The Lost

At the last, he stretched out full length, slapped his hand over Monica’s hand, and she was safe.

I couldn’t hold on to anything anymore. I slipped under the log, resurfaced on the other side. The drag of the current felt like heavy, coaxing hands pulling me down. I fought the temptation to let go as long as I could. Good-bye. Good-bye. It wasn’t so much sad as inevitable. The last I saw of Sam, he had one arm around Monica, the other stretched out to me. This is so stupid was my final thought the first time this happened to me. This time it was I love you so much.

Same sky, different trees. Where was I? This upward view looked familiar, painfully so, but when I turned my head to the side, I didn’t recognize anything. Scattered benches, tidy walks, trimmed hedges. Brick building. Institutional neatness.

Wait a minute.

“What did she say?” asked a tense female voice behind me.

A different tense female voice answered. “I think she said-I think she said-‘I love you.’ ”

That voice I recognized. “Hettie?” I asked in a croak.

The nurse loomed over me, gaping, the whites of her eyes eclipsing the irises. “Laurie?”

I nodded. “I do love you, but”-I had to clear my throat-“ I was thinking of Sam. Would you call him? On his cell-he’s not home.”

The other woman must be an aide; her name tag read “ Victoria.” She and Hettie grabbed each other’s hands and started to cry. So of course I did, too.

Hettie pulled herself together first. “Yes, call,” she told Victoria. “Call the husband. And go get Dr. Lazenby. And Dr. Pei. Hurry!”

Not much time for reflection after that. Nursing homes for the incurably comatose don’t experience miracle awakenings very often, I guess. For mine, Hope Springs went quietly wild. Doctors and nurses surrounded me, then aides, staff, social workers, custodians, even other patients-you’d think there would be a protocol for times like this, rare though they might be. But nobody seemed to be in charge, and everybody was so happy. Dr. Lazenby himself wheeled me back into my room, so then the crowd had to disperse. “Keep talking,” he told me, passing a file or something up and down the soles of my feet. “How do you feel? What’s your full name?”

“Laura Claire Marie O’Du

“On their way.” He peered into my right eye with a lighted scope. “Count backward from twenty, please.”

In a lull in the excitement, I had a little cry myself. “It’s natural,” Hettie assured me. “Strong emotion can very often follow a prolonged period of semi- or unconsciousness. It’s relief, confusion, the stress-or nothing at all. You just go ahead and cry.”

Such a nice woman. I did love her. But I wasn’t weeping from relief or stress or confusion; I was weeping for Sonoma.

She gave up her life for me. That was how it felt, although in another sense you could say I gave up my life for me. Some sort of better me. And Monica was almost irrelevant, just a vehicle, you could also say-but then again, trying to save her was the very thing that had restored me to myself, that act. Wasn’t it?

So confusing. Hettie might be right-these tears were just from stress.

No, they were for Sonoma. When she drowned, I lost the best of myself. But I would spend the rest of my life trying to find her again. In me.

Sam saw me before I saw him. Hettie was raising the bed and punching up the pillows when I heard a sound and looked behind her. He stood in the doorway with his arms held out a little from his sides, knees flexed. His face looked tender and dumbstruck, his body poised as if to fly.

“Hey,” said Hettie with a huge smile. “Well, I’ll just finish this up later, won’t I?” I bet she was Sam’s favorite nurse, too. “They’re getting set up to do a lot of tests, so this visit will have to be quick. Plenty of time later, though. Plenty of time.”

She hugged Sam on her way out, but I’m not sure he noticed. He didn’t seem to be able to move. Even when I held out my hand, he only came a step closer. It took my voice to uproot him.

“It’s me, Sam. I’m back. I’ve come back to you.”

Then I had him, tight in my arms, holding me, warm and breathing and alive. My Sam. Both of us laughing, crying, saying, “Thank God,” and “I love you,” and “I missed you,” and things that made sense only to us. We started to kiss everywhere, as if welcoming each other back in pieces. Then we rested, just holding on and breathing together. Then we kissed again.

“Be

“Hi, Mom,” he said, comically matter-of-fact; I thought he might shake hands. But something, maybe my tears and gluey-voiced “Oh, Be

“You woke up! I knew you would. Daddy said and said, and at first I thought you might not, but then I knew you would.”

“That was clever of you.”

“What were you doing? What were you thinking?”

“Umm…”

“Where were you? Did you know when I was here? I came a lot.”

“I did know. Sometimes, anyway.”

“But you couldn’t wake up until now?”

“Not till now.”

“Because it was hard.”

“It was so hard.”

“And your head hurt.”

“Well, at first. But then it didn’t, and I was just sleeping.”

“Could you hear us talking? We did. We talked all the time. Dad… Dad, mostly. Sometimes, Mommy.” He mumbled this against my neck. “Sometimes… I just played.”

“Oh, but that’s okay-I always knew you were here. I wanted you to just play.”

Exactly the right thing to say, because Be

Sam was kissing my hand, each of my fingers. “You’re still wet,” I noticed, patting his damp sleeve. His lifted brows told me he thought that was an odd sentence construction. That was the moment it first hit me: I have a strange story to tell. And this probably wasn’t the time to tell it.

“That’s because we’ve had a bit of an adventure,” Sam began. “We-”

“We went on a picnic and Monica almost drowned! But Dad got her in time and she’s okay, and she’s in the lounge with Justin and Ethan. They came with us, but they have to go back and get all our stuff because it’s still there, because we didn’t pick anything up. We just ran! Daddy speeded.”

Sam and I smiled at each other, and I felt the world shift a fraction. Go back to normal. I was definitely home.

I stroked Be

“Oh, baby, I’m so-”

“She’s a girl- Sonoma -she’s really good, and smart, she can shake hands and open doors and everything. We ran over her! But then we saved her and now she’s ours. You’ll like her, Mom, she’s really, really good.”

I looked at Sam in alarm. Didn’t Be

Sam made a wry face. “Well, I don’t know how good she is, but she’s definitely our dog. She’s out in the car. Maybe they’ll let you see her later, tomorrow or-”

“ Sonoma ’s in the car? Sonoma is here?”

“Yeah.” Sam looked at me strangely again. “She’s a mess right now, though, been in the river, got some scrapes and bruises-”

“Monica said she saved her! Monica said she jumped in and got her by the shirt! Then she almost drowned, but she ended up on a rock and now she’s okay except a bump on her head. Monica said we should take her to the vet.”