“I was in the bathroom, washing the sink, when she come in and hold his hand and say, ‘Okay, Tom. You’ve been asleep long enough. Today’s the day you get up.’ That’s what she say.”

Anya laughed and waved a hand at her. “How do you know I don’t say that to him every day?”

The little woman shook her head. “Right after she leave, he sit up in bed and ask me if he miss breakfast.”

“Did I?” his father said, smiling. “I don’t remember. I was a little groggy after I first woke up, but I’m fine now.” The smile faded. “So many things I don’t remember. They tell me I had an accident but I don’t remember a thing about it.”

The aide was still pointing at Anya.“Bruja!”

Jack knew enough Spanish to know she was calling Anya a witch.

“Enough of that,” Schoch said. “Go clean something. Git.”

After one last fearful look at Anya, the little woman scurried off. Nurse Schoch stepped over to his father’s side and took his blood pressure. She nodded and wrote on a clipboard.

“How am I doing?” he said.

“Fine.” Schoch smiled and, surprisingly, it didn’t break her face. “Amazingly fine. Dr. Huerta’s coming up to see you.”

“Who’s he?”

“She. She’s been taking care of you since you were brought in to the ED.”

“Well, she’d better get here fast, because as soon as I finish this Jell-O, I’m going home.”

Jack and Schoch began talking at the same time, telling him he couldn’t, that he’d just had a serious injury, and so on and so on. Didn’t faze him.

“I don’t like hospitals. I feel fine. I’m going home.”

Jack recognized the note of finality in his father’s voice. He’d heard it as a kid. It meant Dad had made up his mind and that was that.

“You can’t,” Schoch told him.

He peered at her through his glasses. “I guess I’m a little confused. When did I become the hospital’s property?”

Schoch blinked and Jack guessed no one had ever asked her that.

“You’re certainly not the hospital’s property, but you became itsresponsibility when you were wheeled through the doors.”

“I appreciate that,” he said. “Really, I do. And from the way I feel right now, you’ve all done a wonderful job. But I no longer need a hospital, so I’m going home. Where’s the problem?”

“The problem, Dad…,” Jack said, feeling his patience slipping. His father was acting dumb. “The problem is that you had a serious accident—”

“So I’m told. Can’t remember a thing about it so I guess I’ll have to take people’s word for it.”

“It happened,” Jack told him. “I’ve seen the car. Totaled.”

He winced. “Not even a year old.” He shook his head. “I wish I could remember.”

Jack watched his father’s expression. Was that fear in his eyes? Was he afraid? Of what?

“That’s not the point,” he told him. “The point is you’ve been in a coma for three days and how do we know you won’t lapse back into one in the next minute or hour or day?”

His smile was thin. “We don’t. But if I do, you can bring me back here.” He held out his arm—the one with the IV running into it—to Schoch. “Would you remove that, please?”

She shook her head. “Not without doctor’s orders.”

“Okay, then. I’ll do it myself.”

“Christ, Dad,” Jack said as his father began peeling off the tape that held the line in place.

“All right, all right,” Schoch said. “I’ll take it out for you. Just let me get a tray.”

As she lumbered out, Jack looked at Anya. She hadn’t said a word through all this. He looked at his father who had lowered the top of his hospital gown and was peeling off the cardiac monitor leads.

“Can’t you convince him?” he said to her. “I obviously can’t.”

Oyv popped his head out of her big straw bag as Anya shook hers. “I should be making his decisions? He’s not crazy.”

“He’s acting crazy.”

“He wants to leave the hospital because he feels fine. What’s so crazy about that?”

Thanks for the help, he thought. He’d feel a lot better if his father would stay just one more day, to make sure his condition was stable. He had to find a way around his reckless stubbornness.

Anya was staring at him. “Switch places. What would you do in his situation?”

I’d get the hell out of here and go home, he thought. But he couldn’t say that.

“I’m lots younger and—”

Oyv dropped back down into the bag as an anxious looking Nurse Schoch came charging into the room, carrying a tray. She stopped at the foot of the bed and shook her head as she stared at the cardiac leads scattered across the sheet.

“I figured that was what you were doing when the monitor flatlined, but I had to be sure.”

A few minutes later, Dad had a gauze patch taped over the spot where the IV had been. He stood and looked around.

“All I need now are my clothes.”

“They had to throw them out.” Here was the angle Jack had been looking for. “They were too bloody to keep. You know what? Why don’t you hang out here one more night and I’ll come back first thing in the morning with some of your clothes. How does that sound?”

“Terrible. I’ll wear this if I have to.”

Jack thought of refusing to drive him home, but what would that accomplish? All he had to do was call a cab.

He caught a glimpse of his father’s skinny white buttocks through the back of the hospital gown as he walked to the tiny closet.

“Well, will you look at this!” he said as he opened the door. He held up a white golf shirt and tan Bermuda shorts. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Jack said. He looked at Anya. “Where’d they come from? You were here this morning. Did you—?”

“You think I go snooping in closets?”

His father headed for the bathroom. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Dad, those aren’t your clothes.”

“I’m claiming them for the moment. I’ll bring them back tomorrow.”

I give up, Jack thought. I’m licked. He’s going home.

While he was changing, Anya puttered around the room, opening and closing drawers, filling a little plastic bag with the soaps, mouthwash, toothpaste, and other necessities the hospital had supplied.

“No sense in letting any of this go to waste,” she said. “He’s paid for it, after all—probably through the nose, if I know hospitals.”

Jack watched as her hand darted behind the headboard. She pulled something out and quickly shoved it into the plastic bag. He didn’t see it, but he could guess what it was. She was taking back her painted tin can totem.

Dad, still wearing his hospital booties, stepped out of the bathroom and spread his arms to show off his new duds.

“Would you believe it? A perfect fit.”

“Imagine that.”

Jack looked at Anya but she wouldn’t make eye contact. What was her part in all this? Was that nurse’s aide right? Could Anya have had something to do with his father’s miraculous recovery? That would be strange, but he was becoming used to strange.

“Are we ready?” his father said. “Then let’s go!”