Come Out Tonight (25 page)

“Yes, yes!” I shouted.
 
“She’s awake.”

“Yes.
 
Awake,” Sherry said.
 

Then all hell broke loose. Nurses swarmed the doorway.
 
Doctors I had never seen came out of the woodwork.
  
“What happened?” they all asked me.
 

“I gave her a Somnolux,” I told them, half sheepish, half proud.
 
“She was restless.
 
Maybe in pain.
 
The nurse said there was nothing she could do.
 
I thought it might help, that’s all.”

“How did you introduce it into her PEG tube?” one doctor asked.

“Her what?”

“Her feeding tube.
 
How did you get it in to her?”

“I crushed it up and put it in her mouth.
 
How else?”

“She might have aspirated it.
 
She might have gotten a lung infection.”

“Hey, it worked!
 
Somnolux’s a miracle drug!”

“You’re just lucky you didn’t kill her, son.”

No congratulations. No, “You saved a life, my boy.”
 
“You discovered a cure.”
 
“You’re a hero!”
 
None of that.
 
They just elbowed me out of the way, giving Sherry every test known to man and medicine.
 
They concluded her long-term memory was good, but her short-term memory was poor.
 
Sherry’s muscle tone sucked, but that was no surprise.
 
No one was giving her physical therapy, because they didn’t think it would do a PVS patient any good.
 

Meanwhile, Sherry was showing signs of growing really tired.
 
“Henry!” she called weakly to me, but I couldn’t seem to get past the crowd of health workers.

“Leave her alone,” I finally shouted.
 
“She’s tired.
 
Can’t you see that?”

“Just one more test,” someone said.
 
But, then, all of a sudden, Sherry fell asleep.

“Sherry!” a nurse called softly, but she didn’t respond.
 
“Sherry!” I called loudly from the back. Everybody got into the act, yelling, banging, pinching her leg, but all they got for their trouble was a pained expression, a moan, and a kick. One of the doctors checked her heart beat and her breathing, lifting up her eyelids for a good look at her pupils.
  
“I think she’s PVS again,” he said.

DONNA

It’s been almost three weeks that Julian’s been here, and it hasn’t been so bad after all.
 
Maybe it was my suspicious nature – and, after all, I’m trained to be suspicious – that made for most of the problems.
 
Sure I told him he had to sleep on the couch for one week or two, but, he looked so pathetic with his long legs hanging off the edge of the sofa, and one night after a bottle and a half of wine, I reneged on the deal and invited him back to bed.

And he’s been fairly industrious: besides cooking dinner, he’s been on his cell phone a lot, setting up interviews.
 
At least I think he’s setting up interviews. He tells me that’s what he’s doing.
 
And I’ll be damned if I’m going to give in to that suspicious nature of mine.
 
Until tonight, when his cell rang while he was downstairs buying some fresh thyme for the
Coq au Vin.

I picked it up.
 
It’s a Droid, one of the luxuries Julian still manages to own despite his lack of paycheck, so it took me a few seconds to figure out how to answer. By that time, a woman’s voice had already said, “Julian?”

“He’s out,” is all I managed to get out before the line went dead.
 
That was curious, I thought.
 
If it had been a call back for an interview, they would have wanted me to take a message, at least.

When Julian returned with the thyme along with a bottle of cognac to flambé the dish at the table, I asked him who he supposed she was.
 
He checked the list of recent calls and announced it was the woman at whose apartment he’d last stayed.

It may have been the trace of habitual suspicion in my eyes that made him add, “She wasn’t anything to me, Donna.
 
She was just a ‘couch’.”

“I never asked,” I said.

“Well, I thought you might want to know,” he replied, carrying off the thyme and cognac into the kitchen.

It was nothing, really.
 
I had no right to ask him about his business before he’d moved back in.
 
We weren’t married anymore.
 
I put it out of my mind.

But everything seemed to unravel after that.
 
Julian seemed to be on his phone all the time, though he rarely told me what became of his interviews.
 
I’d assumed that he dressed in a suit and a tie soon after I’d left in the morning, did his thing on Wall Street and was back by the time I usually returned.
 
I figured if he had gotten a job, he’d have told me, and that I wouldn’t draw attention to his failure to get one, if he hadn’t.

But then he began to go out in the evening a couple of times in the week, never telling me where he went.
 
Knowing him, I decided not to ask.
 
I wasn’t sure I’d believe what he told me if I did.
 
And he started to take the phone calls in the bedroom or out in the hall or the bathroom.
 
My suspicious nature began to kick in again whether I wanted it to or not.
 
A couple of times when he went down to the street for something, I searched around for his phone, half hoping that it would ring, wondering whether I was shameless enough to check his calls directory.
 
But the phone was never there.
 
Julian had obviously decided to provide me with no further temptations.

Not that we didn’t have sex a lot anyway. Julian always had a prodigious sexual appetite and he managed to boost me up to his level without really trying.
 
This particular evening we had just finished dinner; we brought the dishes to the sink, and, big surprise, Julian already had me on the kitchen floor, our clothes off to the extent that it allowed us access to what we needed, when his Droid sounded from his pants on the floor.
 
He didn’t make a move to pick it up.
 
I admit that every time these days his phone rang, I had the instinctive reaction to reach out and check the call number, but I was so in the moment, I let it pass.
 
Still, when we were finished with each other, sweaty and salty and happy, I realized I needed to address this crazy insecurity I’d been experiencing over him. To be honest, I had never quite understood what Julian saw in me.
 
We were just polar opposites.
 

So, sitting on the kitchen floor with our clothes half off, I asked him what the hell did I have that he liked in the first place?
  
I don’t usually go there, but I’d never really known the answer, and it seemed that it’s something you have every right to ask of your ex- when you’ve just had terrific sex on the kitchen floor.

Julian just looked at me for a moment.
 
“Donna,” he said, “I never thought of you as needing reassurance.”

“Never mind,” I said, chastened.
 
“Forget it.”

“No, now that we’re on the topic….”
 
He reached up to the counter for the remains of the sauvignon blanc and lowered the bottle down to us.
 
“Intelligence,” he said.
 
“You’ve got a brilliant mind, Donna.”

The eulogy seemed too much.
 
I wasn’t sure that this wasn’t a load of bullshit that Julian was perfectly capable of spreading around.
  
I made a move to stand up, but Julian pulled me back down.
 

“Hey, you started this,” he scolded.
 
“Also persistence.
 
The way you follow everything to its logical conclusion.
 
That’s not something I ever had, as you know.”

This was true.
 
Persistence was never his strong suit, not unless you count his dogged pursuit of women.

Julian took a slug of the wine and passed the bottle to me.
 
“The way you believe in things.
 
I really respect that.”
 

Again, this was not one of his fortes.
 
Julian seemed to successfully sail through life without believing in anything other than good food, sex, and maybe a matched set of Louis Vuitton luggage.
 
But, of course, he had other talents.

He reached over and touched my cheek.
 
“Exceptional cheek bones,” he continued.
 
“Kissable lips.” He leaned over and kissed my lips.
 
“Sexy body and, my favorite, great boobs.”
  
He made a move to kiss these, too, but I was too quick for him.
 
Instead, I gave him a crooked smile, took a slug and passed the bottle back.
 
I already regretted bringing this whole thing up, but Julian seemed on a roll.

 
“And I’ve always loved it when you ‘let your hair down.’”

“I don’t have much hair to let down,” I replied.
 
My hair style was so utilitarian I got it cut at a barber down by the precinct house.

“Metaphorically speaking,” Julian said, taking another swig and passing it back.
 
“I mean the times when I get a peek at your ‘other side’.”

“I only have one side,” I said. “What you see is what you get.”

“Not true,” Julian said.
 
“The hard-boiled detective bit. You know that’s a façade.
 
Inside you’re a pushover.”

I drained the bottle, reached over and placed it on the floor near the garbage pail.
 
I wasn’t sure if he had meant this to be one of my good points.
 
Sure enough, there was more to be said.

“BUT,” he was already saying, “You’re way too judgmental; you dress like a cop; you furnish this place like a prison, and sometimes I just wish you’d cut yourself – and me - some slack.
 
Now, I’m going to take a shower,” Julian announced, getting up.

This sort of ruined the mood.
 
And then, as he walked down the hallway to the bathroom, shirt slung over one broad shoulder, I watched Julian pull his phone out of his pocket and take a good long look at the screen.
 
He closed the bathroom door and I could just make out his voice as he returned the call.

HENRY

The doctors must have told the press, because Sherry’s awakening became big-time news: the
New York Times, the Daily News, Newsweek
.
 
Everyone wanted to read about the real-life Sleeping Beauty, who took Somnolux and woke up. What a story: the doctors who had given up all hope; the comatose patient, sheer months away from having her feeding tube disconnected.
 
And, come to think of it, wasn’t this case a lot like that other one where the husband got a court order to disconnect his wife’s feeding tube?
  
Oh, my God!
 
What
might
have happened if that poor woman had been given Somnolux?
 
Maybe she had been there inside all along, just unable to communicate, and slowly dying of thirst?
  

Sherry hated the publicity, but we couldn’t help but see that Somnolux had brought her back to life.
  
Whenever they’d give Sherry that little white tablet, she’d be up and aware, only to fall back into a vegetative state four hours later, as if someone had pressed her on/off switch.
 
Soon the doctors were giving her 10 mg. twice a day, so she’d be up for eight hours before conking out.
  
It was like a day job for her - take two pills and do your eight hour wake shift.
  
One of the doctors was so impressed he started giving Somnolux to every PVS patient he could get his hands on.
 
It didn’t work for everybody, though, and nobody could figure out why.
 
Maybe it worked only for the ones who were going to wake up, anyway.
 
No one seemed to know for sure, but it sure jump-started people into doing research.

I had heard Vandenberg jumped feet first into the fray, studying their own product on the human brain, but what it was exactly, I didn’t know until the first Saturday after Sherry woke up, when Ryan O’Donnell showed up in the doorway of the nursing home.
  
He walked past me standing at the window, and headed straight toward Sherry, smiling like a long lost cousin.
 
“Sherry!” he cried, kissing her on the cheek, like nothing had happened.
 

You could see the wheels turning in Sherry’s head, trying to access old memories: this is Ryan.
 
I used to work with him.
 
But when did I last see him? And is there something I should remember?
 
I could tell that nothing came to her beyond the name and description, when her furrowed brow disappeared behind a smile and crinkled eyes.
 
“Ryan,” she finally said.
 
“So nice of you to come.”
 
Apparently, her social skills hadn’t been lost.
 
She glanced over at me, saying, “You remember Ryan, Henry?”