But after hoping for a month and a half that Trish would finally wake up today—
Nope. Not going there. Tripp banished the very real, in-his-face fact that she might never recover. She was into the second month of her coma. She had no lingering complications from her surgeries. She wasn’t on a ventilator and her incisions were healing. She just wouldn’t open her eyes.
“Okay, Pooh Bear, you won that race easy,” Tripp said after manipulating her leg for the twentieth rotation. “The crowd’s on their feet. They love you, kiddo. And look at that cheater, Mitt. He thought he could slow you down by sidestepping into you, but you showed him. You go, girl!” Tripp whistled softly and made clucking, hissing noises, hoping it sounded like the clapping din of his imaginary crowd. “You’re a star!”
After exercising her other leg through another imaginary twenty-lap race, he fastened the fluffy-lined booties Gracie had bought Trish around her calves and her always icy-cold feet. The slipper soles were covered with non-skid dots that had yet to meet the floor. But someday…
God, he hoped she’d open those snarky eyes soon.
Tucking her pajama pant legs into the booties, he pressed the Velcro straps in place. Her wardrobe now consisted of clothing designed to snap-on or wrap-around, anything to make dressing easy. This morning, Gracie had dressed Trish in loose-fitting, black silk pajamas with red piping on the edges. Trish’s garish black hair-dye was growing out, as was the length. It actually shone from Gracie’s careful attention now, and her natural curls were back in full force. Tripp couldn’t remember the last time his sister had looked so much like herself.
Since he’d previously exercised her feet to keep them from curling, which was more like a massage than what he considered a workout, Tripp moved alongside the bed for her next sets. Taking hold of her right arm, he put one hand on her wrist, the other at her elbow, and stretched the limb slowly and gently into a wide quarter arc.
“Let’s give all those fans of yours a great big parade wave.” Tripp always put excitement into his voice. Somewhere inside that hard, banged-up head of Trish’s, he hoped she was listening. “There you go. Not too high. Not too low. Jusssst riiiight.”
Lowering her arm to her side, he repeated the rotation. “Good job, Pooh Bear. Ten more of these. Slow and easy. When we’re through, I’ll read something out of ‘Winnie the Pooh.’” A very long time ago, in Idaho, Trish had adored the little, yellow, stuffed bear. Hence her nickname. Brothers loved to tease.
“Great! Now let’s play ball.” He raised her arm high enough to execute a full one hundred eighty degree stretch. “Volleyball, today. Remember when we used to set up the net across the backyard in Idaho? Man, I hated that Russian Olive tree hanging over our fence from Ruskin’s pasture. The thing had ten-inch thorns, I swear. How many balls did we lose to that ball-eating monster. Ten? Twenty?”
She grunted. She’d made a noise!
Very carefully, Tripp relaxed her arm and leaned over her, their hands linked together under her chin. “I heard you. You’re trying to talk to me, I know you are,” he told her, his tears shimmering, making her a beautiful, blurry angel. The gold roots showing through the black, formed a halo at the crown of her head. “Do it again, Pooh Bear. Please. Say something to me, anything.”
She didn’t respond. Didn’t open her eyes. Nothing. Which wasn’t a surprise. Because of the damage to her throat, her thoracic specialist Doctor Pitt had performed a tracheostomy. She now had a hole, aka a stoma, in an already damaged throat that allowed her to breathe. Once she regained full consciousness and strength, she’d have to learn how to eat through her mouth instead of the tube that ran through her nose into her stomach. Because of the way her throat had been cut, Doctor Pitt also planned a surgical procedure called a microlaryngoscopy, to repair the nerve damage to her vocal cords. If Trish put her mind to it, she’d be able to communicate vocally someday. Tripp still couldn’t believe she’d survived.
“Aw, come on, Pooh Bear. Please. It’s just me, your dumbass brother. Do it again. I don’t care if you tell me to fuck off or go to hell. Honest.”
She moaned. Out loud! At least she’d made something in her throat vibrate. She had heard him.
He loved it! “You’re alive!”
Well, of course, she was alive. Tripp knew that. But now she was really alive!
Opening her eyes, she blinked. Three drowsy blinks, but by hell. She’d done that intentionally. He could’ve kissed her! So he did. Lifting her limp torso up from her pillow, just enough to ease his hands beneath her, he hugged the sister he’d been missing for a long, damned time. Gently, he kissed her cheek. While she lay there breathing in his ear, Tripp cried like a damned baby. “You’re alive, and you’re going to be okay, and—”
She managed a weak slap to his shoulder. Tripp eased her carefully back down. His heart had lodged up high in his throat. He was so damned happy. “I’m calling Mom.” He had his cell phone to his ear by then. He couldn’t wait to tell— “Mom! Trish is awake.”
“She is!” Andy shrieked. “When?”
“Just now. Hurry. Get dressed. I’m coming to get you.”
Ashley peeked into the room. “Oh, my gosh, is she awake? How wonderful!” She’d dressed in yoga pants and a plain white t-shirt this morning. She’d been excited, bouncing on her toes when Zack swung by her apartment and gave her a ride to TEAM HQ.
“Congrats,” Zack said. Wearing a black hoodie and running pants, he took
