We turn to find a doctor walking toward us in scrubs soaked with sweat. His dark, curly hair pokes out from his surgical cap. "Are you Ms. Landon?"

"Yes." I meet him halfway.

"I'm Dr. Ryan. We've stabilized Mikaela for the moment, but I'm sorry to say she's in a coma. The next couple of days will be critical."

"Is she going to wake up?"

The doctor gives a slight shrug. "Only she knows that."

"Can we see her?" Jake asks.

"Yes, follow me."

We hurry after the doctor. I glance back once but my mother hasn't moved. We are in the pediatric ICU and it is a sobering sight. So much sadness. So much illness.

The doctor stops and gestures to the room. There is an orange "P" taped to the door. I can do nothing more than s.n.a.t.c.h it up and wad it into my pocket. These letters are really starting to make me mad.

Inside the room it's almost more than I can take in. She looks so small and so lifeless against the big white bed. It engulfs her. Her head is bandaged. A nurse stands nearby holding what looks like a large needle. We watch her stick Mikaela's foot and suddenly I collapse into Jake's arm. A pain shoots right into my heel. "Ouch!"

"Are you okay?" Jake asks. The nurse watches me too.

"I'm fine." I hobble over to Mikaela's bedside. I can't help the tears, they are just coming out by the bucketful. "Mikaela, it's Hope. Listen to me. You don't have to leave. You have me. You have Jake. Here's the deal, you haven't taken that next risk yet, with that next boy, who's probably really glad you see him behind his weird gla.s.ses." I pause, waiting for my emotions to settle down. They don't. "You won't get to kiss him if you don't wake up. You hear me?"

The nurse joins me by the bedside. She is gentle, I can tell. "A lot of coma patients, if they wake up, tell us they can hear what's spoken by their bedsides."

Jake points to the needle she holds. "Does that hurt?"

"Only she can tell us. We're just testing her sensory reflexes for a reaction." She pats me lightly on the shoulder, but it is a stabilizing touch. "I'll be back to check on her."

We stay there for a long time, Jake and me, just sitting and watching her, the monitors beeping in unison, a gray and glum day setting in outside the hospital windows.

"I should go check on my mom."

He nods and a.s.sures me he won't leave Mikaela's bedside.

In the waiting room, Mom is there, still staring at the TV, still not responding to my voice. My mother, from past experience, is not one to handle trauma well. Maybe she needs time. I ask her if she wants coffee and she nods vaguely. Or maybe that's just the rocking. So I decide to go find some.

I'm directed to complimentary coffee down a hallway. The carafe barely spits out half a cup. I grab a stirrer just for something to chew on. When I walk back toward the waiting room, I glance toward the nurse's station. And there I see her. Again.

The nurse in the waitress uniform. Or the waitress in the nurse's uniform. Which is it? She looks at me as I pa.s.s, just like she did when we were on the street-a look that slows all things around me. It's as if only she and I exist in the world.

And then, my shoulder is knocked from behind. I spill some coffee right onto my shoe. I glance up to see the girl. The girl. The one in the purple jacket!

"Hey!" I yell after her, in the exact way n.o.body would yell in a hospital. "Wait! You! Wait a minute!"

I dump the coffee in a trash and run after her. She darts through an exit door, vanishing once again. But I can't give up. I push open the door. I am now in a gray, concrete stairwell-the same color, it seems, as Mikaela's skin tone now . . . the kind of gray that has not an ounce of warmth to it-cold and hopeless.

I shout downward, though I don't know that's where she's gone. "You don't have to run!" My voice echoes but there is no other noise and I'm left alone. It is not a place I want to be.

I decide to return to Mikaela. I don't like being away from her and I notice this is a change from who I used to be. Hope Landon, when faced with dire circ.u.mstances and an uncertain future, tended to run. And here I am, staying.

As I walk toward Mikaela's room, I see Dr. Ryan talking to Jake. I hear them clearly even though I am still far away.

"She has some swelling on her brain. She's not responding to medication as well as we'd hoped."

"What's next for her?" There is a strain in the voice that doesn't match the matter-of-fact question.

"We may have to operate but we don't know if she'll survive the surgery. We're going to watch her a couple more hours and then decide."

"You have to save her!" I say, but I don't stop where they are standing. I go straight into her room. I have to be with her. I have to give her strength, love, whatever it is she needs to feel that she has something to come back to.

And then I am astonished at what I see. My mother. She is draped over Mikaela's tiny body, crying. Weeping. Praying in the most guttural way a human is capable of praying. It's the kind of prayer that is all soul and no flesh. It renders the human inadequate and the Almighty the only one capable of doing what must be done.

I stand there a moment, my skin shivering. And then I am at the bed. I don't even recall walking there. My next action, I cannot explain. It is as if I am not even myself. I feel more desperation than I thought a person was capable of feeling.

I grab Mikaela by the arms. I shake her. Not violently, but not in a way that a person with a head injury should be handled.

"Mikaela! Wake up!"

I feel a hand on my shoulder. It is Jake. "Hope, be gentle with her."

I grab her journal, which I had put at the end of her bed, near her feet. I flip it open, tearing one of the pages by accident. "Mikaela, I'll get you everything on your Christmas list." I am flipping frantically through the pages, trying to find her list. And then I notice there is a bookmark sticking out the top. I flip to that page and notice it is an old photo. I scan the list: Love, Colors, More Time.

What does it mean? I wonder again.

An answer about my father.

Hope.

I stare at the words, trying to figure out what it all means, what I can do to fulfill this. I glance at the photo again, wondering if there is a clue there. Under the harsh fluorescent light, the picture is easy to see, but I pull it closer to my face anyway.

It is a picture of . . . my father. His arms are wrapped around a little girl. They are in ice skates, standing near a frozen lake. I bring the picture even closer and I lose my breath, my heartbeat, my sense of s.p.a.ce and time.

The little girl is me.

And I look just like Mikaela.

I look at her, lying in that bed. It's me.

It's me.

My mom is suddenly behind me. I don't know when she moved or how she got there. "I remember taking that photo of you and your daddy. That was right before he disappeared."

And then I am in a tunnel of images, like I am being swallowed by them, like I'm sliding down a throat. I am reaching up, trying to grab something, but I am only offered flashes of clarity that do not seem to stop me from sliding.

The letters that I've been seeing everywhere, in every color, taped in the oddest places, all come before me.

W-A-K-E-U-P.

I do not know where I am. It is both a dark and light place.

But I call out. Or up. I reach. And I plead. "You want to be alive. To love again. You want to live. You . . . me . . . I want to live. I want to live. Wake up . . ."

Wake up.

16.

Hope stared into a throbbing white light. Why was she floating, and why were people shouting, and why couldn't she connect all the words in her head?

The shouting settled and when she opened her eyes again, she now heard whispers, except she seemed closer to them then she did before. So why were their voices softer?

She heard her name being called, and then she felt the weight of her own body, like she was, for the first time, aware of gravity. She felt warm and safe. Rested and calm.

A face came into focus.

"Mom . . ."

"Hope! Hope! Hallelujah!"

The word instantly grounded her. She was where she should be. She didn't know where she had been, but here she was and it was good. She smiled up at her mom. She felt her mom's cold, fragile hand squeeze hers.

She looked to the left. A lot of cards. Where did they come from? Were they hers?

There was a tray of hospital food nearby, Jell-O and rice and Salisbury steak. There was a strong smell of tuna, something sharply familiar though she hated tuna and would never eat it.

There was a framed photo next to the food tray. It was blurry but she already knew it by heart. It was of her and her father, standing on ice skates in front of a cold, frozen lake. The last picture they ever took together.

"Hope! You're awake!"

There was a man standing over her and she blinked. A doctor? No. Who? He was cute. Had a nice smile. So familiar yet she couldn't place him. She smiled a little, hoping not to embarra.s.s herself. She really needed to get her bearings. Where was she and why were people standing over her? Why was she lying down? Why did her backside feel breezy?

Her attention was drawn back to her mother, who was flapping her hands in the air. "You're awake! Oh my goodness! Goodness, goodness. I told the Lord all I wanted for Christmas was your consciousness."

And there was a lady there too, smiling brightly at her while pushing b.u.t.tons on a monitor and holding a syringe of some sort. She looked so familiar, a nurse she'd once known. A flurry of activity continued over beeping sounds and excited whispers. She was aware of much but couldn't see beyond just a couple of feet around her.

The man with the cute smile said, "Hope . . ."

"What's going on?" The words feel strange coming out of her mouth.

"You've been in a coma for over a month," he said.

"What day is it?"

"It's Thanksgiving," her mother said. "That gives you one whole month for Christmas shopping." Her mother held up a pencil kit, tied with a red bow. "I got you an early gift. So you can draw your cards."

The nurse, whose voice was familiar and good, took her blood pressure. "Well, well. Sleeping Beauty decided to wake up, huh? You get tired of that tuna smell every day or what?"

"A coma," Hope said again, not sure where that word even came from. She searched the room for an answer.

"Since your wedding day," her mother said. "You got knocked out in the parking lot."

Her memory flashed suddenly to rain and concrete, to voices and to pain-to a purple jacket and a flower truck. To screams, then silence.

There was the guy again, leaning over her. He touched her hand. "I found you in the parking lot on my way out, the day of your wedding."

And then she saw him, at the end of the bed, standing there-the first face she should've seen but didn't.

"Sam!" she gasped. "Sam!"

Something changed in the room. A shifting of some sort. People moved. Gazes fell and others rose. She couldn't quite put it all together, but this . . . this was the man that she needed to see. She looked at her left hand, wondering where her wedding ring was.

"Did we go on the honeymoon to Idaho?"

"Silly," her mom said. "You can't go to Idaho in a coma."

The nurse was back and seemed to be hustling people out of the way. Hope looked for the man with the nice smile, but couldn't find him. "It's going to take a bit for you to understand what you've been through. Be patient with yourself."

"How did I come out of the coma?"

The nurse looked contemplative. "Well, I think a lot of people helped. Your poor mother, she prayed herself silly-though I suspect," she said in a hushed voice, "she was pretty much silly before that. And we did CAT on you."

She had a sense she'd been around cats.

"Coma Arousal Therapy," the nurse explained. "I did that on you, but I had some help. Couldn't have done that without him."

"Who?"

"Lan! Lan!" Sam was again at her bedside, filling the entire side of the bed, it seemed. He looked familiar in an unfamiliar way, like she'd known him before. Of course she had. They were married . . . or going to be. She was going to have to find that out, but the words were still hard to come by. "As soon as I heard you were here, well, I had a lot to process, of course. I mean, I had my own grieving to do, as you can well imagine. But that's what I always loved about you . . . you took me at my pace."

"Sam?" He seemed to be acting so weird.

"I've been such a jerk." And then, from his back pocket, he pulled out a card, bent in half to fit in the pocket, crumpled at every corner. "The card says it better than I could. And no card could make up for what I did. I just got scared. But being without you proved to me that I love you. I just needed that proof, you know? I'm not a take-it-by-faith kind of guy."

Behind him, Hope saw the guy with the smile. He stood in the doorway but the smile was gone.

Sam continued. "I want to throw you a wedding! On my parents' yacht! You won't have to do a thing. You've been in a coma-who would make a coma chick throw herself another wedding, right? I don't think they make a card for that kind of a jerky move."

Then, just like that, the man behind Sam left. Hope felt an emptiness she couldn't explain, and then a memory arrived like a letter to a mailbox. It was a letter, in fact, that she saw . . . a letter from Sam, slipping from her fingers, floating to the ground, breaking her heart in two and three and then a million pieces.

"I'm sorry about everything that happened to you," Sam said.