Life Blood --VI---Page 22

"Listen, there was a message on my machine when I came

                        in. I've got to go up to the hospital. Right now." Lou's voice was

brimming with hope and exuberance. "They said Sarah was
stirring. She's opened her eyes and started talking. They said
she's not making much sense, but . . . oh, God."
        "That's wonderful." I felt my heart expanding with life. For
some reason, I had a flash of memory of her climbing up into the
rickety little tree house—well, more like a platform—I'd helped her
build in my thirteenth summer, no boys invited to assist. A year
later that part had seemed terminally dumb. "I'll meet you there."
        I was almost home, but I screeched the car around and
headed east. Racing over, though, I tried not to wish for too much.
I kept remembering all the stages to a complete recovery and
telling myself that whatever had happened, it was only the first
step on a very long, very scary journey. . .

I hadn't realized how scary till I walked into the room. Lou,

who had gotten there just minutes before I did, was sitting by her
side, holding her hand, his gaze transfixed on her. She was
propped up slightly in her bed, two pillows fluffed behind her
head, staring dreamily at the ceiling. Three attentive middle-aged
nurses were standing around the sides of her bed, their eyes
wide, as though Sarah were a ghost. I very quickly realized why.
She was spinning out a fantasy that could only come from a
deranged mind. Had she regained consciousness only to talk
madness?

"Lou, does she recognize you?" I asked.

He just shook his head sadly, never taking his eyes off her
face. She was weaving in and out of reality, pausing, stuttering,
uncertain of her incoherent brain. Once, when she'd fallen off a
swing and got knocked out for a brief moment, she came to
talking nonsense. Now she seemed exactly the same way.
        "Lights ... so bright," she mumbled, starting up again to
recount what seemed to be a faraway fantasy, ". . . like now.
Why . . . why are there lights here?" Her lips were moving but her
eyes were still fixed in a stare. Then, with that last, odd question,
her gaze began to dart about the room, looking for someone who
wasn't present. She settled on me for a moment, and I felt a chill
from her plaintive vulnerability. When I tried to look back as
benignly and lovingly as possible, I couldn't help noticing how
drawn her cheeks were, doubtless from the constant IV feeding,
and again my heart went out. "I'm scared," she went on, "but—"
        "I'm here, honey," Lou declared, bending over her, his eyes
pained. "Do you know who I am?"

"The jade face . . . a mask," she babbled on, still ignoring him. "All the colors. It's so . . . so beautiful."

Her hallucination didn't relate to anything I could understand.
She clearly was off in another world, like when she was a kid,
weaving the lights of the room now into some kind of dream. I
touched Lou's shoulder and asked permission to turn off the
overhead fluorescents, but he just shrugged me off, his attention
focused entirely on her.

His eyes had grown puzzled, as though he wanted to believe she was returning to rationality but his common sense was telling him it wasn't true.

I was having a different reaction. What she was saying was random babblings, all right, but I was beginning to think she was reliving something she had actually seen.

However, she wasn't through.

"I want to pray, but . . . the white tunnel . . . is coming." She
shuddered, then almost tried to smile. "Take me . . ."
        She was gone, her eyelids fluttering uncontrollably.
        "Honey, talk to me," Lou pleaded. He was crying, something
 I'd never seen him do, something I was not even aware he was
capable of. What he really was trying to say was, "Come back."
        It wasn't happening. She stared blankly at the ceiling for a
moment, then slowly closed her eyes, a shutter descending over
her soul.

"She'll be okay," I whispered to him, almost believing it. Her
brain had undergone a physical trauma, enough to cause a coma,
but some kind of mental trauma must have preceded it. Was she
now trying to exorcise that as part of her path to recovery?

The nurses in the room stirred, perhaps not sure what to do.
The overhead lights were still dazzlingly bright, and I moved to
shut them off, leaving only a night-light behind the bed. Perhaps
the lights had brought her awake, but I was convinced what she'd
just gone through had tired her to the point that she would not
revive again that day.

Then one of the Caribbean nurses came over and placed her hand on Lou's shoulder. She had an experienced face, full of selfconfidence. Something about her inspired trust.

"I wouldn't let this upset you too much," she said, a lovely lilt
in her voice. "What just happened may or may not mean anything.
When patients first come out of a coma, they can sometimes talk
just fine, and yet not make any sense. They ramble on about
things they dreamed of like they were real." Then she smiled. "But

it's a good first step. She could wake up perfectly fine tomorrow. Just don't pay any attention to what she says for a while. She's dreaming now."

Lou grunted as though he believed her. I nodded in sympathy, though no one seemed to notice.

I also thought that although what Sarah had said was bizarre,
it sounded like something more than a dream. Or had she gone
back to her child-state where imaginary worlds were real for her?

Then in the dim glare of her bed light, Lou took a wrinkled

blue booklet out of his inner pocket and stared at it. I had to stare
at it a moment before I realized it was a passport.
        "What—?"

"The American consulate in Merida, Mexico, sent it up to 26
Federal Plaza yesterday, because my name and office address
are penciled on the inside cover as an emergency contact. The
police down there said somebody, some gringo tourist fly-fishing
way down on the Usumacinta River, near where the Rio Tigre
comes in from Guatemala, snagged this floating in a plastic bag.
He turned it in to the Mexican authorities there, and it ended up
with our people." He opened the passport and stared at it. "The
photo and ID page is ripped out, but it's definitely Sarah's." He

handed it over. "Guy I know downtown dropped it off last night. I'm not sure if it has anything to tell us, but now, I was hoping it might help jog her memory."

I took it, the cover so waterlogged its color was almost gone.
However, it must have been kept dry in the plastic bag for at least
some of its trip from wherever, since much of the damage seemed
recent.

Lou shook his head staring wistfully at me. "I still don't know
how she got down there. She was in California. Remember that
postcard? If she'd come back East, she'd have got in touch.
Wouldn't she?" His eyes pleaded for my agreement.
        I didn't know what to say, so I just shrugged. I wanted to be
sympathetic, but I refused to lie outright. He took my ambivalence
as assent as he pulled out the locket containing her picture, his
talisman. He fingered it for a moment, staring into space, and then
he looked down and opened it, as if seeing her high school
picture, from a time when she was well, would somehow ease his
mind.

"This whole thing doesn't sound like her," he went on. "Know
what I think? She was being held down there against her will."