself. Madeline looked over to Diego, who rose to lean back against the windowsill and cross his arms.
Then Madeline patted my hand and continued. “We owe her everything. She took a chance on you when no one else would. I trust her implicitly.”
“Tell her what Fallon does,” Diego said.
“Dr. Fallon specializes in an experimental form of brain surgery,” Madeline said. “She takes brain cells from people who have died in accidents. Donors. It’s the same principle as when they harvest healthy hearts and livers for people, but Dr. Fallon rescues brain tissue. Dream seeds, she calls them. Her team here grows the cells into a kind of patch, and she injects that into an injured brain, like yours. Your old connections regrow through the patch, recreating your memories and thought processes until you wake up. That’s why we’re here.”
I got it now. They took my dream seed out of my body, grew it for however long, and put it here, in Althea’s brain. But Althea hadn’t recovered. My dream seed had taken over instead.
“What’s the point of having a fortune if you can’t spend it on the ones you love?” Diego said dryly.
“We took a chance,” Madeline said. “We brought you here and took a chance on Dr. Fallon’s technique, and she took a chance on you, even though she warned us it might not work. You’re a miracle in so many ways.”
Except the procedure hadn’t worked right. I wasn’t Althea. I didn’t have one tiny hint of Althea’s memories. She was as lost as ever. I still wanted to leave this place.
Madeline turned to Diego. “We can’t take her home yet,” she said. “It’s too soon, Diego. What if something goes wrong? We have to keep her here.”
“Okay, Madeline,” he said.
“Please understand,” Madeline said to me. “We’ll take you home as soon as it’s safe, but we can’t go yet. Can you put up with all of this a little longer?”
I typed again. I’m scared.
Madeline glanced at the screen, and her eyes welled up. “Oh, honey,” she said, and she strengthened her grip on my hand. “I know you’re scared, but the worst is over. Believe me. You have so much to live for. We’ll get you through this if it takes every penny we have.”
That brought up a question that had occurred to me. How rich are we? I typed.