osa moved into the small cottage beside the main house, set her few personal items in the pink-tiled bathroom, and stocked the refrigerator with iced tea and a loaf of wheat bread. There was no point in doing more; she planned on spending all of her time with the children or Mikaela.

The next morning, after Liam left for the hospital, Rosa made the children a hot breakfast and tried to take them to school.

Not yet, Grandma, please …

She had not the heart to deny them. She granted their wish for one more day at the hospital—but after that, she said, they must go to school. The waiting room was no place for children, not hour upon hour, day upon day.

They drove the few miles to the medical center, and then Rosa settled the kids in the waiting room.

She hurried through the busy corridor, head down, purse tucked against her body, counting the three hundred and eleven steps to Mikaela’s room in the ICU.

The small, curtained room still frightened her—there were so many unfamiliar noises and machines. At the bedside, she gazed down at her beautiful, broken child. “I guess it does not matter how old we get, or that you have children of your own, you will always be my little girl, sí, mi hija?” She gently stroked Mikaela’s unbruised cheek. The skin was swollen and taut, but Rosa thought she could feel a little more softness in the flesh than had been there yesterday.

She picked up the brush from the bedside table and began brushing Mikaela’s short hair. “I will wash your hair today, hija.”

She forced her lips into a smile and kept talking. “I am still not used to this short hair of yours, even though it has been many years like this. When I close my eyes, I still see my niña with hair streaming like spilled ink down her back.”

Rosa’s thoughts turned to the bleak days when her daughter had been so unhappy that she’d chopped off her own hair with a pair of drugstore scissors. Mikaela had been waiting for him. Waiting and waiting for a man who never showed up, and when she realized that he had no intention of returning, she’d cut off her lovely hair. The thing he liked best about her.

You cannot make yourself ugly—that’s what Rosa had said when she’d seen what Mikaela had done, but what she’d meant was, He isn’t worth this broken heart of yours. She hadn’t said that; she was the last person in the world to devalue a woman’s love for the wrong man.

She had thought that Mikaela would get over him, and that when she got over him, she would one day grow her hair long again.

Yet still, Mikaela’s hair was as short as a boy’s.

“No,” Rosa said aloud, “I will not think about him. He was not worth our thoughts then and he is not worth my words now. I will think instead about my little girl. You were so bright and beautiful and funny. Always you make me laugh.

“You had such big dreams. Remember? You used to pin all those fotografías up on your bedroom wall, pictures of faraway places. You dreamed of going to London and France and China. I used to say to you, ‘Where do you get such big dreams, Mikita?’ And do you remember your answer?”

She stroked her daughter’s hair gently. “You told me, ‘I have to have big dreams, Mama … I have them for both of us.’

“It broke my heart when you said that.” Rosa’s hand stilled. She couldn’t help remembering how her daughter’s swollen dreams had shriveled beneath the hot California sun.

It had happened years ago, so many that the scent should not remain in the air, and yet here it was.

“I am the one with big dreams now, querida. I dream that you will sit up in this bed and open your eyes … that you will come back to us.” Her voice cracked, fell to a throaty whisper. “I have a dream now. Just like you always wanted. I am the carrier of my dreams now … and yours, too, Mikita. I am dreaming for both of us.”

Later that afternoon, Stephen called Liam and Rosa into his office.

“The good news is, she has stabilized. She’s off the ventilator and breathing on her own. We didn’t need to do a tracheotomy. She’s being fed intravenously. We’ve moved her out of the ICU—to a private room on Two West.”

Liam barely heard the words. He knew that whenever a doctor started a sentence with “The good news is,” there was a hell of a right hook coming.

Rosa stood near the door. “She is breathing. This is life, sí?”

Stephen nodded. “Yes. The problem is, we don’t know why she isn’t waking up. She’s healthy, stable. Her brain activity is good. By all measures, she should be conscious.”

Rosa asked, “How long can a person sleep like this?”

Stephen hesitated. “Some people wake up in a few days, and some … stay in a coma for years and never wake up. I wish I could tell you more.”

“Thanks, Steve.”

Stephen didn’t smile. “She’s in Two forty-six.”

Liam rose to his feet and went to Rosa, gently taking her arm. “Let’s go see her.”

Rosa nodded. Together they left Stephen’s office and headed for Mikaela’s new room.

Once inside, Liam went to the window and shoved it open, sticking his head out into the cold afternoon air. Turning, he went to his wife’s bedside and gently touched her swollen cheek. “It’s winter, baby. You went to sleep in the fall, and already it’s winter. How can that be, in only three days?” He swallowed hard. His life flashed before him, an endless collection of busy days and empty, empty nights. A calendar of weeks without her. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter.

Rosa came up beside him. “You must not give up hope, Dr. Liam. She will be one of the lucky ones who wake up.”

Liam had given his mother-in-law the gift of ignorance. He’d told her that a bad outcome was possible, but he’d made it sound improbable. Now he didn’t have the strength for subterfuge. Brain damage, paralysis, even a lifetime of coma; these were the possibilities. He knew that tomorrow morning he would be stronger, better able to hang on to his wobbling faith. That’s what the last few days had been—long stretches of hope punctuated by moments of severe, numbing fear.

He stood perfectly still, trying not to imagine how it would feel to wait for Mike to wake up, day after day, week after week. He drew in a deep, calming breath and exhaled slowly. “I won’t ever give up, Rosa. But I need … something to pin my faith on, and right now my colleagues aren’t giving me much to work with.”

“Faith in God will be your floor, Dr. Liam. Do not be afraid to stand on it.”

He held a hand up. “Not now, Rosa. Please …”

“If you cannot speak to God, then at least talk to Mikaela. She needs to be reminded she has a life out here. Now it is up to love to bring her back.”

Liam turned to Rosa. “What if my love doesn’t bring her back, Rosa?”

“It will.”

Liam envied Rosa’s simple faith. He searched deep inside himself for a matching certainty, but all he found was fear.

Rosa gazed up at him. “She needs you now … more than ever. She needs you to be the light that guides her home. This is all you should be thinking about now.”

“You’re right, Rosa.” Then, stronger, “You’re right.”

“And what you talk about is importante, sí? Talk to her about the things that matter.” She moved toward him. Her mouth was trembling as she said, “I have slept through my life, Dr. Liam. Do not let my daughter do the same thing.”

Bret made it past lunchtime without screaming, but now he could feel the temper tantrum coming on, building inside him. At first he’d just been crabby, then he’d ripped the head off his action figure and thrown the brand-new People magazine in the garbage.

He was tired of being in this waiting room, tired of being ignored.

No one seemed to care that Bret was always by himself in this grody, disgusting room. Jacey’s friends came at lunchtime—they had driver’s licenses—and it didn’t bother her one bit to leave her little brother alone while she went to the cafeteria with “the gang.” Even Grandma and Daddy seemed to have forgotten all about him.

The only people who talked to Bret were the nurses, and whenever they looked at him, they had that poor you look in their eyes that made him want to puke.

Bret went to the sofa again and tried to interest himself in drawing, but he couldn’t do it. There was that sick feeling in his stomach and it was getting bigger and bigger. He was pretty sure that he was going to start screaming.

Instead, he picked up the nearest crayon—black—and went to the wall. He didn’t even bother looking around to see if he was alone. He didn’t care. In fact, he wanted someone to see him. In bold, sweeping letters, he wrote I hate this hospital across the bumpy wall. When he finished, he felt better. Then he turned around and saw Sarah, the head nurse, standing in the doorway, holding a bunch of comic books.

“Oh, Bret,” she said softly, giving him that poor you look.

He waited for her to say something else, maybe to come in and yell at him, but all she did was turn around and walk away. A few minutes later, he heard his dad’s name ringing out through the hospital paging system.

He dropped the crayon on the floor and went back to the sofa. Picking up the headless action figure, he started playing.

“Bretster?”

Dad’s voice.

Bret’s cheeks burned. Slowly he turned.

Dad was standing there, holding a bucket and a sponge. He set the bucket down and crossed the room in a few big steps, then he sat down on the coffee table in front of Bret.

“I know, Daddy.” He tried not to cry, but he couldn’t help himself. Every time he sucked in a breath, he tasted his tears. “I’m sorry.”

Dad wiped Bret’s tears away. “I’m sorry we left you alone, Bretster. There’s so much going on … I’m sorry.”

Bret drew in a great, gulping breath. “I shouldn’t’ve written on the walls, Daddy. I’m sorry.”

Dad almost smiled. “I know you want to see your mom, kiddo. It’s just … she doesn’t look good. Her face is pretty bruised up. I thought it would give you bad dreams.”

Bret thought about how she’d looked, with her eye open, staring at him, and he shuddered. He wiped his eyes and whispered, “When dead people have their eyes open, can they see you, Daddy?”

“She’s not dead, Bret. I swear to you.” He sighed heavily. “Do you want to see her?”

“The rules won’t let me.”

“We could break the rules. If you want.”

Bret sniffed and wiped the snot away from his upper lip. That image of Mommy flashed through his mind again, and when he saw it, his heart did a little ka-thump. “No,” he said quietly, “I don’t wanna see her.”

Dad pulled him into a hug, and Bret felt himself slowly, slowly relaxing. The hug felt so good. He felt almost safe. He clung to his dad for a long, long time.

Then, finally, Daddy said, “Well, pal, I guess you’d better start washing that wall. I don’t think it’s fair to make the custodians do it.”

Bret scooted back. On wobbly legs, he got to his feet and went over to the bucket. When he picked it up, soapy water splashed over the rim and hit his pant legs. Holding on to the metal handle with both hands, he carried the bucket to the wall and set it down. He plunged the sponge into the water, squeezed it almost dry, and started cleaning up his mess.

It wasn’t even a minute later that Dad was beside him, crouching down. He grabbed a second sponge, dunked it into the water, and wrung it out.

Dad smiled at him, right at eye level. “I guess this is sort of a family mess, don’t you think?”

At dinnertime Rosa took the children home. Liam knew he should have gone with them, but he couldn’t leave Mikaela. It was as simple as that.

He stared down at his wife. She was lying on her side now; the nurses had turned her. “I hired Judy Monk to take care of your horses,” he told her. “They all seem to be doing great. Even that whacko mare—what’s her name, Sweetpea? She’s eaten through the top rail of the corral, but other than that, she’s okay. And the vet said Scotty’s colic is completely cleared up.”

He reached for the box he’d brought from home. “I brought you a few things.” He lifted the cardboard box from the chair and brought it to the bedside table. He pulled out a beribboned bag of scented potpourri. “Myrtle down at the drugstore told me this brand was your favorite.” He poured the multicolored clippings into a small glass bowl. The soft scent of vanilla wafted upward. Then he pulled out a collection of family photographs and layered them along the windowsill—just in case she opened her eyes when none of them were here.

He set a tape player on another table and popped a cassette in. Madonna’s “Crazy for You”—to remind her of the old days. The last item was a sweater of Bret’s, one he’d outgrown long ago. Liam smoothed it over her shoulders, tucking the tiny Shetland wool arms around her. If anything could reach her, it would be the never-to-be-forgotten smell of her little boy.

Memories tiptoed into this quiet room. He remembered the first time he’d seen Mikaela. It had been here, in this very hospital. He’d come home for his mother’s funeral and found his father—the great Ian Campbell—suffering from Alzheimer’s. The disease had slowly and methodically erased every larger-than-life aspect of Ian’s personality.

When the inevitable slide to death began, Ian had been moved into the medical center that bore his name.

That was when Liam met Mikaela. She’d been young then—only twenty-five—and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

“Did you know how much I longed to talk to you?” he said softly, leaning toward her. “You were sitting by my dad’s bedside. Do you remember that day? I didn’t say anything. I just stood in the doorway, listening to the way you talked to my father.”

He sat down in the chair by the bed and took her left hand in his, coiled his fingers around hers. “I still remember the first time you looked at me. You’d seen me, of course, but you never really noticed me until I told you that he was my father.

“It was springtime … remember that? You’d opened his window and brought him a small azalea plant that was a riot of pink flowers. I saw the sadness in you right away. Was it so close to the surface? I wonder about that now. Then, I thought I was special to see it, like we were soldiers of a similar war. The walking wounded. All I could think was how it would feel to be the one to make you smile. Do you remember what you said to me?

“‘Do you talk to him?’ you asked me. I was so embarrassed. I said, ‘No one really talks to my dad anymore.’

“And you said, ‘Then you should. It doesn’t matter what you say, just that you’re here. He needs to know you care.’”

Care. It was such a little word. Like love or hate. There was so much packed into those four letters. Up until that moment, Liam and his father hadn’t spent much time caring.

“You gave him back to me, you know. I never really knew him when he was strong and bold and sucking up all the sunlight, but when he was old and shrunken and afraid, he finally became mine. You taught me to talk to him, and in those last weeks, there were moments when he saw me, moments when he knew who I was and why I was there. The day before he died, he held my hand and told me he loved me for the first and only time in my life. You gave me that, Mikaela, and I don’t know if I ever thanked you for it.”

He stood and leaned over the bed rail. He slowly released her hand and touched her swollen cheek. “I love you, Mike, with everything inside me. I’ll be here, waiting for you, for the rest of our lives. The kids and I … Come back to us, baby.” His voice broke. He gave himself a minute, then kissed her forehead, whispering, “Forever,” against her skin.

Then he sat back down in the chair, still holding her hand.