More Than Friends (19 page)

me that I could touch a woman other than you. I was as shocked as anyone else."

"After the fact," Annie reminded him. "You weren't so shocked at the time."

"In my mind I was with you, which was why it happened like that," Sam said firmly. "I couldn't have made love to Teke. I'm not attracted to her that way. Did you ever see signs that I was?"

"The wife is the last one to see things like that." He let out a breath. "You don't believe me."

"I sure don't," J.D. said from behind him, and strode into the room.

"I'd say that hindsight gives new meaning to all the hugs and kisses and hand holding you've done with Teke over the years."

"That was fondness for a good friend," Sam declared. "You'd have done the same to Annie, if you were the demonstrative type." J.D. looked at Annie. "Are you all right?"

Annie felt a quick pique. She didn't like the way J.D. assumed command. There was an argument to be made that if he had been the demonstrative type, Teke wouldn't have been susceptible to Sam. There was further argument to be made that some failing in their marriage had driven Teke into Sam's arms.

"I'm fine," she said, and gathered the strap of her purse to her shoulder. "Just going, now that you two are here." She didn't care to spend time with either of them just then. "I sent Teke off for a break. One of you should stay until she gets back."

"I can't stay long," J.D. said. "I have an appointment at four."

"You always have an appointment at four," Sam barked, "or three, or two. Whenever you don't want to be somewhere, you have an appointment. This is your son"--he jabbed his finger Michael's way-"lying here. Doesn't that affect you at all?"

J.D. recoiled. "Of course it affects me. But I won't do him any good pacing the floor here for hours."

"Have you talked with him like the rest of us have? Or, on the chance that he doesn't hear, does that offend your good sense?" J.D."s eyes went from Sam to Annie and back. His frown deepened.

"What's with you? I'm the one who's been wronged."

"And you won't let me forget it. You look through me, you walk past me, you talk around me. When are we going to deal with it, for Christ's sake? You and Annie, both, running away from the problem like it might disappear on its own. Well, it won't! Sooner or later, we have to face it."

"That's easy for you to say," Annie put in. "You're not the one feeling the hurt."

"True," Sam admitted, "but I'm the one who caused the hurt, and, I swear, it's worse. What can I do? Tell me. I want to make amends, only neither of you will allow that."

"Make amends?" J.D. scoffed. "The damage is done!" Sam snapped his fingers. "And that's it? The friendship is over? The partnership is over? The marriage is over?" The last he said looking at Annie, but she didn't have a chance to reply because at that moment a feeble sound came from the bed.

Michael's eyes were half-open. They closed again, then reopened, still only halfway, but that was more than they'd done in nine days. Annie leaned close. "Michael," she called urgently, "can you hear me?" His eyes focused directly above him at first. Slowly they shifted until they met hers. "Are you with us?" she whispered, half-afraid to hope.

After a pause, during which she had blood-chilling visions of his mind being gone, he gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

Sam gripped the boy's shoulder. "Do you know where you are?" Michael's eyes moved slowly. They met and held Sam's, crept to J.D." who was leaning in beside Sam, inched across the room, then returned to Annie. "Hospital," he mouthed.

Sam grinned. "All right!"

"I'm getting the doctor," J.D. said excitedly, and raced out. Annie smiled through tears of relief. She moved her hands around Michael's face, through his hair, over the bright pink scar from which the stitches had newly been removed. "Thank God. Thank God! Oh, Michael, we've been so worried! How do you feel?"

His eyes slipped shut.

She shot a terrified look at Sam, who looked as terrified as she.

"Don't go," she begged Michael. "Come back. Come back." Michael dragged his eyes back open. His tongue skimmed his lips.

"Thirsty he whispered.

A nurse and a doctor came in on the run. Annie's sole thought was to give Michael anything his heart desired. "He's thirsty. What can he have?"

The doctor leaned over him. He arced a light in front of his eyes, then, appearing satisfied with the results, snapped it off. "Do you know who you are?" he asked.

Michael gave another faint nod.

"Who?" the doctor prodded.

It was slow and weak, but distinct. "Michael Phillip Maxwell." Only then did the doctor allow a smile. "Got the whole thing in there. I'd say that deserves, what, a chocolate milk shake?" Michael shook his head.

"I thought you liked chocolate."

"Coke," Michael whispered, and produced a lopsided grin. The nurse left the room at an excited run, calling the news to any attendants in sight.

Annie straightened. Leaving a hand around Michael's arm, she took a deep, relieved, grateful breath. It was half out when she gasped.

"Someone has to get Teke."

"Don't look at me," J.D. said.

What Annie heard was, If she saw fit to leave his bedside, she can just wait until she gets around to returning to find out he's woken up. Besides, she doesn't deserve to share the excitement. She was the one who put him here. But Annie didn't agree. As hurt as she'd been by what Teke had done, Teke was Michael's mother. She had been living his coma with him for nine long days. She had to be found.

Annie thought to send Sam, then thought again. She didn't want Sam going after Teke. She didn't trust them together.

"I'll go," she said, and set off.

eight

as when Michael opened his eyes, identified where he was, and offered the doctor his full name. Winning Dunn V. Hanover paled by comparison, both with regard to heartstrings and consequence in his life. While Michael had lain in a coma, Sam carried a ponderous burden of sorrow and guilt-and might well have carried it the rest of his life, had Michael not awoken. He saw Michael's awakening as the beginning of the end of the nightmare. What the boy remembered of the accident was unknown and at that moment irrelevant. The most important thing was that he would live.

He drifted in and out of sleep. Between a pervasive weakness, and the fact that his right arm and leg were in casts, it was hard to assess what effect the brain injury had on his motor ability. J.D. wasn't pleased with that; after waiting in limbo for so long, he wanted to know exactly what was what and pestered the doctors accordingly. Sam was simply grateful that Michael was awake and aware.

By five-thirty Jon arrived with Leigh, Jana, and Zoe. Their excitement filled the small room and

spilled into the hall, but no one seemed to mind. On a floor devoted to head injury patients, one's recovery gave hope to the families of others.

Annie ran in at six, followed closely by Teke, whose face was streaked with tears. She couldn't say a word, just stood smiling at Michael through those tears before sitting down, slipping her arms around him as best she could, and crying into his pillow.

As he watched, Sam's throat was tight. He prayed Michael would remember how much his mother loved him when and if memory returned. Determined to make a celebration of the awakening, Sam took Jon to a nearby pizza parlor and returned with four huge, gooey pies and a bagful of sodas. The smell permeated the room in a dramatic change from its earlier sterility. Everyone dug in as though they hadn't eaten in days, while the one boy who truly hadn't dozed on and off. The kids didn't seem to mind when his eyes were closed. He opened them at appropriate times, which was all that mattered. He was the guest of honor at their party. They kept a constant stream of chatter aimed his way.

"What did you feel all that time?" Jana wanted to know.

"I'll bet it was like floating," Zoe speculated, "all white and light and airy."

Jana shook her head. "Not light and airy. Dark and heavy. Like his limbs were weighted down. Like a gray cloud was smothering him. Like he wanted to get up but something kept him down."

"I've read about out-of-body experiences," Jon told Michael, "where you're here, but you're not. Was it like that? Could you hear things?"

"Or feel things, or smell things?" Leigh asked. Michael opened his eyes. They fell on Leigh, who,

sitting beside him on the bed, was the nearest. He frowned--Sam loved the expression after days of no reaction at all. "Floating," he said in a raspy voice, and tacked on, "I guess," before closing his eyes again.

"Floating," Jana mused. "That's incredible. Did you know where you were the whole time?"

Eyes closed, Michael nodded.

"Did you want to talk, but couldn't?" Zoe asked. He frowned again. After a minute he moved a single shoulder in a shrug.

Leigh asked, "Could you feel what they were doing to you--moving your arms and legs and stuff?"

Michael's eyes opened to her but were distant. He looked confused.

"Sometimes."

Jon leaned against Leigh. "I'll bet you were lying there thinking some of the things we said were pretty stupid. But you run out of things to say, you just babble on and on when someone doesn't answer." Sam thought back to some of the things he had told Michael. The boy wouldn't have to recall the accident to know what had happened. One look at Teke, and Sam knew she was thinking the same. She was standing against the wall now, and though there was a flush on her cheeks that hadn't been there in nine days, she looked frightened.

He caught Annie's eye. The way hers skipped to Teke, then to the floor, was telling. Likewise the way she kept her head bowed. He wondered what she had told Michael during her private times by his side. He could see that she felt awkward, even embarrassed. He guessed she was apprehensive, too.

J.D. returned from making another round of phone calls, helped himself to a piece of pizza, and asked, "How's my boy doing?"

"Okay," Michael whispered.

"Not eating pizza?"

The boy moved his head in the negative. His eyes slid from J.D. to Teke, several feet away, then several feet more to Annie, then to Sam. Sam didn't like that perplexed look. It suggested Michael was remembering things.

"Well, well," boomed John Stewart, striding into the room with Lucy in tow, "there he is. You had us worried, young man." Lucy set a small foil box on the bed stand "Fresh truffles for my chocolate lover," she said. She touched a hand to her mouth and patted a kiss on Michael's cheek.

He managed a feeble half smile.

Zoe clapped her hands together. "We'll have to call Terry and Alex. They've been here nearly every day. They were so scared."

"And Josh, Tommy, and Nat," Jana added.

"And Kari Stevens," Zoe finished with a heartthrob sigh. "She keeps asking about you, Michael. I think she likes you." Leigh grew stern. "What were you guys doing, leaving school like that?"

"MTV," Michael mouthed.

"One stupid concert was worth all this?" Jon asked. "No way, man. That was a dumb thing to do."

"You could have been suspended," Zoe said.

Jana grunted. "So instead you were hit by a truck! Didn't you see it coming?"

"How could he?" Jon asked. "The trees block the street."

"Or hear it?" Jana pressed. "It's not like there's so much traffic on our street that you wouldn't hear a motor. What were you thinking?" Sam was growing uneasy. He wished she would leave it, but Jana was so like J.D." and J.D. had never

been one to leave well enough alone.

Zoe put a tempering hand on Jana's arm. Softly she said, "His mind was on the concert."

"But Mom taught him not to run into the street without looking. That was rule number three, right behind keeping his fingers out of light sockets and putting the toilet seat down after he peed."

"Jana Maxwell," Lucy scolded, "such language!"

"It doesn't matter," Zoe whispered to Jana.

"It does. If he'd looked where he was going, this wouldn't have happened."

"He wasn't thinking."

"Why not?"

"Mom and Sam," Michael murmured, drawing all heads back his way. Sam's gut twisted. He racked his brain for a way to stop what was coming but couldn't think of a thing. He looked at Annie. She had her head down and her arms wrapped around her waist.

"What?" Leigh asked, leaning closer to Michael, who seemed perplexed again.

"I saw," he whispered, and shut his eyes.

"He saw what?" Leigh asked Jon.

"Mom and Sam?" Jana asked no one in particular. Zoe turned in confusion to Sam. "What did he see?" But before Sam could offer any sort of answer, Leigh gasped. "Oh, my God! Will Clinger!"

Jana's eyes widened. "Virginia Clinger!" She turned on Teke. "It's true!"

Zoe shook her head. "No."

"But Michael said!" Leigh argued.

"Jesus." This from Jon, who was staring at Sam as though he were alien.

Sam held up a hand. It's not what you think, he wanted to say, but there was nothing more trite than that. He didn't think "I was hard for Annie, so I

screwed Teke" would do. Nothing else came.

"Mom?" Jana asked, pale now. "Is it true?" John Stewart's frown deepened as he looked from one face to the next.

"What are they talking about?"

"A mistake," J.D. said. His jaw was like stone as he stared at Sam, who at that moment felt that the future of everyone in the room rested on any words he might say. He was used to thinking on his feet-that was part of being a trial lawyer--but law school hadn't trained him for this.

"Mom?" Jana prodded, her eyes glued to Teke's ashen face. "You and Sam?"

"Say something, Mom," Leigh begged.

"Your father's right," Teke managed in a shaky voice. "It was a mistake."

"I don't like what I'm hearing," John Stewart warned.

"Did it happen?" Jon asked Sam.

"Something happened," Sam conceded. "It remains for us to define what it was."

Jana turned on him. "Did you--fuck--my--mother?" John Stewart's face went purple. Lucy gasped. Zoe cringed. Annie cried, "For Gods sake, Jana!"