When she turned away from the window, she discovered that Jack's eyes
were open and that he was watching her.
Her heart stuttered.
She remembered Procnow's bleak words. Massive blood loss. Deep
shock.
Cerebral consequence. Brain damage.
She was afraid to speak for fear his response would be slurred,
tortured, and meaningless.
He licked his gray, chapped lips.
His breathing was wheezy.
Leaning against the side of the bed, bending over him, summoning all
her courage, she said, 'Honey?'
Confusion and fear played across his face as he turned his head
slightly left, then slightly right, surveying the room.
'Jack? Are you with me, baby?'
He focused on the cardiac monitor, seemed transfixed by the moving
green line, which was spiking higher and far more often than at any
time since Heather had first entered the cubicle.
Her own heart was pounding so hard that it shook her. His failure to
respond was terrifying.
'Jack, are you okay, can you hear me?'
Slowly he turned his head to face her again. He licked his lips,
grimaced. His voice was weak, whispery. 'Sorry about this.'
Startled, she said, 'Sorry?'
'Warned you. Night I proposed. I've always been . . . a little bit
of a fuck-up.'
The laugh that escaped her was perilously close to a sob. She leaned
so hard against the bed railing that it pressed painfully into her
midriff, but she managed to kiss his cheek, his pale and feverish
cheek, and then the corner of his gray lips. 'Yeah, but you're my
fuck-up,' she said.
'Thirsty,' he said.
'Sure, okay, I'll get a nurse, see what you're allowed to have.'
Maria Alicante hurried through the door, alerted to Jack's change of
condition by telemetry data on the cardiac monitor at the central
desk.
'He's awake, alert, he says he's thirsty,' Heather reported, running
her words together in quiet jubilation.
'A man has a right to be a little thirsty after a hard day, doesn't
he?' Maria said to Jack, rounding the bed to the nightstand, on which
stood an insulated carafe of ice water.
'Beer,' Jack said.
Tapping the IV bag, Maria said, 'What do you think we've been dripping
into your veins all day?'
'Not Heineken.'
'Oh, you like Heineken, huh? Well, we have to control medical costs,
you know.
Can't use that imported stuff.' She poured a third of a glass of water
from the carafe. 'From us you get Budweiser intravenously, take it or
