The Choice

Fifteen

February 2007

Travis tried to shake free of those memories from nearly eleven years ago, wondering why they’d resurfaced with such clarity. Was it because he was now old enough to realize how unusual it was to fall in love so quickly? Or simply because he missed the intimacy of those days? He didn’t know.

Lately, it seemed he didn’t know a lot of things. There were people who claimed to have all the answers, or at least the answers to the big questions of life, but Travis had never believed them. There was something about the assurance with which they spoke or wrote that seemed self-justifying. But if there were one person who could answer any question, Travis’s question would be this: How far should a person go in the name of true love?

He could pose the question to a hundred people and get a hundred different answers. Most were obvious: A person should sacrifice, or accept, or forgive, or even fight if need be… the list went on and on. Still, even though he knew that all these answers were valid, none would help him now. Some things were beyond understanding. Thinking back, he recalled events he wished he could change, tears he wished had never been shed, time that could have been better spent, and frustrations he should have shrugged off. Life, it seemed, was full of regret, and he yearned to turn back the clock so he could live parts of his life over again. One thing was certain: He should have been a better husband. And as he considered the question of how far a person should go in the name of love, he knew what his answer would be. Sometimes it meant a person should lie.

And soon, he had to make his choice as to whether he would.

The fluorescent lights and white tile underscored the sterility of the hospital. Travis moved slowly down the corridor, certain that even though he’d spotted Gabby earlier, she hadn’t seen him. He hesitated, steeling himself to head over and talk to her. It was the reason he’d come, after all, but the vivid parade of memories earlier had drained him. He stopped, knowing a few more minutes to collect his thoughts wouldn’t make any difference.

He ducked into a small reception room and took a seat. Watching the steady, rhythmic movement in the corridor, he realized that despite the never-ending emergencies, the staff had a routine here, much as he had his own routines at home. It was inevitable for people to try to create a sense of normalcy in a place where nothing was normal. It helped one get through the day, to add predictability to a life that was inherently unpredictable. His mornings were a case in point, for every one was the same. Six-fifteen alarm; a minute to get out of bed and nine minutes in the shower, another four minutes to shave and brush his teeth, and seven minutes to get dressed. A stranger could set a watch by following his shadowed movements through his windows. After that, he’d hurry downstairs to pour cereal; he’d check backpacks for homework and make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for lunches while his sleepy daughters ate their breakfast. At exactly quarter past seven, they’d troop out the door and he’d wait with them at the end of the driveway for the school bus to arrive, driven by a man whose Scottish accent reminded him of Shrek. After his daughters got on and settled into their seats, he’d smile and wave, just as he was supposed to. Lisa and Christine were six and eight, a bit young for first and third grade, and as he watched them venture out to start another day, he often felt his heart clench with worry. Perhaps that was common-people always said that parenting and worrying were synonymous-but recently his worries had grown more pronounced. He dwelled on things he never had before. Little things. Ridiculous things. Was Lisa laughing at cartoons as much as she used to? Was Christine more subdued than normal? Sometimes, as the bus would pull away, he would find himself replaying the morning over and over, searching for clues to their well-being. Yesterday he had spent half the day wondering whether Lisa had been testing him by making him tie her shoes or whether she had just been feeling lazy. Even though he knew he was bordering on obsession, when he’d crept to their rooms last night to adjust their strewn-about blankets, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering whether the nighttime restlessness was new or something he’d just never noticed before.

It shouldn’t have been like this. Gabby should have been with him; Gabby should have been the one tying shoes and adjusting the blankets. She was good at things like that, as he’d known she would be from the very beginning. He remembered that in the days that followed their first weekend together, he would find himself studying Gabby, knowing on some deep level that even if he spent the rest of his life looking, he’d never find a better mother or more perfect complement to him. The realization often hit in the strangest of places-while pushing the cart in the fruit aisle of the grocery store or standing in line to buy movie tickets-but whenever it happened, it made something as simple as taking her hand an exquisite pleasure, something both momentous and gratifying.

Their courtship hadn’t been quite as uncomplicated for her. She was the one torn between two men vying for her love. “A minor inconvenience,” was the way he described it at parties, but he often wondered when exactly her feelings for him finally overwhelmed those she’d had for Kevin. Was it when they sat beside each other, gazing at the nighttime sky, and she quietly began naming the constellations she recognized? Or was it the following day, when she held him tight as they rode on the motorcycle before their picnic? Or was it later that evening, when he took her in his arms?

He wasn’t sure; capturing a specific instant like that was no more possible than locating a specific drop of water in the ocean. But the fact remained that it left Gabby to explain the situation to Kevin. Travis could remember her pained expression on the morning she knew Kevin would be arriving back in town. Gone was the certainty that had guided them the previous days; in its place was the reality of what lay ahead for her. She barely touched her breakfast; when he kissed her good-bye, she responded with only the flicker of a smile. The hours had crawled by without word, and Travis busied himself at work and made calls to find homes for the puppies, knowing it was important to her. Eventually, after work, Travis went to check on Molly. As if sensing she’d be needed later, she didn’t return to the garage after he let her out. Instead, she lay in the tall marsh grass that fronted Gabby’s property, staring toward the street as the sun sank lower in the sky.

It was well after dark when Gabby turned in the drive. He remembered the steady way she looked at him as she stepped out of the car. Without a word, she took a seat beside him on the steps. Molly wandered up and began to nuzzle her. Gabby ran her hand rhythmically through her fur.

“Hey,” he said, breaking the silence.

“Hey.” Her voice sounded drained of emotion.

“I think I found homes for all of the puppies,” he offered.

“Yeah?”

He nodded, and the two of them sat together without speaking, like two people who’d run out of things to talk about.

“I’m always going to love you,” he said, searching and failing to find adequate words to comfort her.

“I believe you,” she whispered. She looped her arm through his and leaned her head against his shoulder. “That’s why I’m here.”

Travis had never liked hospitals. Unlike the veterinary clinic, which closed its doors around dinnertime, Carteret General Hospital struck him as the endless turning of a Ferris wheel, with patients and employees hopping on and off every minute of every day. From where he was sitting, he could see nurses bustling in and out of rooms or clustering around the station at the end of the hall. Some were frazzled while others seemed bored; the doctors were no different. On other floors, Travis knew that mothers were giving birth and the elderly were passing away, a microcosm of the world. As oppressive as he found it, Gabby had thrived working here, energized by the steady buzz of activity.

There’d been a letter in the mailbox months earlier, something from the administrator’s office announcing that the hospital planned to honor Gabby’s tenth year working at the hospital. The letter didn’t allude to anything specific that Gabby had accomplished; it was nothing more than a form letter, something no doubt sent out to a dozen other people who’d started working around the same time she had. A small plaque, the letter promised, would be hung in Gabby’s honor in one of the corridors, along with other recipients’, though as yet it hadn’t happened.

He doubted that she cared. Gabby had taken the job at the hospital not because she might one day receive a plaque, but because she’d felt she hadn’t much choice. Though she had alluded to some problems at the pediatrician’s office during their first weekend together, she hadn’t been specific. He’d let the comment pass without pressing her, but he knew even then that the problem wasn’t simply going to go away.

Eventually, she told him about it. It was the end of a long day. He’d been called out the previous night to the equestrian center, where he found an Arabian sweating and pawing the ground, its stomach tender to the touch. Classic signs of equine colic, though with a bit of luck, he didn’t think it would require surgery. Still, with the owners in their seventies, Travis wasn’t comfortable asking them to walk the horse for fifteen minutes every hour, in case the horse became more agitated or took a turn for the worse. Instead, he decided to stay with the horse himself, and though the horse gradually improved as the day rolled on into the next evening, he was exhausted by the time he left.

He arrived home, sweaty and filthy, to find Gabby crying at her kitchen table. It took a few minutes before she was able to tell him the story-how she’d had to stay late with a patient who was waiting for an ambulance for what she was fairly certain was appendicitis; by the time she was able to leave, most of the staff had gone home. The attending physician, Adrian Melton, had not. They left together, and Gabby didn’t realize that Melton was walking with her toward her car until it was too late. There, he laid a hand on her shoulder and told her that he was heading to the hospital and would update her on the patient’s condition. When she forced a smile, however, he leaned in to kiss her.

It was a clumsy effort, reminiscent of high school, and she recoiled before he could finish. He stared at her, seemingly put out. “I thought this was what you wanted,” he’d said.

At the table, Gabby shuddered. “He made it sound like it was my fault.”

“Has it happened before?”

“No, not like this. But…”

When she trailed off, Travis reached over and took her hand. “Come on,” he said. “It’s me. Talk to me.”

Her gaze remained focused on the surface of the table, but her voice was steady as she recounted the history of Melton’s behavior. By the time she finished, his face was tight with barely suppressed rage.

“I’ll fix this,” he said without waiting for a response.

It took two phone calls to find out where Adrian Melton lived. Within minutes, his car screeched to a stop in front of Melton’s house. His insistent finger on the doorbell brought the doctor to the front door. Melton barely registered his puzzlement before Travis’s fist crashed into his jaw. A woman Travis assumed was Melton’s wife materialized the same instant Melton hit the floor, and her screams echoed in the hallway.

When the police arrived at the house, Travis was arrested for the first and only time in his life. He was brought to the station, where most of the officers treated him with amused respect. Every one of them had brought their pets to the clinic and were clearly skeptical of Mrs. Melton’s claim that “some psycho has assaulted my husband!”

When Travis called his sister, Stephanie showed up looking less worried than amused. She found Travis sitting in a single cell, deep in discussion with the sheriff; as she approached, he realized they were talking about the sheriff’s cat, who seemed to have developed a rash of some sort and couldn’t stop scratching.

“Bummer,” she said.

“What?”

“And here I thought I was going to find you wearing an orange jumper.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Maybe there’s still time. What do you think, Sheriff?”

The sheriff didn’t know what to think, and a moment later, he left them alone.

“Thanks for that,” Travis said once the sheriff was gone. “He’s probably considering your suggestion.”

“Don’t blame me. I’m not the one attacking doctors on doorsteps.”

“He deserved it.”

“I’m sure he did.”

Travis smiled. “Thanks for coming.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it, Rocky. Or would you prefer I call you Apollo Creed?”

“How about you work on getting me out of here instead of trying to come up with nicknames?”

“Coming up with nicknames is more fun.”

“Maybe I should have called Dad.”

“But you didn’t. You got me. And trust me, you made the right choice. Now let me go talk to the sheriff, okay?”

Later, while Stephanie was talking to the sheriff, Adrian Melton visited Travis. He’d never met the local veterinarian and demanded to know the reason for Travis’s assault. Though he never told Gabby what he said, Adrian Melton promptly dropped the charges, despite protests from Mrs. Melton. Within a few days, Travis heard through the small-town grapevine that Dr. and Mrs. Melton were in counseling. Nonetheless, the workplace remained tense for Gabby, and a few weeks later, Dr. Furman called Gabby into the office and suggested that she consider trying to find another place to work.

“I know it’s not fair,” he said. “And if you stay, we’ll somehow make it work. But I’m sixty-four, and I’m planning to retire next year. Dr. Melton has agreed to buy me out, and I doubt that he’ll want to keep you on anyway, or that you’d want to work for him. I think it would be easier and better for you if you take the time to find a place where you’re comfortable and simply put this awful thing behind you.” He shrugged. “I’m not saying that his behavior wasn’t reprehensible; it was. But even if he’s a jerk, he’s the best pediatrician I interviewed and the only one who was willing to practice in a small town like this. If you leave voluntarily, I’ll write the finest recommendation you can imagine. You’ll be able to get a job anywhere. I’ll make sure of it.”

She recognized the manipulation for what it was, and while her emotions cried out for retribution on her behalf and that of sexually harassed women everywhere, her pragmatic side asserted itself. In the end, she took a job in the emergency room at the hospital.

There had been only one problem: When Gabby found out what Travis had done, she’d been furious. It was the first argument they had as a couple, and Travis could still remember her outrage when she demanded to know whether he believed she was “grown-up enough to handle her own problems” and why he acted “as if she were some silly damsel in distress.” Travis didn’t bother trying to defend himself. In his heart, he knew he’d do the same thing again in an instant, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

For all Gabby’s outrage, Travis suspected there was part of her that had admired what he’d done. The simple logic of the act-He bothered you? Let me at ’im-had appealed to her, no matter how angry she’d appeared, for later that night her lovemaking had seemed particularly passionate.

Or at least, that’s the way Travis remembered it. Had the evening unfolded exactly like that? He wasn’t sure. These days, it seemed that the only thing he was certain about was the knowledge that he wouldn’t trade his years with Gabby for anything. Without her, his life had little meaning. He was a small-town husband with a small-town occupation and his cares were no different from anyone else’s. He’d been neither a leader nor a follower, nor had he been someone who would be remembered long after he passed away. He was the most ordinary of men with only one exception: He’d fallen in love with a woman named Gabby, his love deepening in the years they’d been married. But fate had conspired to ruin all that, and now he spent long portions of his days wondering whether it was humanly possible to fix things between them.

Sixteen

Hey, Travis,” said a voice from the doorway. “I thought I’d find you in here.”

Dr. Stallings was in his thirties and made rounds every morning. Over the years, he and his wife had become good friends of Gabby and Travis’s, and last summer the four of them had traveled to Orlando with kids in tow. “More flowers?”

Travis nodded, feeling the stiffness in his back.

Stallings hesitated on the threshold of the room. “I take it you haven’t seen her yet.”

“Kind of. I saw her earlier, but…”

When he trailed off, Stallings finished for him. “You needed some time alone?” He entered and took a seat beside Travis. “I guess that makes you normal.”

“I don’t feel normal. Nothing about this feels normal at all.”

“No, I don’t suppose it does.”

Travis reached for the flowers again, trying to keep his thoughts at bay, knowing there were some things he couldn’t talk about.

“I don’t know what to do,” he finally admitted.

Stallings put his hand on Travis’s shoulder. “I wish I knew what to tell you.”

Travis turned toward him. “What would you do?”

Stallings remained silent for a long moment. “If I were in your position?” He brought his lips together, considering the questions, looking older than his years. “In all honesty, I don’t know.”

Travis nodded. He hadn’t expected Stallings to answer. “I just want to do the right thing.”

Stallings brought his hands together. “Don’t we all.”

When Stallings left, Travis shifted in his seat, conscious of the papers in his pocket. Where once he’d kept them in his desk, he now found it impossible to go about his daily life without them nearby, even though they portended the end of everything he held dear.

The elderly attorney who drafted them seemed to find nothing unusual about their request. His small-town family law practice had been located in Morehead City, close enough to the hospital where Gabby worked to be able to see it from the windows of the paneled walls of the conference room. The meeting hadn’t lasted long; the lawyer explained the relevant statutes and offered a few anecdotal experiences; later Travis could remember only the loose, almost weak way he had grasped Travis’s hand on his way out the door.

It seemed strange that those papers could signal the official end of his marriage. They were codified words, nothing more, but the power afforded them now seemed almost malevolent. Where, he wondered, was the humanity in those phrases? Where was the emotion governed by these laws? Where was the acknowledgment of the life they’d led together, until everything went wrong? And why in God’s name had Gabby wanted them drawn up in the first place?

It shouldn’t end like this, and it was certainly not an outcome he foresaw when he’d proposed to Gabby. He remembered their autumn trip to New York; while Gabby had been at the hotel spa getting a massage and a pedicure, he’d sneaked over to West 47th Street, where he’d purchased the engagement ring. After dining at Tavern on the Green, they’d taken a carriage ride through Central Park. And beneath a cloudy, full-moon sky, he’d asked for her hand in marriage and was overcome by the passionate way she’d wrapped her arms around him while whispering her consent over and over.

And then? Life, he supposed. In between her shifts at the hospital, she planned the wedding: Despite his friends’ warnings to simply go with the flow, Travis relished being part of the process. He helped her pick out the invitations, the flowers, and the cake; he sat beside her as she flipped through albums in downtown studios, hoping to find the right photographer to memorialize the day. In the end, they invited eighty people to a small, weathered chapel on Cumberland Island in spring 1997; they honeymooned in Cancún, which ended up being an idyllic choice for both of them. Gabby wanted someplace relaxing, and they spent hours lying in the sun and eating well; he wanted a bit more adventure, so she learned to scuba dive and joined him on a day trip to see the nearby Aztec ruins.

The give-and-take of the honeymoon set the tone for the marriage. Their dream house was constructed with little stress and was completed by their first anniversary; when Gabby ran her finger over the rim of her glass of champagne and wondered aloud whether they should start a family, the idea struck him as not only reasonable, but something he desperately wanted. She was pregnant within a couple of months, her pregnancy devoid of complications or even much discomfort. After Christine was born, Gabby cut back on her hours and they worked out a schedule that ensured one of them was always home with the baby. When Lisa followed two years later, neither of them noticed much of a change, other than added joy and excitement in the house.

Christmases and birthdays came and went, the kids grew out of one outfit only to be replaced by the next. They vacationed as a family, yet Travis and Gabby also spent time alone, keeping the flame of romance alive between them. Max eventually retired, leaving Travis to take over the clinic; Gabby limited her hours even more and had enough time to volunteer at school. On their fourth anniversary, they went to Italy and Greece; for their sixth, they spent a week on safari in Africa. On their seventh, Travis built Gabby a gazebo in the backyard, where she could sit and read and watch the play of light reflecting on the water. He taught his daughters to wakeboard and ski when each was five years old; he coached their soccer teams in the fall. On the rare occasions when he stopped to reflect on his life, he wondered if anyone in the world felt as blessed as he did.

Not that things were always perfect. Years ago, he and Gabby had gone through a rough patch. The reasons were fuzzy now, lost in the recesses of time, but even then, there had never been a point when he truly believed their marriage to be in jeopardy. Nor, he suspected, had she. Marriage, each of them realized intuitively, was about compromise and forgiveness. It was about balance, where one person complemented the other. He and Gabby had that for years, and he hoped they could have it again. But right now they didn’t, and the realization left him wishing there was something, anything, he could do to restore that delicate balance between them.

Travis knew he couldn’t postpone seeing her any longer, and he rose from his seat. Holding the flowers, he started down the corridor, feeling almost disembodied. He saw a few nurses glance at him, and though he sometimes wondered what they thought, he never stopped to ask. Instead, he summoned his nerve. His legs were shaky, and he could feel the beginning of a headache, a dull throb at the back of his head. If he allowed himself to close his eyes, he felt sure he would sleep for hours. He was falling apart, a thought that made about as much sense as a square golf ball. He was forty-three, not seventy-two, and though he hadn’t been eating much lately, he still forced himself to go to the gym. “You’ve got to keep exercising,” his dad had urged. “If only for your own sanity.” He’d lost eighteen pounds in the last twelve weeks, and in the mirror he could see that his cheeks had hollowed out. He reached the door and pushed it open, forcing himself to smile as he saw her.

“Hi, sweetheart.”

He waited for her to stir, waited for any response to let him know that things were somehow returning to normal. But nothing happened, and in the long, empty silence that followed, Travis felt an ache like a physical pain in his heart. It was always like this. Stepping into the room, he continued to stare at Gabby as if trying to memorize her every feature, though he knew it was a pointless exercise. He knew her face better than his own.

At the window, he opened the blinds, allowing sunlight to spill across the floor. There wasn’t much of a view; the room overlooked a small highway that bisected the town. Slow-moving cars drifted past fast-food restaurants, and he could imagine the drivers listening to music on the radio, or chatting on cell phones, or heading to work, or making deliveries, or running errands, or going to visit friends. People going about their daily lives, people lost in their own concerns, all of them oblivious to what was going on in the hospital. He had once been one of them, and he felt the loss of his previous life.

He set the flowers on the sill, wishing he had remembered to bring a vase. He had chosen a winter bouquet, and the burnt orange and violet colors seemed muted, almost mournful. The florist considered himself an artist of sorts, and in all the years Travis had used him, he’d never been disappointed. The florist was a good man, a kind man, and sometimes Travis wondered how much the florist knew about their marriage. Over the years, Travis had purchased bouquets on anniversaries and birthdays; he’d purchased them as apologies or on the spur of the moment, as a romantic surprise. And each time, he’d dictated to the florist what he wanted written on the card. Sometimes he’d recited a poem he’d either found in a book or written on his own; at other times, he’d come straight to the point and simply said what was on his mind. Gabby had saved these cards in a tiny bundle held together by a rubber band. They were a kind of history of Travis and Gabby’s life together, described in tiny snippets.

He took a seat in the chair by the bed and reached for her hand. Her skin was pale, almost waxy, her body seemed smaller, and he noted the spidery lines that had begun to form at the corners of her eyes. Still, she was as remarkable to him as she had been the first time he’d ever seen her. It amazed him that he’d known her almost eleven years. Not because the length of time was extraordinary, but because those years seemed to contain more… life than the first thirty-two years without her. It was the reason he’d come to the hospital today; it was the reason he came every day. He had no other choice. Not because it was expected-though it was-but because he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. They spent hours together, but their nights were spent apart. Ironically, there was no choice in that, either, for he couldn’t leave his daughters alone. These days, fate made all his decisions for him.

Except for one.

Eighty-four days had passed since the accident, and now he had to make a choice. He still had no idea what to do. Lately he’d been searching for answers in the Bible and in the writings of Aquinas and Augustine. Occasionally he would find a striking passage, but nothing more than that; he would close the cover of the book and find himself staring out the window, his thoughts blank, as if hoping to find the solution somewhere in the sky.

He seldom drove straight home from the hospital. Instead, he would drive across the bridge and walk the sands of Atlantic Beach. He would slip off his shoes, listening as the waves crashed along the shore. He knew his daughters were as upset as he was, and after his visits to the hospital, he needed time to compose himself. It would be unfair to subject them to his angst. He needed his daughters for the escape they afforded him. When focusing on them, he didn’t focus on himself, and their joy still held an unadulterated purity. They still had the ability to lose themselves in play, and the sound of their giggling made him want to laugh and cry at the same time. Sometimes as he watched them, he was struck by how much they resembled their mother.

Always they asked about her, but usually he didn’t know what to tell them. They were mature enough to understand that Mommy wasn’t well and had to stay in the hospital; they understood that when they visited, it would seem as if Mommy were asleep. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell them the truth about her condition. Instead, he would cuddle with them on the couch and tell them how excited Gabby had been when she’d been pregnant with each of them or remind them about the time the family played in the sprinklers for an entire afternoon. Mostly, though, they would thumb through the photo albums Gabby had assembled with care. She was old-fashioned that way, and the pictures never ceased to bring a smile to their faces. Travis would tell stories associated with each, and as he stared at Gabby’s radiant face in the photos, his throat would tighten at the knowledge that he’d never seen anyone more beautiful.

To escape the sadness that overtook him in such moments, he would sometimes raise his eyes from the album and focus on the large, framed photograph they’d had taken at the beach last summer. All four of them had worn beige khakis and white button-down oxfords, and they were seated amid the dune grass. It was the kind of family portrait common in Beaufort, yet it somehow struck him as entirely unique. Not because it was his family, but because he was certain that even a stranger would find himself filled with hope and optimism at the sight, for the people in the photo looked the way a happy family should.

Later, after the girls had gone to bed, he would put away the albums. It was one thing to look at them with his daughters and tell stories in an attempt to keep their spirits up, it was another thing to gaze at them alone. He couldn’t do that. Instead, he would sit alone on the couch, weighed down by the sadness he felt inside. Sometimes Stephanie would call. Their conversations were filled with their usual banter but it was somehow stilted at the same time, for he knew she wanted him to forgive himself. Despite her sometimes flippant remarks and her occasional teasing, he knew what she was really saying: that no one blamed him, that it wasn’t his fault. That she and others were worried about him. To head off her reassurances, he’d always say that he was doing fine, even when he wasn’t, for the truth was something he knew she didn’t want to hear: that not only did he doubt he’d ever be fine again, but he wasn’t even sure he ever wanted to be.

Seventeen

Warm bands of sunlight continued to stretch toward them. In the silence, Travis squeezed Gabby’s hand and winced at the pain in his wrist. It had been in a cast until a month ago, and the doctors had prescribed painkillers. The bones in his arms had fractured and his ligaments had torn in half, but after his first dose, he’d refused to take the painkillers, hating the woozy way they made him feel.

Her hand was as soft as always. Most days he would hold it for hours, imagining what he would do if she squeezed his in return. He sat and watched her, wondering what she was thinking or if she was thinking at all. The world inside her was a mystery.

“The girls are good,” he began. “Christine finished her Lucky Charms at breakfast, and Lisa was close. I know you worry about how much they eat, since they’re on the small side, but they’ve been pretty good about nibbling on the snacks I put out after school.”

Outside the window, a pigeon landed on the sill. It walked a few steps one way, then back again, before finally settling in place as it did on most days. It seemed, somehow, to know when it was time for Travis to visit. There were times he believed it was an omen of sorts, though of what, he had no idea.

“We do homework after dinner. I know you like to do it right after school, but this seems to be working out okay. You’d be excited at how well Christine is doing in math. Remember at the beginning of the year when she didn’t seem to understand it at all? She’s really turned it around. We’ve been using those flash cards you bought pretty much every night, and she didn’t miss a single question on her latest test. She’s even doing her homework without me having to walk her through it. You’d be proud of her.”

The sound of the cooing pigeon was barely audible through the glass.

“And Lisa’s doing well. We watch either Dora the Explorer or Barbie every night. It’s crazy how many times she can watch the same DVDs, but she loves them. And for her birthday, she wants a princess theme. I was thinking about getting an ice-cream cake, but she wants to have her party at the park, and I’m not sure they’d get to the cake before it melts, so I’ll probably have to get something else.”

He cleared his throat.

“Oh, did I tell you that Joe and Megan are thinking of having another kid? I know, I know-it’s crazy considering how many problems she had with the last pregnancy and the fact that she’s already in her forties, but according to Joe, she really wants to try for a little boy. Me? I think Joe’s the one who wants a son and Megan’s just going along with it, but with those two, you never really know, do you.”

Travis forced himself to sound conversational. Since she’d been here, he’d been trying to act as naturally as he could around her. Because they talked incessantly about the kids before the accident, because they discussed what was happening in their friends’ lives, he always tried to talk about them when he visited her. He had no idea whether she heard him; the medical community seemed divided on that. Some swore that coma patients could hear-and possibly remember-conversations; others said just the opposite. Travis didn’t know whom to believe, but he chose to live his days on the side of the optimists.

For that same reason, after glancing at his watch, he reached for the remote. In her stolen moments when she hadn’t been working, Gabby’s guilty pleasure was watching Judge Judy on television, and Travis had always teased her about the way she took an almost perverse delight in the antics of those unfortunate enough to find themselves in Judge Judy’s courtroom.

“Let me turn on the television, okay? Your show’s on. I think we can catch the last couple of minutes.”

A moment later, Judge Judy was speaking over both the defendant and the plaintiff, just to get them to shut up, which seemed to be the predictable, recurring theme of the show.

“She’s in rare form, huh?”

When the show was over, he turned it off. He thought about moving the flowers closer, in the hope that she would smell them. He wanted to keep her senses stimulated. Yesterday, he’d spent some time brushing her hair; the day before, he’d brought in some of her perfume and added a dab to each wrist. Today, however, doing any of those things seemed to take more effort than he could summon.

“Other than that, not much new is going on,” he said with a sigh. The words sounded as meaningless to him as they no doubt did to her. “My dad’s still covering for me at the clinic. You’d be amazed at how well he does with the animals, considering how long ago he retired. It’s like he never left. People still adore him, and I think he’s happy being there. If you ask me, he never should have stopped working in the first place.”

He heard a knock at the door and saw Gretchen walk in. In the past month, he’d come to depend on her. Unlike the other nurses, she maintained an undying faith that Gabby would emerge from all of this just fine and consequently treated Gabby as if she were conscious.

“Hey, Travis,” she chirped. “Sorry for interrupting, but I’ve got to hook up a new IV.”

When Travis nodded, she approached Gabby. “I’ll bet you’re starving, honey,” she said. “Just give me a second, okay? Then I’ll give you and Travis your alone time. You know how I am about interrupting two lovebirds.”

She worked quickly, removing one IV bag and replacing it with another, all the while keeping up a steady stream of conversation. “I know you’re sore from your workout this morning. We really went at it, didn’t we? We were like those folks you see on those infomercials. Working this, working that. I was really proud of you.”

Every morning and again in the evening, one of the nurses came in to flex and stretch Gabby’s limbs. Bend the knee, straighten it out; flex the foot up, then push it down. They did this for every joint and muscle in Gabby’s body.

After she finished hanging the bag, Gretchen checked the flow and adjusted the sheets, then turned to Travis.

“Are you doing okay today?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

Gretchen seemed sorry she’d asked. “I’m glad you brought flowers,” she said, nodding in the direction of the windowsill. “I’m sure Gabby appreciates it.”

“I hope so.”

“Are you going to bring in the girls?”

Travis swallowed through the lump in his throat. “Not today.”

Gretchen pursed her lips and nodded. A moment later, she was gone.

Twelve weeks ago, Gabby was rolled into the emergency room on a gurney, unconscious and bleeding heavily from a gash on her shoulder. The physicians concentrated first on the gash because of the heavy blood loss, though in retrospect, Travis wondered whether a different approach would have changed things.

He didn’t know, nor would he ever. Like Gabby, he’d been rolled into the emergency room; like Gabby, he’d spent the night unconscious. But there the similarities had ended. The following day, he woke up in pain with a mangled arm, while Gabby never woke up at all.

The doctors were kind, but they didn’t try to conceal their concern. Brain injuries were always serious, they said, but they were hopeful the injury would heal and that all would be well in time.

In time.

He sometimes wondered whether doctors realized the emotional intensity of time, or what he was going through, or even that time was something finite. He doubted it. No one knew what he was going through or really understood the choice that lay before him. On the surface, it was simple. He would do exactly what Gabby wanted, exactly as she’d made him promise.

But what if…

And that was the thing. He had thought long and hard about the reality of the situation; he had stayed awake nights considering the question. He wondered again what love really meant. And in the darkness, he would toss and turn, wishing for someone else to make the choice for him. But he wrestled with it alone, and more often than not, he’d wake in the morning with a tear-drenched pillow in the place Gabby should have been. And the first words out of his mouth were always the same.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

The choice Travis now had to make had its roots in two distinct events. The first event related to a couple named Kenneth and Eleanor Baker. The second event, the accident itself, had occurred on a rainy, windy night twelve weeks ago.

The accident was simple to explain and was similar to many accidents in that a series of isolated and seemingly inconsequential mistakes somehow came together and exploded in the most horrific of ways. In mid-November, they’d driven to the RBC Center in Raleigh to see David Copperfield perform onstage. Over the years, they’d usually seen one or two shows a year, if only to have an excuse to get away for an evening alone. Usually they had dinner beforehand, but that night they didn’t. Travis was running late at the clinic, they got a late start out of Beaufort, and by the time they parked the car, the show was only minutes from beginning. In his haste, Travis forgot his umbrella, despite the ominous clouds and building wind. That was mistake number one.

They watched the show and enjoyed it, but the weather had deteriorated by the time they’d left the theater. Rain was pouring down hard, and Travis remembered standing with Gabby, wondering how best to get to their car. They happened to bump into friends who’d also seen the show, and Jeff offered to walk Travis to his car so he wouldn’t get wet. But Travis didn’t want him to have to go out of his way and declined Jeff’s offer. Instead, he bolted into the rain, splashing through ankle-deep puddles on the way to his car. He was soaked to the bone by the time he crawled in, especially his feet. That was mistake number two.

Because it was late, and because they both had to work the following morning, Travis drove fast despite the wind and rain, trying to save a few minutes in a drive that normally took two and a half hours. Though it was difficult to see through the windshield, he drove in the passing lane, pushing past the speed limit, racing past cars with drivers who were more cautious about the dangers of the weather outside. That was mistake number three. Gabby asked him repeatedly to slow down; more than once, he did as she asked, only to speed up again as soon as he could. By the time they reached Goldsboro, still an hour and a half from home, she’d become so angry that she’d stopped speaking to him. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, refusing to talk, frustrated at the way he was tuning her out. That was mistake number four.

The accident was next, and it could have been avoided had none of the other things happened. Had he brought his umbrella or walked with his friend, he wouldn’t have run to the car in the rain. His feet might have stayed dry. Had he slowed the car, he might have been able to control it. Had he respected Gabby’s wishes, they wouldn’t have argued, and she would have been watching what he intended to do and stopped him before it was too late.

Near Newport, there’s a wide, easy bend in the highway intersected by a stoplight. By that point in the drive-less than twenty minutes from home-the itch in his feet was driving him crazy. His shoes had laces, the knots made tighter by the moisture, and no matter how hard he tried to push them off his feet, the toe of one foot would slip from the heel of the other. He leaned forward, his eyes barely above the dash, and reached for one shoe with his hand. Glancing downward, he struggled with the knot and didn’t see the light turn yellow.

The knot wouldn’t come free. When it finally did, he lifted his eyes, but by then it was already too late. The light had turned red, and a silver truck was entering the intersection. Instinctively he hit the brakes, and the tail began to swerve on the rain-slicked road. Their car careened out of control. At the last instant, the wheels caught and they avoided the truck in the intersection, only to continue hurtling through the bend, off the highway, and toward the pines.

The mud was even more slippery, and there was nothing he could do. He turned the wheel and nothing happened. For an instant, the world seemed to be moving in slow motion. The last thing he remembered before he lost consciousness was the sickening sound of shattering glass and twisting metal.

Gabby didn’t even have time to scream.

Travis brushed a loose strand of hair from Gabby’s face and tucked it behind her ear, listening to his stomach as it gurgled. As hungry as he was, he couldn’t bear the idea of eating. His stomach was perpetually knotted, and in those rare moments it wasn’t, thoughts of Gabby would come rushing back to fill the void.

It was an ironic form of punishment, for during their second year of marriage, Gabby had taken it upon herself to teach Travis to eat things other than the bland food he’d long favored. He supposed it had come about because she’d grown tired of his restrictive habits. He should have realized that changes were coming when she started slipping in the occasional comment regarding the tastiness of Belgian waffles on Saturday mornings or how nothing was more satisfying on cold winter days than a plate of homemade beef stew.

Until that point, Travis had been the chef in the family, but little by little she began edging her way into the kitchen. She bought two or three cookbooks, and in the evenings, Travis would watch her as she lay on the couch, occasionally folding down the corner of a page. Now and then, she would ask him whether something sounded particularly good. She’d read aloud the ingredients of Cajun jambalaya or veal Marsala, and though Travis would say they sounded terrific, the tone of his voice made it obvious that even if she prepared these dishes, he probably wouldn’t eat them.

But Gabby was nothing if not persistent, and she started making small changes anyway. She prepared butter or cream or wine sauces and poured them over her portion of the chicken he cooked nearly every night. Her single request was that he at least smell it, and usually he had to admit the aroma was appetizing. Later, she took to leaving a small amount in the serving bowl, and after she’d poured some on her plate, she simply added some to his whether he wanted to try it or not. And little by little, to his own surprise, he did.

On their third anniversary, Gabby prepared a mozzarella-stuffed, Italian-flavored meat loaf; in lieu of a gift, she asked him to eat it with her; by their fourth anniversary, they were sometimes cooking together. Though his breakfast and lunch were as boring as usual and most evenings his dinners were still as bland as always, he had to admit there was something romantic about preparing meals together, and as the years rolled on, they started to do it at least twice a week. Often, Gabby would have a glass of wine, and while they cooked, the girls were required to stay in the sunroom, where the prominent feature was a Berber carpet the color of emeralds. They called it “green carpet time.” While Gabby and Travis chopped and stirred and conversed quietly about their day, he reveled in the contentment that she had brought him.

He wondered if he’d ever get the chance to cook with her again. In the first weeks after the accident, he’d been almost frantic about making sure the evening nurse had his cell number handy. After a month, because she was breathing on her own, she was moved from the ICU to a private room, and he was certain the change would wake her. But as the days passed with no change at all, his manic energy was replaced by a quiet, gnawing dread that was even worse. Gabby had once told him that six weeks was the cutoff-that after that, the odds of waking from a coma dropped dramatically. But still he held out hope. He told himself that Gabby was a mother, Gabby was a fighter, Gabby was different from all the rest. Six weeks came and went; another two weeks followed. At three months, he knew, most patients who remained in a coma were moved to a nursing home for long-term care. That day was today, and he was supposed to let the administrator know what he wanted to do. But that wasn’t the choice he was facing. His choice had to do with Kenneth and Eleanor Baker, and though he knew he couldn’t blame Gabby for bringing them into their lives, he wasn’t ready to think about them just yet.

Eighteen

The house they built was the kind of place in which Travis could imagine spending the rest of his life. Despite its newness, there was a lived-in quality from the moment they moved in. He attributed this to the fact that Gabby had worked hard to create a home that made people feel comfortable as soon as the door was opened.

She was the one who oversaw the details that had made the house come alive. While Travis conceived the structure in terms of square footage and building materials that could survive the salty, humid summers, Gabby introduced eclectic elements he’d never considered. Once, while in the process of building, they were driving past a crumbling farmhouse, long since abandoned, and Gabby insisted he pull over. By that point, he’d grown used to her occasional flights of fancy. He humored her, and soon they were walking through what was once a doorway. They stepped across floors carpeted with dirt and tried to ignore the kudzu that wove through broken walls and gaping windows. Along the far wall, however, was a fireplace, thick with grime, and Travis remembered thinking that she’d somehow known it was there. She squatted next to the fireplace, running her hand along the sides and beneath the mantel. “See this? I think it’s hand-painted tile,” she said. “There must be hundreds of pieces, maybe more. Can you imagine how beautiful it was when it was new?” She reached for his hand. “We should do something like this.”

Little by little, the house took on accents he’d never before imagined. They didn’t just copy the style of the fireplace; Gabby found the owners, knocked on their door, and convinced them to let her purchase the fireplace in its entirety for less than it cost to clean it. She wanted big oak beams and a vaulted, soft pine ceiling in the living room, which seemed to match the gabled roofline. The walls were plaster or brick or covered with colorful textures, some that resembled leather, all of them somehow resembling works of art. She spent long weekends shopping for antique furniture and knickknacks, and sometimes it seemed as if the house itself knew what she was trying to accomplish. When she found a spot in the hardwood floor that creaked, she walked back and forth, a big grin on her face, to make sure she wasn’t imagining it. She loved rugs, the more colorful the pattern the better, and they were scattered throughout the house with generous abandon.

She was practical, too. The kitchen, bathrooms, and bedrooms were airy and bright and sparkly modern, with large windows framing the gorgeous views. The master bathroom had a claw-foot tub and a roomy, glass-walled shower. She wanted a big garage, with plenty of room for Travis. Guessing that they’d spend a lot of time on the wraparound porch, she insisted on a hammock and matching rockers, along with an outdoor grill and a seating area located in such a way that during storms, they could sit outside without getting wet. The overall effect was one in which a person didn’t know whether he or she was more comfortable inside or out; the kind of home where someone could walk in with muddy shoes and not get in trouble. And on their first night in their new home, as they lay on the canopy bed, Gabby rolled toward Travis with an expression of pure contentment, her voice almost a purr: “This place, with you by my side, is where I’ll always want to be.”

The kids had been having problems, even if he didn’t mention them to Gabby.

Not surprising, of course, but most of the time, Travis was at a loss as to what to do. Christine had asked him more than once whether Mommy was ever going to come home, and though Travis always assured her that she would, Christine seemed uncertain, probably because Travis wasn’t sure he believed it himself. Kids were perceptive like that, and at eight years old, she’d reached an age where she knew the world wasn’t as simple as she’d once imagined it to be.

She was a lovely child with bright blue eyes who liked to wear neat bows in her hair. She wanted her room to always appear just so and refused to wear clothes that didn’t match. She didn’t throw temper tantrums when things weren’t right; instead, she was the sort of child who organized her toys or picked a new pair of shoes. But since the accident, she got frustrated easily, and temper tantrums were now the norm. His family, Stephanie included, had recommended counseling, and both Christine and Lisa went twice a week, but the temper tantrums seemed to be getting worse. And last night, when Christine went to bed, her room was a mess.

Lisa, who’d always been small for her age, had hair the same color as Gabby’s and a generally sunny disposition. She had a blanket she carried with her everywhere, and she followed Christine around the house like a puppy. She put stickers on all her folders, and her work in school usually came home covered in stars. Still, for a long time she’d cry herself to sleep. From downstairs, Travis could hear her weeping on the monitor, and he’d have to pinch the bridge of his nose to keep from joining in. On those nights, he would climb the stairs to the girls’ bedroom-since the accident, another change was that they wanted to sleep in the same room-and Travis would lie beside her, stroking her hair and listening as she whimpered “I miss Mommy” over and over, the saddest words Travis had ever heard. Almost too choked up to speak, he would simply say, “I know. I do, too.”

He couldn’t begin to take Gabby’s place, and he didn’t try; what that left, however, was a hole where Gabby used to be, an emptiness he didn’t know how to fill. Like most parents, each of them had carved out fiefdoms of expertise when it came to child care. Gabby, he knew now, had taken a far greater share of the responsibility than he had, and he regretted it now. There were so many things he didn’t know how to do, things that Gabby made seem easy. Little things. He could brush the girls’ hair, but when it came to braids, he understood the concept but found them impossible to master. He didn’t know what kind of yogurt Lisa referred to when she said she wanted “the one with the blue banana.” When colds settled in, he stood in the aisle of the grocery store, scanning the shelves of cough syrup, wondering whether to buy grape or cherry flavoring. Christine never wore the clothes he set out. He’d had no idea that Lisa liked to wear sparkly shoes on Fridays. He realized that before the accident, he hadn’t even known their teachers’ names or where in the school, exactly, their classrooms were located.

Christmas had been the worst, for that had always been Gabby’s favorite holiday. She loved everything about the season: trimming the tree, decorating, baking cookies, and even the shopping. It used to amaze Travis that she could retain her humor as she pushed through frenzied crowds in department stores, but at night, after the girls had gone to bed, she’d drag out the gifts with a giddy sense of glee, and together they’d wrap the items she’d purchased. Later, Travis would hide them in the attic.

There was nothing joyous about last year’s holiday season. Travis did his best, forcing excitement when none was evident. He tried to do everything Gabby had done, but the effort of maintaining a happy facade was wearying, especially because neither Christine nor Lisa made things any easier. It wasn’t their fault, but for the life of him, he didn’t know how respond when at the top of both their holiday wish lists was the request for Mommy to get better. It wasn’t like a new Leapster or a dollhouse could take her place.

In the past couple of weeks, things had improved. Kind of. Christine still threw her tantrums and Lisa still cried at night, but they’d adapted to life in the house without their mom. When they walked in the house after school, they no longer called for her out of habit; when they fell and scraped their elbows, they automatically came to him to find a Band-Aid. In a picture of the family Lisa drew at school, Travis saw only three images; he had to catch his breath before he realized there was another horizontal image in the corner, one that seemed added almost as an afterthought. They didn’t ask about their mom as much as they used to, and they visited rarely. It was hard for them to go, for they didn’t know what to say or even how to act. Travis understood that and tried to make it easier. “Just talk to her,” he would tell them, and they would try, but their words would trail off into nothing when no response was forthcoming.

Usually, when they did visit, Travis had them bring things-pretty rocks they’d found in the garden, leaves they’d laminated, homemade cards decorated with glitter. But even gifts were fraught with uncertainty. Lisa would set her gift on Gabby’s stomach and back away; a moment later, she’d move it closer to Gabby’s hand. After that, she’d shift it to the end table. Christine, on the other hand, would move constantly. She’d sit on the bed and stand by the window, she’d peer closely at her mother’s face, and through it all, she’d never say a single word.

“What happened at school today?” Travis had asked her the last time she’d come. “I’m sure your mom wants to hear all about it.”

Instead of answering, Christine turned toward him. “Why?” she asked, her tone one of sad defiance. “You know she can’t hear me.”

There was a cafeteria on the ground floor of the hospital, and on most days Travis would go there, mainly to hear voices other than his own. Normally, he arrived around lunchtime, and over the past few weeks, he’d come to recognize the regulars. Most were employees, but there was an elderly woman who seemed to be there every time he arrived. Though he’d never spoken to her, he’d learned from Gretchen that the woman’s husband had already been in the intensive care unit when Gabby was admitted. Something about complications from diabetes, and whenever he saw the woman eating a bowl of soup, he thought about her husband upstairs. It was easy to imagine the worst: a patient hooked up to a dozen machines, endless rounds of surgery, possible amputation, a man barely hanging on. It wasn’t his business to ask, and he wasn’t even certain he wanted to know the truth, if only because it felt as though he couldn’t summon the concern he knew he’d need to show. His ability to empathize, it seemed to him, had evaporated.

Still, he watched her, curious about what he could learn from her. While the knot in his stomach never seemed to settle enough for him to swallow more than a few bites of anything, she not only ate her entire meal, but seemed to enjoy it. While he found it impossible to focus long enough on anything other than his own needs and his daughters’ daily existence, she read novels during lunch, and more than once, he’d seen her laughing quietly at a passage that had amused her. And unlike him, she still maintained an ability to smile, one she offered willingly to those who passed her table.

Sometimes, in that smile, he thought he could see a trace of loneliness, even as he chided himself for imagining something that probably wasn’t there. He couldn’t help wondering about her marriage. Because of her age, he assumed they’d celebrated a silver, perhaps even golden, anniversary. Most likely there were kids, even if he’d never seen them. But other than that, he could intuit nothing. He wondered whether they had been happy, for she seemed to be taking her husband’s illness in stride, while he walked the corridors of the hospital feeling as if a single wrong step would send him crumpling to the floor.

He wondered, for instance, whether her husband had ever planted rosebushes for her, something Travis had done for Gabby when she’d first become pregnant with Christine. Travis remembered the way she looked as she sat on the porch, one hand on her belly, and mentioned that the backyard needed flowers. Staring at her as she said it, Travis could no more have denied her request than breathed underwater, and though his hands were scraped and his fingertips bloody by the time he finished planting the bushes, roses were blooming on the day Christine had been born. He’d brought a bouquet to the hospital.

He wondered whether her husband had watched her from the corner of his eye the way Travis watched Gabby when their kids frolicked on the swings in the park. He loved the way Gabby’s expression would light up with pride. Often, he’d reach for her hand and feel like holding it forever.

He wondered whether her husband had found her beautiful first thing in the morning, with her hair askew, the way Travis did when he saw Gabby. Sometimes, despite the structured chaos always associated with mornings, they would simply lie together in each other’s arms for a few more minutes, as if drawing strength to face the upcoming day.

Travis didn’t know whether his marriage had been especially blessed or whether all marriages were like his. All he knew was that without Gabby he was utterly lost, while others, including the woman in the cafeteria, somehow found the strength to go on. He didn’t know whether he should admire the woman or feel sorry for her. He always turned away before she caught him staring. Behind him, a family wandered in, chattering excitedly and carrying balloons; at the register, he saw a young man digging through his pockets for change. Travis pushed aside his tray, feeling ill. His sandwich was only half-eaten. He debated whether to bring it with him back to the room but knew he wouldn’t finish it even if he did. He turned toward the window.

The cafeteria overlooked a small green space, and he watched the changing world outside. Spring would be here soon, and he imagined that tiny buds were beginning to form on the dogwoods. In the past three months, he’d seen every kind of weather from this very spot. He’d watched rain and sun and seen winds in excess of fifty miles an hour bend the pine trees in the distance almost to the point of snapping. Three weeks ago, he’d seen hail fall from the sky, only to be followed minutes later by a spectacular rainbow that seemed to frame the azalea bushes. The colors, so vivid they seemed almost alive, made him think that nature sometimes sends us signs, that it’s important to remember that joy can always follow despair. But a moment later, the rainbow had vanished and the hail returned, and he realized that joy was sometimes only an illusion.

Nineteen

By midafternoon, the sky was turning cloudy, and it was time for Gabby’s afternoon routine. Though she’d completed the exercises from the morning, and a nurse would come by later in the evening to do another workout, he’d asked Gretchen if it would be okay if he did the same thing in the afternoon as well.

“I think she’d like that,” Gretchen had said.

She walked him through the process, making sure he understood that every muscle and every joint needed attention. While Gretchen and the other nurses always started with Gabby’s fingers, Travis started with her toes. He lowered the sheet and reached for her foot, flexing her pinkie toe up and down, then again, before moving to the toe beside it.

Travis had come to love doing this for her. The feel of her skin against his own was enough to rekindle a dozen memories: the way he’d rubbed her feet while she’d been pregnant, the slow and intoxicating back rubs by candlelight during which she’d seemed to purr, massages on her arm after she’d strained it lifting a bag of dog food one-handed. As much as he missed talking to Gabby, sometimes he believed that the simple act of touch was what he missed most of all. It had taken him over a month before he’d asked Gretchen’s permission to help with the exercises, and during that time, whenever he’d stroked Gabby’s leg, he’d felt somehow as if he were taking advantage of her. It didn’t matter that they were married; what mattered was that it was a one-sided act on his part, somehow disrespectful to the woman he adored.

But this…

She needed this. She required this. Without it, her muscles would atrophy, and even if she woke-when she woke, he quickly corrected himself-she would find herself permanently bedridden. At least, that’s what he told himself. Deep down, he knew he needed it as well, if only to feel the heat from her skin or the gentle pulse of blood in her wrist. It was at such times he felt most certain that she would recover; that her body was simply repairing itself.

He finished with her toes and moved to her ankles; when that was done, he flexed her knees, bending them both to her chest and then straightening them. Sometimes, while lying on the couch and glancing through magazines, Gabby would absently stretch her leg in exactly the same way. It was something a dancer would do, and she made it look just as graceful.

“Does that feel good, sweetheart?”

That feels wonderful. Thanks. I was feeling a little stiff.

He knew he’d imagined her answer, that Gabby hadn’t stirred. But her voice seemed to arise from nowhere whenever he worked with her like this. Sometimes he wondered whether he was going crazy. “How are you doing?”

Bored out of my head, if you want to know the truth. Thanks for the flowers, by the way. They’re lovely. Did you get them from Frick’s?

“Where else?”

How are the girls? Tell me the truth this time.

Travis moved to the other knee. “They’re okay. They miss you, though, and it’s hard on them. Sometimes I don’t know what to do.”

You’re doing the best you can, right? Isn’t that what we always tell each other?

“You’re right.”

Then that’s all I expect. And they’ll be okay. They’re tougher than they look.

“I know. They take after you.”

Travis imagined her looking him over, her expression wary.

You look skinny. Too skinny.

“I haven’t been eating much.”

I’m worried about you. You’ve got to take care of yourself. For the girls. For me.

“I’ll always be here for you.”

I know. I’m afraid of that, too. Do you remember Kenneth and Eleanor Baker?

Travis stopped flexing. “Yes.”

Then you know what I’m talking about.

He sighed and started again. “Yes.”

In his mind, her tone softened. Do you remember when you made us all go camping in the mountains last year? How you promised that the girls and I would love it?

He began working on her fingers and arms. “What brought that up?”

I think about a lot of things here. What else can I do? Anyway, do you remember that when we first got there, we didn’t even bother to set up camp-just kind of unloaded the truck-even though we heard thunder in the distance, because you wanted to show us the lake? And how we had to walk half a mile to get there, and right when we reached the shore, the sky opened up and it just… poured? Water gushing out of the sky like we were standing under a hose. And by the time we got back to camp, everything was soaked through. I was pretty mad at you and made you take us all to a hotel instead.

“I remember.”

I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have gotten so mad. Even though it was your fault.

“Why is it always my fault?”

He imagined her winking at him as he gently rolled her neck from side to side.

Because you’re such a good sport when I say it.

He bent over and kissed her on the forehead.

“I miss you so much.”

I miss you, too.

His throat clenched a little as he finished the exercise routine, knowing Gabby’s voice would begin to fade away again. He moved his face closer to hers. “You know you’ve got to wake up, right? The girls need you. I need you.”

I know. I’m trying.

“You’ve got to hurry.”

She said nothing, and Travis knew he’d pressed too hard.

“I love you, Gabby.”

I love you, too.

“Can I do anything? Close the blinds? Bring you something from home?”

Will you sit with me a while longer? I’m very tired.

“Of course.”

And hold my hand?

He nodded, covering her body with the sheet once more. He sat in the chair by the bed and took her hand, his thumb tracing it slightly. Outside, the pigeon had come back, and beyond it, heavy clouds shifted in the sky, transforming into images from other worlds. He loved his wife but hated what life with her had become, cursing himself for even thinking this way. He kissed her fingertips one by one and brought her hand to his cheek. He held it against him, feeling her warmth and wishing for even the tiniest of movements, but when nothing happened, he moved it away and didn’t even realize that the pigeon seemed to be staring at him.

Eleanor Baker was a thirty-eight-year-old housewife with two boys she adored. Eight years ago, she’d come into the emergency room vomiting and complaining about a blinding pain in the back of her head. Gabby, who was covering a friend’s shift, happened to be working that day, though she didn’t treat Eleanor. Eleanor was admitted to the hospital, and Gabby knew nothing about her until the following Monday, when she realized that Eleanor had been placed in the intensive care unit when she didn’t wake up on Sunday morning. “Essentially,” one of the nurses said, “she went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”

Her coma was caused by a severe case of viral meningitis.

Her husband, Kenneth, a history teacher at East Carteret High School who by all accounts was a gregarious, friendly guy, spent his days at the hospital. Over time, Gabby got to know him; at first it was only a few niceties here and there, but as time wore on, their conversations grew longer. He adored his wife and children, and always wore a neat sweater and pressed Dockers when he visited the hospital, and he drank Mountain Dew by the liter. He was a devout Catholic, and Gabby often found him praying the rosary by his wife’s bedside. Their kids were named Matthew and Mark.

Travis knew all this because Gabby spoke about him after work. Not in the beginning, but later, after they’d become something like friends. Their conversations were always the same in that Gabby wondered how he could continue to come in each and every day, what he might be thinking as he sat in silence beside his wife.

“He seems so sad all the time,” Gabby said.

“That’s because he is sad. His wife is in a coma.”

“But he’s there all the time. What about his kids?”

Weeks turned into months, and Eleanor Baker was eventually moved to a nursing home. Months eventually passed into a year, then another. Thoughts of Eleanor Baker may have eventually slipped away, if not for the fact that Kenneth Baker shopped at the same grocery store as Gabby. They would occasionally bump into each other, and always the conversation would turn to how Eleanor was doing. There was never any change.

But over the years, as they continued to run into each other, Gabby noticed that Kenneth had changed. “She’s still going,” was the way he began to casually describe her condition. Where there had once been a light in his eyes when he spoke about Eleanor, there was now only blankness; where once there was love, now there seemed to be only apathy. His black hair had turned gray within a couple of years, and he’d become so thin that his clothes hung off him.

In the cereal aisle or frozen food section, Gabby couldn’t seem to avoid him, and he became something of a confidant. He seemed to need her, to tell her what was happening, and in those moments they met, Kenneth mentioned one horrible event after another: that he’d lost his job, lost his house, that he couldn’t wait to get all the kids out of the house, that the older one had dropped out of high school and the younger one had been arrested again for dealing drugs. Again. That was the word Gabby emphasized when she told Travis about it later. She also said she was pretty sure he’d been drunk when she’d run into him.

“I just feel so bad for him,” Gabby said.

“I know you do,” Travis said.

She grew quiet then. “Sometimes I think it might have been easier if his wife had died instead.”

Staring out the window, Travis thought about Kenneth and Eleanor Baker. He had no idea whether Eleanor was still in the nursing home or whether she was still alive. Since the accident, he’d replayed those conversations in his head nearly every day, remembering the things Gabby had told him. He wondered whether somehow Eleanor and Kenneth Baker had been brought into their lives for a reason. How many people, after all, knew anyone who’d been in a coma? It seemed so… fantastic, no more likely than visiting an island filled with dinosaurs or watching an alien spaceship blowing up the Empire State Building.

But Gabby worked in a hospital, and if there was some sort of reason for the Bakers to have come into their lives, what was it? To warn him that he was doomed? That his daughters would lose their way? Those thoughts terrified him, and it was the reason he made sure he was waiting when his daughters came home from school. It was the reason he would be taking them to Busch Gardens as soon as school let out, and it was the reason he let Christine spend the night at her friend’s house. He woke every morning with the thought that even if they were struggling, which was normal, he still insisted they behave at home and in school, and it was the reason that when they misbehaved, both of them were sent to their rooms for the night as punishment. Because those were the things Gabby would have done.

His in-laws sometimes thought he was being too hard on the girls. That wasn’t surprising. His mother-in-law, in particular, had always been judgmental. While Gabby and her dad could chat on the phone for an hour, conversations with her mother were always clipped. In the beginning, Travis and Gabby spent the mandatory holidays in Savannah and Gabby always came home stressed; once their daughters were born, Gabby finally told her parents she wanted to start her own holiday traditions and that while she would love to see them, her parents would have to come to Beaufort. They never did.

After the accident, however, her parents checked into a hotel in Morehead City to be close to their daughter, and for the first month, the three of them were often in Gabby’s room together. While they never said they blamed him for the accident, Travis could feel it in the way they seemed to keep their distance. When they spent time with Christine and Lisa, it was always away from the house-outings for ice cream or pizza-and they seldom spent more than a couple of minutes inside.

In time, they had to go back, and now they sometimes came up on weekends. When they did, Travis tried to stay away from the hospital. He told himself that it was because they needed time alone with their daughter, and that was partly true. What he didn’t like to admit was that he also stayed away because they continually, if unintentionally, reminded him that he was responsible for Gabby being in the hospital in the first place.

His friends had reacted as he’d expected. Allison, Megan, and Liz prepared dinners in shifts for the first six weeks. Over the years, they’d grown close to Gabby, and sometimes it seemed as if Travis had to support them. They would show up with red eyes and forced smiles, holding Tupperware containers filled to the brim with lasagna or casseroles, side dishes, and desserts of every kind. They always made a special point to mention that chicken was always used in place of red meat, to ensure that Travis would eat it.

They were particularly good with the girls. In the beginning, they often held the girls as they cried, and Christine grew especially fond of Liz. Liz braided her hair, helped her make beaded bracelets, and usually spent at least half an hour with Christine, kicking the soccer ball back and forth. Once inside, they would begin to whisper as soon as Travis left the room. He wondered what they said to each other. Knowing Liz, he was certain that if she felt it was something important, she’d tell him, but usually she’d simply say that Christine wanted to talk. Over time, he found himself simultaneously thankful for her presence and envious of her relationship with Christine.

Lisa, on the other hand, was closer to Megan. They would color at the kitchen table or sit beside each other watching television; sometimes Travis would watch Lisa curl her body against Megan’s in the same way she did with Gabby. In moments like those, they almost looked like mother and daughter, and for the briefest of moments, Travis would feel as if the family were reunited again.

Allison, on the other hand, was the one who made sure the girls understood that even if they were sad and upset, they still had responsibilities. She reminded them to pick up their rooms, helped them with their homework, and always prompted them to bring their dishes to the sink. She was gentle about it, but firm as well, and while his daughters sometimes avoided their chores on the nights Allison didn’t come, it happened less frequently than Travis would have guessed. On a subconscious level, they seemed to realize they craved structure in their lives, and Allison was exactly what they’d needed.

Between them and his mother-who was there every afternoon and most weekends-Travis was seldom alone with his daughters in the aftermath of the accident, and they were able to function as parents in a way that he simply couldn’t. He’d needed them to do that for him. It was all he could do to get out of bed in the morning, and most of the time, he felt on the verge of crying. His guilt hung heavy, and not simply because of the accident. He didn’t know what to do or where he was supposed to be. When he was at the hospital, he wished he were at home with his daughters; when he was at home with his daughters, he wished he were visiting Gabby. Nothing was ever right.

But after six weeks of dumping excess food in the garbage cans, Travis finally told his friends that while they were welcome to continue visiting, he no longer needed his dinners prepared. Nor did he want them coming by every day. By that point, with visions of Kenneth Baker playing in his mind, he knew that he had to take control over what was left of his life. He had to become the father he once had been, the father Gabby wanted him to be, and little by little, he did. It wasn’t easy, and while there were still times when Christine and Lisa seemed to miss the attention from the others, it was more than offset by the attention Travis began to show again. It wasn’t as if everything had reverted to normal, but now, at the three-month mark, their lives were as normal as could be expected. In taking responsibility for the care of his daughters, Travis sometimes thought he’d saved himself.

On the downside, since the accident, he’d left little time for Joe, Matt, and Laird. While they still dropped by occasionally for a beer after the girls had gone to bed, their conversations were stilted. Half the time, everything they said seemed to be… wrong, somehow. When they asked about Gabby, he wasn’t in the mood to talk about her. When they tried to talk about something else, Travis wondered why they seemed to be avoiding talking about Gabby. He knew he wasn’t being fair, but while spending time with them, he was always struck by the differences between their lives and his. Despite their kindness and patience, despite their sympathy, he would find himself thinking that in a little while, Joe would head home to Megan and they’d talk quietly while curled up in bed; when Matt put his hand on his shoulder, he would wonder whether Liz was glad that Matt had gone over or whether she’d needed him to do something at home. His relationship with Laird was exactly the same, and despite himself, he was often unaccountably angry in their presence. While he was forced to live constantly with the unthinkable, their concern could be switched on and off, and for the life of him, he couldn’t escape his rage at the unfairness of it all. He wanted what they had and knew they would never understand his loss, no matter how hard they tried. He hated himself for thinking these things and tried to hide his fury, but he got the sense that his friends realized that things had changed, even if they were uncertain what was really going on. Gradually, their visits became shorter and more infrequent. He hated himself for that, too, for the wedge he was creating between them, but he didn’t know how to repair it.

In quiet moments, he wondered about his anger toward his friends, while he felt only gratitude toward their wives. He would sit on the deck pondering it all, and last week he’d found himself gazing at the crescent moon, finally accepting what he’d known all along. The difference, he knew, had to do with the fact that Megan, Allison, and Liz focused their support on his daughters, while Joe, Matt, and Laird focused their support on him. His daughters deserved that.

He, however, deserved to be punished.

Twenty

Sitting with Gabby, Travis glanced at his watch. It was coming up on half-past two, and normally he would be getting ready to say good-bye to Gabby so he could be home when the girls came back from school. Today, however, Christine was visiting a friend’s house, and Lisa was going to a birthday party at the aquarium in Pine Knoll Shores, so neither would be home until just before dinner. The fact that his daughters had plans for today was fortunate, since he needed to stay longer anyway. Later, he had to meet with the neurologist and the hospital administrator.

He knew what the meeting was about, and he had no doubt they’d be in full-sympathy mode, complete with moderate, reassuring tones. The neurologist would tell him that because there was nothing more the hospital could do for Gabby, she would have to be transferred to a nursing home. He would be assured that since her condition was stable, the risk would be minimal and that a physician would check in on her weekly. Additionally, he would probably be told that the staff who worked in nursing homes were fully capable of providing the care she would need daily. If Travis protested, the administrator would probably step in and note that unless Gabby was in the intensive care unit, their insurance covered only a three-month stay in the hospital. He might also shrug and mention that since the hospital was meant to serve the local community, there wasn’t room to keep her long-term, even if she had once been an employee. There was really nothing else he could do. Essentially, by teaming up, they wanted to make sure they got their way.

What neither of them realized was that the decision wasn’t quite that simple. Beneath the surface lurked the reality that while Gabby was in the hospital, it was assumed that she would wake up soon, for this was where temporary coma patients always stayed. Patients in temporary comas needed physicians and nurses nearby to quickly monitor changes that would signify the improvement they’d known was coming all along. In a nursing home, it would be assumed that Gabby would never wake up. Travis wasn’t ready to accept that, but it seemed as if he weren’t going to be given a choice.

But Gabby had a choice, and in the end, his decision wasn’t going to be based on what either the neurologist or the administrator said to him. He would base his decision on what he thought Gabby would want.

Outside the window, the pigeon was gone, and he wondered whether it went off to visit other patients, like a doctor making his rounds, and if it did, whether the other patients noticed the pigeon the way he did.

“Sorry about crying earlier,” Travis whispered. As he stared at Gabby, he watched her chest rising and falling with every breath. “I couldn’t help it.”

He was under no illusions he would hear her voice this time. It happened only once a day.

“Do you know what I like about you?” he asked. “Aside from pretty much everything?” He forced a smile. “I like the way you are with Molly. She’s all right, by the way. Her hips haven’t given out, and she still likes to lie in the tall grass whenever she can. Whenever I see her doing that, I think about those first few years we were together. Remember when we used to take the dogs on walks down the beach? When we’d go out early so we could let them off the leash and they could run around? Those were always such… restful mornings, and I used to love watching you laugh as you chased Molly in circles, trying to tap her butt. She used to go crazy when you did that, and she’d get this gleam in her eye with her tongue hanging out, waiting for you to make your move.”

He paused, noting with surprise that the pigeon had returned. It must like listening to him talk, he decided.

“That’s how I knew you’d be great with kids, by the way. Because of how you were with Molly. Even that first time we met…” He shook his head, his mind flashing back. “Believe it or not, I’ve always liked the fact that you stormed over to my place that night, and not just because we ended up getting married. You were like a mama bear protecting her cub. It’s impossible to get that angry unless you’re capable of loving deeply, and after watching how you were with Molly-lots of love and attention, lots of worry, and nobody on earth better mess with her-I knew you’d be exactly the same way with kids.”

He traced his finger along her arm. “Do you know how much that’s meant to me? Knowing how much you love our daughters? You have no idea how much comfort that gave me over the years.”

He leaned his face close to her ear. “I love you, Gabby, more than you’ll ever know. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a wife. You’re every hope and every dream I’ve ever had, and you’ve made me happier than any man could possibly be. I don’t ever want to give that up. I can’t. Can you understand that?”

He waited for a response, but there was nothing. There was always nothing, as if God were telling him that his love was somehow not enough. Staring at Gabby, he suddenly felt very old and very tired. He adjusted the sheet, feeling alone and apart from his wife, knowing he was a husband whose love had somehow failed her.

“Please,” he whispered. “You’ve got to wake up, sweetheart. Please? We’re running out of time.”

“Hey,” Stephanie said. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, she looked nothing like the successful professional she’d become. Living in Chapel Hill, she was the senior project manager at a rapidly growing biotechnology firm, but in the last three months, she’d spent three or four days a week in Beaufort. Since the accident, she’d been the only one Travis could really talk to. She alone knew all his secrets.

“Hey,” Travis said.

She crossed the room and leaned over the side of the bed. “Hey, Gabby,” she said, kissing her on the cheek. “You doing okay?”

Travis loved the way his sister treated Gabby. Except for Travis, she was the only one who’d always seemed comfortable in Gabby’s presence.

Stephanie pulled up another chair and slid it closer to Travis. “And how are you doing, big brother?”

“Okay,” he said.

Stephanie gave him the once-over. “You look like hell.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re not eating enough.” She reached in her handbag and pulled out a bag of peanuts. “Eat these.”

“I’m not hungry. I just had lunch.”

“How much?”

“Enough.”

“Humor me, okay?” She used her teeth to tear open the bag. “Just eat these and I promise I’ll shut up and won’t bother you again.”

“You say that every time you’re here.”

“That’s because you keep looking like hell.” She tilted her head toward Gabby. “I’ll bet she said the same thing, too, right?” She’d never questioned Travis’s claims about hearing Gabby’s voice, or if she did, her tone reflected no concerns about it.

“Yeah, she did.”

She forced the bag toward him. “Then take the peanuts.”

Travis took the bag, lowering it to his lap.

“Now put some in your mouth, then chew and swallow.”

She sounded like their mother. “Did anyone ever tell you that you can be a little bit too pushy at times?”

“Every day. And believe me, you need someone to be pushy with you. You’re just lucky you have me in your life. I’m quite the blessing for you.”

For the first time all day, he gave a genuine laugh. “That’s one word for it.” He poured out a small handful of nuts and began to chew. “How are things with you and Brett?”

Stephanie had been dating Brett Whitney for the past two years. One of the most successful hedge fund managers in the country, he was wildly wealthy, handsome, and considered by many to be the most eligible bachelor south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

“We’re still going.”

“Trouble in paradise?”

Stephanie shrugged. “He asked me to marry him again.”

“And you said?”

“The same thing I said before.”

“How did he take it?”

“Fine. Oh, he did his ‘I’m hurt and angry’ thing again, but he was back to normal in a couple of days. We spent last weekend in New York.”

“Why don’t you just marry him?”

She shrugged. “I probably will.”

“Here’s a hint, then. You might want to say yes when he asks.”

“Why? He’ll ask again.”

“You sound so certain when you say that.”

“I am. And I’ll say yes when I’m positive he wants to marry me.”

“He’s asked you three times. How much more positive can you get?”

“He just thinks he wants to marry me. Brett is the kind of guy who likes challenges, and right now, I’m a challenge. As long as I stay a challenge, he’ll keep asking. And when I know he’s really ready, that’s when I’ll say yes.”

“I don’t know…”

“Trust me,” she said. “I know men, and I have my charms.” Her eyes glittered with mischief. “He knows that I don’t need him, and it practically kills him.”

“No,” he said. “You definitely don’t need him.”

“So, changing the subject, when are you going back to work?”

“Soon,” he mumbled.

She reached into his bag of peanuts and popped a couple in her mouth. “You are aware that Dad’s not exactly a spring chicken anymore.”

“I know.”

“So… next week?”

When Travis didn’t respond, Stephanie folded her hands in front of her. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen, since you obviously haven’t made up your mind. You’re going to start showing up at the clinic, and at the very least, you’re going to stay every day until at least one o’clock. That’s your new schedule. Oh, and you can close the office on Friday at noon. That way, Dad’s only there for four afternoons.”

He squinted at her. “I can see you’ve been giving this a lot of thought.”

“Someone has to. And just so you know, this isn’t just for Dad. You need to go back to work.”

“What if I don’t think I’m ready?”

“Too bad. Do it anyway. If not for you, do it for Christine and Lisa.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your daughters. Remember them?”

“I know who they are…”

“And you love them, right?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“Then if you love them,” she said, ignoring his question, “you’ve got to start acting like a parent again. And that means you have to go back to work.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said, “you have to show them that no matter what horrible things happen in life, you still have to go on. That’s your responsibility. Who else is going to teach them that?”

“Steph…”

“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but I am saying you don’t have a choice. After all, you haven’t let them quit, have you? They’re still in school, right? You’re still making them do homework, right?”

Travis said nothing.

“So, if you expect them to handle their responsibilities-and they’re only six and eight-then you’ve got to handle yours. They need to see you getting back to normal, and work is part of that. Sorry. That’s life.”

Travis shook his head, feeling his anger rise. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand completely.”

He brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose and squeezed. “Gabby is…”

When he didn’t continue, Stephanie put her hand on his knee. “Passionate? Intelligent? Kind? Moral? Funny? Forgiving? Patient? Everything you ever imagined in a wife and mother? In other words, pretty much perfect?”

He looked up in surprise.

“I know,” she said quietly. “I love her, too. I’ve always loved her. She’s not only been the sister I never had, but my best friend, too. Sometimes she felt like my only real friend. And you’re right-she’s been wonderful for you and the kids. You couldn’t have done any better. Why do you think I keep coming down here? It’s not just for her, or for you. It’s for me. I miss her, too.”

Unsure how to respond, he said nothing. In the silence, Stephanie sighed.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

Travis swallowed. “No,” he admitted. “Not yet.”

“It’s been three months.”

“I know,” he said.

“When’s the meeting?”

“I’m supposed to meet with them in half an hour.”

Watching her brother, she accepted that. “Okay. I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you think about it some more. I’ll just head over to your place and see the girls.”

“They’re not there, but they should be back later.”

“You mind if I wait around?”

“Go ahead. There’s a key-”

She didn’t let him finish. “Beneath the plaster frog on the porch? Yeah, I know. And if you’re curious, I’m pretty sure most burglars could figure that out, too.”

He smiled. “I love you, Steph.”

“I love you, too, Travis. And you know I’m here for you, right?”

“I know.”

“Always. Anytime.”

“I know.”

Staring at him, she finally nodded. “I’ll just wait for you, okay? I want to know what happens.”

“Okay.”

Standing, she reached for her purse and flung it over her shoulder. She kissed her brother on the top of his head.

“We’ll see you later, okay, Gabby?” she said, not expecting an answer. She was halfway out of the room when she heard Travis’s voice again.

“How far should you go in the name of love?”

Stephanie half turned. “You’ve asked me that question before.”

“I know.” Travis hesitated. “But I’m asking what you think I should do.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I always do. That it’s your choice how you handle this.”

“What does that mean for me?”

Her expression seemed almost helpless. “I don’t know, Trav. What do you think it means?”

Twenty-one

It was a little more than two years ago when Gabby bumped into Kenneth Baker on one of those summer evenings for which Beaufort was famous. With live music playing and dozens of boats tied up at the docks on a summer night, it had seemed like the perfect night to bring Gabby and the kids downtown for ice cream. While they stood in line with the kids, Gabby casually mentioned that she’d seen a beautiful print in one of the stores they’d passed. Travis smiled. By then, he’d grown used to her hints.

“Why don’t you check it out,” he’d said. “I’ve got the girls. Go ahead.”

She was gone longer than he’d expected, and when she returned, her expression was troubled. Later, after they’d gone home and put the girls to bed, Gabby sat on the couch, clearly preoccupied.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Gabby shifted on the couch. “I ran into Kenneth Baker earlier today,” she admitted. “When you were getting ice cream.”

“Oh yeah? How’s he doing?”

She sighed. “Do you realize that his wife’s been in a coma for six years now? Six years. Can you imagine what that must be like for him?”

“No,” Travis said. “I can’t.”

“He looks like an old man.”

“I’m sure I’d age, too. He’s going through something terrible.”

She nodded, her expression still troubled. “He’s angry, too. It’s like he resents her. He said he only visits her now and then. And his kids…” Lost in thought, she seemed to lose track of her sentence.

Travis stared at Gabby. “What’s this about?”

“Would you visit me? If something like that happened to me?”

For the first time, he felt a pang of fear, even though he wasn’t quite sure why. “Of course I would.”

Her expression was almost sad. “But after a while, you’d visit less.”

“I’d visit you all the time.”

“And in time, you’d resent me.”

“I’d never resent you.”

“Kenneth resents Eleanor.”

“I’m not Kenneth.” He shook his head. “Why are we even talking about this?”

“Because I love you.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but she raised her hand. “Let me finish, okay?” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “When Eleanor first went into the hospital, it was obvious how much Kenneth loved her. That’s what I noticed whenever we spoke, and over time, I think he told me their entire story-how they’d met at the beach the summer after graduation; that when he first asked her out, she’d said no, but he somehow finagled her number anyway; that he first told her he loved her on her parents’ thirtieth anniversary. But he didn’t just tell the stories-it was like he was reliving them over and over. In a way, he reminded me of you.”

Gabby reached for his hand. “You do the same thing, you know. Do you know how many times I’ve heard you tell someone about the first time we met? Don’t get me wrong-I love that about you. I love the fact that you keep those memories alive in your heart and that they mean as much to you as they do to me. And the thing is… when you do, I can feel you fall in love with me again. In some ways, it’s the most touching thing you do for me.” She paused. “Well, that and cleaning the kitchen when I’m too tired to do it.”

Despite himself, he laughed. Gabby didn’t seem to notice.

“Today, though, Kenneth was just so… bitter, and when I asked about Eleanor, I got the sense that he wished she were dead. And when I compare that to the way he used to feel about his wife, and what’s happened to his kids… it’s terrible.”

When her voice died away, Travis squeezed her hand. “That’s not going to happen to us…”

“That’s not the point. The point is, I can’t live knowing that I didn’t do what I should have done.”

“What are you talking about?”

She ran her thumb over his hand. “I love you so much, Travis. You’re the best husband, the best person, that I’ve ever known. And I want you to make me a promise.”

“Anything,” he said.

She looked directly at him. “I want you to promise that if anything ever does happen to me, you’ll let me die.”

“We already have living wills,” he countered. “We did those when we did our regular wills and power of attorney.”

“I know,” she said. “But our lawyer retired to Florida, and as far as I know, no one but the three of us knows that I don’t want my life prolonged in the event I can’t make my own decisions. It wouldn’t be fair to you or the kids to put your lives on hold, because in time, resentment would be inevitable. You would suffer and the kids would suffer. Seeing Kenneth today convinced me of that, but I don’t want you to ever be bitter about anything we shared. I love all of you too much for that. Death is always sad, but it’s also inevitable, and that’s why I signed the living will in the first place. Because I love all of you so much.” Her tone became softer and yet more determined. “And the thing is… I don’t want to feel like I have to tell my parents or my sisters about the decision I made. The decision we made. I don’t want to have to find another attorney and redraft the documents. I want to be able to trust that you’ll do what I want. And that’s why I want you to promise me that you’ll honor my wishes.”

The conversation struck him as surreal. “Yeah… sure,” he said.

“No, not like that. I want you to promise me. I want you to make a vow.”

Travis swallowed. “I promise to do exactly what you want. I swear it.”

“No matter how hard it is?”

“No matter how hard.”

“Because you love me.”

“Because I love you.”

“Yes,” she said. “And because I love you, too.”

The living will Gabby had signed in the attorney’s office was the document Travis had brought with him to the hospital. Among other things, it specified that her feeding tubes were to be removed after twelve weeks. Today was the day he had to make his choice.

Sitting beside Gabby in the hospital, Travis recalled the conversation he’d had with Gabby that night; he remembered the vow he’d made to her. He’d replayed those words a hundred times over the last few weeks, and as the three-month mark approached, he’d found himself growing ever more desperate for Gabby to wake. As had Stephanie, which was why she was waiting for him at home. Six weeks ago, he’d told her about the promise he’d made to Gabby; the need to share it had become unbearable.

The next six weeks passed without relief. Not only didn’t Gabby stir, but she’d shown no improvement in any of her brain functions. Though he tried to ignore the obvious, the clock had moved forward, and it was now the hour of his decision.

Sometimes, during his imaginary conversations with her, he’d tried to get her to change her mind. He’d argue that the promise hadn’t been a fair one; that the only reason he’d said yes was that the prospect seemed so unlikely, he’d never believed it would come up. He confessed that had he been able to predict the future, he would have torn up the documents she’d signed in the attorney’s office, for even if she couldn’t respond, he still couldn’t imagine a life without her.

He would never be like Kenneth Baker. He felt no bitterness toward Gabby, nor would he ever. He needed her, he needed the hope he felt whenever they were together. He drew strength from visiting her. Earlier today, he’d been exhausted and lethargic; as the day wore on, his sense of commitment had only grown stronger, leaving him certain that he would have the ability to laugh with his daughters, to be the father Gabby wanted him to be. It had worked for three months, and he knew he could do it forever. What he didn’t know was how on earth he could go on knowing that Gabby was gone. As strange as it seemed, there was a comforting predictability to the new routine of his life.

Outside the window, the pigeon paced back and forth, making him think it was pondering the decision with him. There were times when he felt a strange kinship with the bird, as if it were trying to teach him something, though what, he had no idea. Once, he had brought some bread with him, but he hadn’t realized the screen would prevent him from tossing it onto the ledge. Standing before the glass, the pigeon had eyed the bread in his hand, cooing slightly. It flew away a moment later, only to return and stay the rest of the afternoon. After that, it showed no fear of him. Travis could tap the glass and the pigeon would stand in place. It was a curious situation that gave him something else to think about when sitting in the quiet room. What he wanted to ask the pigeon was this: Am I to become a killer?

This was where his thoughts inevitably led, and it was what differentiated him from others who were expected to carry out the desires outlined in living wills. They were doing the right thing; their choice was rooted in compassion. For him, however, the choice was different, if only for logical reasons. If A and B, then C. But for his commission of one mistake after the next, there would have been no car accident; had there been no accident, there would have been no coma. He was the proximate cause of her injury, but she hadn’t died. And now, with the flourish of some legal documents from his pocket, he could finish the job. He could be responsible for her death once and for all. The difference turned his stomach inside out; with every passing day, as the decision approached, he ate less and less. Sometimes it seemed not only that God wanted Gabby to die, but that He wanted Travis to know that it had been entirely his fault.

Gabby, he was certain, would deny it. The accident was just that-an accident. And she, not he, had made the decision as to how long she wanted a feeding tube. Yet he couldn’t shed the crushing weight of his responsibility, for the simple reason that no one, aside from Stephanie, knew what Gabby wanted. In the end, he alone would make the choice.

The grayish afternoon light gave the walls a melancholy cast. He still felt paralyzed. Buying time, he removed the flowers from the windowsill and brought them to the bed. As he laid them across Gabby’s chest and took his seat, Gretchen appeared in the doorway. She moved into the room slowly; as she checked Gabby’s vitals, she didn’t say a word. She jotted something in the chart and smiled briefly. A month ago, when he was doing Gabby’s exercises, Gabby had mentioned that she was pretty sure Gretchen had a crush on him.

“Is she going to be leaving us?” he heard Gretchen ask.

Travis knew she was referring to a transfer to a nursing home; in the halls, Travis had heard whispers that it would be coming soon. But there was more to her question than Gretchen could possibly understand, and he couldn’t summon the will to answer.

“I’m going to miss her,” she said. “And I’m going to miss you, too.”

Her expression was brimming with compassion.

“I mean it. I’ve worked here longer than Gabby, and you should have heard the way she used to talk about you. And the kids, too, of course. You could tell that even though she loved her job, she was always happiest when it was time to go home at the end of the day. She wasn’t like the rest of us, who were excited to be done for the day. She was excited to go home, to be reunited with her family. I really admired that about her, that she had a life like that.”

Travis didn’t know what to say.

She sighed, and Travis thought he saw the glisten of tears. “It breaks my heart to see her like this. And you, too. Do you know that every nurse in the hospital knows you sent your wife roses every anniversary? Pretty much every woman here wished that her husband or boyfriend would do things like that. And then, after the accident, the way you are with her… I know you’re sad and angry, but I’ve seen you do the exercises with her. I’ve heard what you say, and… it’s like you and she have this connection that can’t be broken. It’s heartbreaking and yet beautiful. And I feel so horrible for what you’re both going through. I’ve been praying for you both every night.”

Travis felt his throat close.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that you two make me believe that true love really exists. And that even the darkest hours can’t take that away.” She stopped, her expression revealing that she felt she’d said too much, and she turned away. A moment later, as she was about to leave the room, he felt her place a hand on his shoulder. It was warm and light and lingered for just an instant, and then it was gone, and Travis was alone with his choice once more.

It was time. Looking at the clock, he knew he couldn’t wait any longer. The others were waiting for him. He crossed the room to shut the blinds. Habit led him to turn on the television. Though he knew the nurses would turn it off later, he didn’t want Gabby to lie alone in a room more silent than a tomb.

He’d often imagined himself trying to explain how it happened. He could see himself shaking his head in disbelief while sitting at the kitchen table with his parents. “I don’t know why she woke up,” he heard himself saying. “As far as I can tell, there is no magical answer. It was just like every other time I visited… except that she opened her eyes.” He could imagine his mother crying tears of joy, he could picture himself making the call to Gabby’s parents. Sometimes it was as clear to him as if it had actually happened, and he would hold his breath, living and experiencing the feeling of wonder.

But now he doubted that it would ever be possible, and from across the room, he stared at her. Who were they, Gabby and he? Why had it all turned out this way? There had been a time when he would have had reasonable answers to those questions, but that time was long past. These days, he understood nothing. Above her, the fluorescent light hummed, and he wondered what he was going to do. He still didn’t know. What he knew was this: She was still alive, and where there was life, there was always hope. He focused on her, wondering how someone so close and so present could remain so remote.

Today, he had to make his choice. To tell the truth meant Gabby would die; to tell a lie meant that Gabby’s wish would be denied. He wanted her to tell him what to do, and from somewhere far away, he could imagine her answer.

I already have, sweetheart. You know what you have to do.

But the choice, he wanted to plead, had been based on faulty assumptions. If he could go back in time, he would never have made that promise, and he wondered whether she would have even asked him to. Would she have made the same decision if she’d known that he would cause her coma in the first place? Or if she’d known that pulling the feeding tube and watching her slowly starve to death would certainly kill a part of him? Or if he told her that he believed he could be a better father if she remained alive, even if she never recovered at all?

It was more than he could bear, and he felt his mind begin to scream: Please wake up! The echo seemed to shake the very atoms of his being. Please, sweetheart. Do it for me. For our daughters. They need you. I need you. Open your eyes before I go, while there’s still time…

And for a moment, he thought he saw a twitch, he would swear he saw her stir. He was too choked up to speak, but as always, reality reasserted itself, and he knew it had been an illusion. In the bed, she hadn’t moved at all, and watching her through his tears, he felt his soul begin to die.

He had to go, but there was one more thing he had to do. Like everyone, he knew the story of Snow White, of the kiss from the Prince that broke the evil spell. That’s what he thought of every time he left Gabby for the day, but now the notion struck him as imperative. This was it, his very last chance. Despite himself, he felt a tiny swell of hope at the thought that somehow, this time would be different. While his love for her had always been there, the finality had not, and maybe the combination constituted the magical formula that he’d been missing. He steadied himself and moved toward the bed, trying to convince himself that this time it would work. This kiss, unlike all the others, would fill her lungs with life. She would moan in momentary confusion, but then she would realize what he was doing. She would feel his life pouring into hers. She would sense the fullness of his love for her, and with a passion that surprised him, she would begin to kiss him in return.

He leaned closer, their faces drawing near, and he could feel the heat of her breath mingling with his. He closed his eyes against the memory of a thousand other kisses and touched his lips to hers. He felt a kind of spark, and all at once he felt her slowly coming back to him. She was the arm that held him close in times of trouble, she was the whisper on the pillow beside him at night. It was working, he thought, it was really working… and as his heart began to race in his chest, it finally dawned on him that nothing had changed at all.

Pulling back, all he could do was lightly trace her cheek with his finger. His voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper.

“Good-bye, sweetheart.”

Twenty-two

How far should a person go in the name of love?

Travis was still turning this question over in his mind when he pulled into the drive, even though he’d already made his decision. Stephanie’s car was parked out front, but except for the living room, the rest of the house was dark. An empty house would have been too much to bear.

The chill was biting as he stepped out of his car, and he pulled his jacket tighter. The moon had yet to rise, and the stars glittered overhead; if he concentrated, he knew he could still remember the names of the constellations that Gabby had once traced for him. He smiled briefly, thinking back on that evening. The memory was as clear as the sky above, but he forced it away, knowing he didn’t have the strength to let it linger. Not tonight.

The lawn was shiny with moisture, promising a heavy frost overnight. He reminded himself to put out the girls’ mittens and scarves so he wouldn’t have to rush around in the morning. They would be home soon, and despite his fatigue, he missed them. Tucking his hands in his pockets, he made his way up the front steps.

Stephanie turned when she heard him enter. He could feel her trying to read his expression. She started toward him.

“Travis,” she said.

“Hey, Steph.” He removed his jacket, realizing he couldn’t remember the drive back home.

“Are you okay?”

It took him a moment to respond. “I don’t know.”

She put her hand on his arm. Her voice was gentle. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“A glass of water would be great.”

She seemed relieved to be able to do something. “Be back in a jiffy.”

He sat on the couch and leaned his head back, feeling as drained as if he’d spent the day in the ocean, fighting waves. Stephanie returned and handed him the glass.

“Christine called. She’s running a little late. Lisa’s on her way.”

“Okay,” he said. He nodded before focusing on the family portrait.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He took a drink of water, realizing how parched his throat had become. “Did you think about the question I asked you earlier? About how far someone should go in the name of love?”

She considered the question for a moment. “I think I answered that.”

“You did. Sort of.”

“What? You’re telling me it wasn’t a good enough answer?”

He smiled, thankful that Stephanie was still able to talk to him as she always had. “What I really wanted to know is what you would have done if you were in my position.”

“I knew what you wanted,” she said hesitantly, “but… I don’t know, Trav. I really don’t. I can’t imagine having to make that kind of decision, and to be honest, I don’t think anyone can.” She exhaled. “Sometimes I wish you’d never told me.”

“I probably shouldn’t have. I had no right to burden you with that.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t mean it like that. I know you had to talk to someone about it, and I’m glad you trusted me. It’s just that it made me feel terrible for what you’ve been going through. The accident, your own injuries, worries about the kids, your wife in a coma… and then to have to make a choice whether or not to honor Gabby’s wishes? It’s too much for anyone to handle.”

Travis said nothing.

“I’ve been worried about you,” she added. “I’ve barely slept since you told me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I should be the one apologizing to you. I should have moved back here as soon as it happened. I should have visited Gabby more often. I should have been around every time you needed to talk to someone.”

“It’s all right. I’m glad you didn’t walk away from your job. You worked hard to get there, and Gabby knew that, too. Besides, you were here a lot more than I thought you would be.”

“I just feel so sorry for what you’ve been going through.”

He slipped his arm around her. “I know,” he said.

Together, they sat in silence. In the background, Travis heard the heater click on as Stephanie sighed. “I want you to know that no matter what you decided, I’m with you, okay? I know, more than almost anyone, how much you love Gabby.”

Travis turned toward the window. Through the glass, he could see the lights from his neighbors’ houses gleaming in the darkness. “I couldn’t do it,” he finally said.

He tried to collect his thoughts. “I thought I could, and I even rehearsed the words I would say when telling the doctors to remove her feeding tube. I know that’s what Gabby wanted, but… in the end I just couldn’t do it. Even if I spend the rest of my life visiting her in the nursing home, it’s still a better life than one I could spend with anyone else. I love her too much to let her go.”

Stephanie gave him a wan smile. “I know,” she said. “I could see it on your face when you walked in the door.”

“Do you think I did the right thing?”

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.

“For me, or for Gabby?”

“Both.”

He swallowed. “Do you think she’ll wake up?”

Stephanie met his eyes. “Yes, I do. I’ve always believed that. The two of you… there’s something uncanny about the way you are with each other. I mean everything-the way you look at each other, the way she relaxes when you put your hand on her back, the way you both seem to know what the other is always thinking… it’s always struck me as extraordinary. That’s another reason I keep putting marriage off. I know I want something like what you two share, and I’m not sure I’ve found it yet. I’m not sure I ever will. And with love like that… they say anything’s possible, right? You love Gabby and Gabby loves you, and I just can’t imagine a world where you’re not together. Together the way you’re meant to be.”

Travis let her words sink in.

“So what’s next?” she asked. “You need help burning the living will?”

Despite the tension, he laughed. “Maybe later.”

“And the lawyer? He won’t come back to haunt you, right?”

“I haven’t heard from him in years.”

“See, that’s another sign you did the right thing.”

“I guess.”

“What about nursing homes?”

“She’ll be transferred next week. I just have to make the arrangements.”

“Need help?”

He massaged his temples, feeling unbearably tired. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d like that.”

“Hey-” She gave him a little shake. “You made the right decision. Don’t feel guilty about a single thing. You did the only thing you could do. She wants to live. She wants the chance to get back to you and the girls.”

“I know. But…”

He couldn’t finish his sentence. The past was gone and the future had yet to unfold, and he knew he should focus his life on the present… yet his day-to-day existence suddenly struck him as endless and unbearable.

“I’m scared,” he finally admitted.

“I know,” she said, pulling him close. “I’m scared, too.”