“Hi,” I say, not taking his hand because I’m scared that it won’t feel like his hand, it will feel like a stranger’s hand, because it looks like a stranger’s hand.
“Hold his hand,” suggests the nurse, more cheerful than she ought to be.
I slowly reach over and pick up his hand, and it is deadweight, a mannequin’s hand, but at least it’s warm. At least it isn’t actually dead.
“I miss you,” I say. “Wake up soon, OK?”
Again I stare intently at his face, wishing, hoping, praying for some response.
No response. Nothing at all.
“I think he heard you,” says the nurse. I scowl at her, because it isn’t nice to say things that blatantly aren’t true. It isn’t fair to wake up our hope like that. She smiles at me and says, “Oh, sweet pea” – which I don’t think anyone has ever called me in my whole life – “his heart rate just picked up. He heard you. And he’s fighting to wake up.”
I want to ask her if she really thinks that, and if she does, then why the hospital asked my mom if we wanted to turn him off, but instead I look at my brother’s face and smile, hoping that he’ll feel it even if he can’t see it.
Granny Dee and LaoLao sit with him too until visiting hours are over, and then we make our way back to the car. The hope I felt looking at my brother is blooming into something bigger, yet fragile, like a bubble. When I sit in the front, Granny Dee hollers at me that I’m in her seat, so she must be feeling better too.
It’s Sunday night and I’m trying to read in bed but the words aren’t making sense and are jumping and blurring all over the pages. My door creaks open and my mom walks in. She comes over and perches on the edge of my bed.
“Wing,” she says. “I know this is hard for you. And I’m sorry I haven’t been more … there for you.” She’s pulling at an errant thread on my bedspread and won’t look at me. “It’s hard for me too.” I want to wrap my arms around her but I’m worried if I do that one of us or both of us will start crying and won’t be able to stop, so instead I stare at my hands.
“On Friday the nurse said his heart rate went up… That’s a good thing, right?” I ask. “Do you think he really could hear us?”
“I’m not a doctor. I wish I knew. I hope he did. But, Wing, even if he did, even if he wakes up…” My mom pauses.
“When he wakes up,” I correct her.
“When he wakes up … things will be very different. We need to be ready for that. And it could take … a very long time.”
“For him to wake up?”
“Yes. And for him to recover.”
“He’s got us,” I say.
My mom smiles and leans toward me, brushing my hair off my forehead like she used to do when I was little.
“Yes,” she says. “He does.”
“Mom?” I finally look up from my hands. “I love you.”
My mom smiles, the first smile I’ve seen on her face since the accident, and pats my cheek. “I love you too. Now get some sleep. You’ve got to go back to school tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to,” I say quickly. “Can’t I withdraw? Be homeschooled?”
“Honey, we need to maintain some kind of normalcy. You have to go back to school. Our lives can’t stop because Marcus is in the hospital.”
But I could barely manage school with Marcus, I want to say. How will I manage it without him?
“You have to go back, Wing,” says my mom with an air of finality. “I know it’s going to be hard, but you can do it. Be strong. You’ve always been my strong girl.”
I nod because I don’t know what else I can do.
She tucks me in like I’m little again and says “Sweet dreams” as she flips the light switch.
Since the night of the accident, the night my dragon and my lioness visited me, I’ve been having the same dream. Not about the accident. Thank goodness I can’t picture that; even if I try, my brain shuts down, fades to black. I wonder if Monica sees it in her dreams, and when she wakes up, she realizes that it isn’t a nightmare, that she’s living it. Thinking about how awful that must be for her makes me shudder. Does she reach out for Marcus when she wakes up? (I know she used to sleep in his room with him almost every weekend. She used to creep down the hall, slip into his room after dark, and be gone by morning. Marcus said he slept better with her next to him, and when he told me that he sounded so grown-up, and it made me feel so far away from him, this brother of mine who wanted to fall asleep next to the girl he loved, and now who knows when he’ll get to fall asleep next to her, or if he ever will again).