“No, it’s true. Not unhappy-troubled. Maybe this woman. I don’t know.” She looked at him. “I still don’t want to know, do you understand that?”
He walked toward the pool, thinking.
“How long? I mean, when did you notice?”
She got up, gathering her robe, the movement like a reluctant sigh. “Not long. The summer, the end of the summer. So now you can find the girl and ask her, what happened this summer, all right? Then maybe you’ll be satisfied.” She belted the robe. “But it wasn’t us. We were all right. We were just the way we were.”
The hospital seemed busier at night-trays being collected, nurses changing shifts. Danny was alone in the room, oblivious.
“He wouldn’t just leave,” Liesl said, looking for her father, then spied him at the end of the corridor in the smoking lounge with another man, not as tall, looking around hesitantly, like someone trying to make small talk. “My uncle Dieter,” she said. “Look how they stand. See how stiff?”
“His brother?”
“My mother’s. The truth is they don’t like each other. When my mother was alive, it was different. Now he only comes when you have to, for appearances. My father’s birthday, things like that.”
“Or like this.”
“Yes,” she said, looking down. “But not only for that. He liked Daniel. Everybody did.” Already in the past.
“He lives here, too?”
“Pasadena. Come, before they quarrel.”
But when they joined the men, the mood seemed polite, not at all contentious, Danny’s situation overriding whatever irritation there might have been. Introductions were made, doctors’ visits discussedand then they were all back on watch, drifting between Danny’s room and the hall, fidgeting, looking for something to do. Only Ben stayed fixed, holding Danny’s hand again, convinced against all sense that Danny could feel it, use it to climb back. When the two men got up to go to dinner Liesl went out with them to the hall, a family huddle, leaving Ben alone. Talk to me, he thought, tell me why before you go. At least that. The battered face had lost its power to upset him, used to it now, but the waiting itself had become oppressive, making him logy, his mind dense with still air. When the first sound came, he wasn’t sure he’d actually heard anything, just his own wish, but the second was real. He lifted his head sharply, as if someone had snapped fingers in his face.
“Ben.” Still faint, a little croaky, but there. He grasped Danny’s hand, waiting for his eyes to flutter open.
“Yes. I’m here.”
“Ben,” the voice said again, the tone slightly puzzled, working things out.
“Danny, my god.”
The eyes open now but blinking against the light.
“You’re in the hospital. Do you remember anything?”
The blinking stopped, his eyes steadier, wetting his lips, focusing.
“Danny.”
Then his eyes closed, a kind of resignation.
“Danny, let me get the others. They’re just outside. EveryoneLiesl, her father, Dieter. We didn’t know if you’d make it-”
He got up, ready to bolt across the room, but Danny made a hiss, an attention-getter, his mouth so dry it was difficult now to speak. Ben leaned close to his face.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispered, his voice raspy, urgent.
Ben lifted his head, disconcerted. Did Danny know it was him? All these years, and now suddenly clinging. Maybe what happened at the end, any life raft.
“Don’t,” he said again.
“No, I won’t. It’s going to be all right now.” Elated by the unexpectedness of it. “I’ll just get Liesl,” Ben said, excited, racing across the room and flinging open the door. “He’s awake!”
They all looked at him, stunned. Liesl got to the bed first.
“Daniel?” she said, then, when there was no response, turned to Ben. “You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Daniel? But he looks the same.”
“He was awake. I’ll get the doctor,” Ben said, still excited, heading for the door.
“I’ll go,” Ostermann said.
But Ben was already on his way, racing down the hall to the nursing station, everything around him a blur. The nurse, alone on duty, looked up in alarm, Ben’s hands now pounding on the desk, an emergency signal. Dr. Walters was on another floor. She picked up the phone to call the station upstairs.
“Never mind,” Ben said, not waiting for the elevator, leaping up the stairs, his eyes looking for the recognizable white coat. Down the hall, jotting notes on a clipboard.
“He woke up,” Ben said, a little breathless.
Dr. Walters, startled, put the clipboard down without a word and followed him to the stairs. Ben could hear their feet clumping, an echo effect between floors. Ostermann and Dieter were at the nursing station now, then Liesl, everyone running, the corridor filling with people, the same blur as they raced back. Dr. Walters dodged past an aide, not stopping till he pushed the door and ran across the empty room to the bed, taking up Danny’s hand.
“You said if he came to-” Ben started, watching the doctor lower his head to Danny’s face, then take his wrist. “What’s the matter?”
The doctor took out a stethoscope and bent lower again, a repeat check.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “He’s gone.”
Ben looked at Danny, winded, his own body suddenly cool. Could you tell just by looking? The body still, mouth slightly open, no movement at all.
“But he can’t. He was just here,” Ben said.
The doctor looked at him. “Maybe he was saying good-bye. A last effort. Nurse.”
She hurried over, turning off the monitor, and drew up the sheet. The doctor glanced at his watch, already mentally filling out a certificate.
“It may be for the best,” he said calmly, an attempt to comfort. “This kind of injury. A full recovery isn’t possible. It’s unusual, to last this long. If we do a complete examination, maybe we’ll know more next time. Mrs. Kohler, I’ll need you to sign some forms.”
Liesl didn’t answer, staring at the bed, dazed.
“We can wait till tomorrow, if you like.”
“You mean an autopsy,” Ben said, imagining the knives.
“It can wait,” the doctor said.
Liesl turned from the bed. “No, I’ll come,” she said, her voice a monotone. “He wanted to be cremated.” Danny in a box.
“That’s not a hospital-”
“No, I just meant, it won’t matter, the examination.” She touched Ben’s arm. “That’s right, isn’t it? You don’t object?”
Ben shook his head. “He knew me. He was conscious.”
And then he wasn’t. When? What everyone always said, it happened so fast, a part of a second.
“Mrs. Kohler,” the doctor said again and then he was leading her out, Ostermann following, everybody, even the duty nurse, until Ben was alone in the room.
In a minute orderlies would come and wheel the bed away. Ben went over and pulled back the sheet, a last look, shaken. On the train, he’d thought of Danny as already dead, but that was an idea. This was worse, a flash of contact, then gone, actually cold now to the touch. Another body. When he was a child, death was something remote, an event for old people. Then, in the war, it happened to everybody. But you only got used to it when they were already dead. Dying itself was new each time, something you could feel. Ed bleeding away. Now Danny. Don’t leave me, he’d said. But he was the one who’d left, just the way he always did, when it suited him, leaving Ben behind.
