I slip out of the room.

The nurse at the nurses’ station glances up at me as I pad across the hallway. There’s a doctor filling out a form. His back is to me, but I recognize his hair immediately. “Dr. Barrett?”

He turns. “Ms. Chase. Is everything all right?”

“Fine. She’s sleeping.”

His shoulders relax. I’m surprised I can tell under his doctor’s coat. “Are you all right?” he asks. “You should be resting. Do you need assistance back to your room? I’m on call so I can’t—”

“No, thanks. I’m fine. I’m actually looking for a pencil and paper.”

“That I can arrange.” He leans over the nurses’ station and tears off a few sheets from a pad of paper and then he plucks a no. 2 pencil out of a cup. He hands them to me. “Anything else?”

I shake my head, but then I think of something. “Can I look in your lost-and-found bin? For unclaimed clothes? It might be a while before I’m back in my apartment.”

“Of course.” He addresses the nurse. “Paula, would you mind?”

“Go ahead. It’s in supply closet 308.” She waves her hand. “You wouldn’t believe some of the things people leave behind and never claim.”

I think of the stuffed puffer fish and smile, a tight sad smile but the best that I have right now. “I’m sure it’s quite interesting.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

I meet Dr. Barrett in the hospital cafeteria at noon. I’m surprised to see him, though I suppose doctors have to eat, too. In line for the pasta Alfredo, I ask, “Isn’t there a doctors-only cafeteria where you don’t have to mix with us riffraff?”

“Yes, there is,” he says. “But this one has cupcakes.” He points to a red velvet cupcake with a mass of ivory frosting, and for an instant, I can’t breathe. Claire would have loved it.

I try to keep my voice light and normal. “Can’t argue with cupcakes.”

“Indeed,” he says gravely.

We reach the cashier, and I pay with my mom’s credit card. I sign her name and hope that Dr. Barrett doesn’t notice, or doesn’t mind. My purse was lost in the crash. The credit card company has issued me a new card, but it’s being mailed to my apartment and I haven’t been home yet. Happily, home does still exist. Mom said she arranged for automatic payment of rent through the end of the year. And in thanks, I steal her credit card. Okay, I asked her first, but still I feel a twinge of guilt. Trapped in a hospital bed and Mom still finds ways to take care of me. I wonder if there will ever be a point when I’m not so damned needy and selfish, when I can be the one taking care of someone else. You’d think this would be my opportunity, but the credit card belies that.

“Wait,” he says. He snags a second red velvet cupcake, and he pays. Once past the cashier, he drops the second cupcake on my tray. “You can’t pass up the only good thing about being in the hospital.”

“It’s good that I can stay with my mom,” I say. “Thanks for arranging that.” After my first visit, he’d added a formal note to Mom’s chart that I didn’t have to leave when visitor hours ended. Mom no longer had to plead with each shift’s nurse. “I should have bought you a cupcake in thanks.”

“Next time.” He points, one hand holding his tray, to a table by the window. “Join me?”

“Sure.” I feel my heart beat a little faster, though I don’t know why. He’s already delivered all the bad news about Mom that there could possibly be... I shouldn’t tempt fate by thinking like that. I sit across from him.

There’s a fake daisy in a pink vase in the center of the table, as well as a condiment carrier with an array of ketchup, soy sauce, jelly, and syrup. I can’t imagine what meal would require all of those, but I eye the packets of jelly for a second. Claire loved strawberry... No, Claire’s not real. She was never real. The doctors had made that abundantly clear. I don’t know how I keep forgetting, or why I can’t get her out of my mind.

Dr. Barrett picks up a bit of rope tied into a noose that was tucked behind the ketchup. “Cute, gallows humor. Different people cope in different ways.” He tosses it onto the next table, and I think of Tiffany. I am about to reach for the noose, but then Dr. Barrett says, “Nurses tell me you haven’t left the hospital yet. Are you getting enough sleep?”

He’s been checking up on me? I don’t know how I feel about that. Flattered? Comforted? Unsettled? “You know I’m not your patient, right? I’m fine.”

“Sometimes this is hard, and a night’s sleep at home can help.” He eats his pasta, swirling the noodles expertly on his fork.

“Mom sleeps better when I’m here.”

“You have to look out for yourself, too.”

I don’t want to explain how I don’t want to go home, don’t want to see the life I built, don’t want to resume it. I haven’t called in to work. I don’t know if they even know I’m out of the coma. I don’t know if I still have a job. There’s probably some policy about not firing people in comas, kind of like maternity leave minus the cute baby photos. I try to deflect the conversation. “How do you look out for yourself? All of this...so much loss. It must be hard sometimes.” I think of Peter and all the people he’s lost.

Not real. Dr. Barrett is real. I force myself to focus on him.

“Sometimes, not always.” He makes a face. “I have bad days. When I fail.”

“Perfectionist?”

He nods. “And control freak. Bad combination.” He leans forward as if about to tell me a secret. “I alphabetize nearly everything.”

“Must be nice. Bet you never lose anything.”

“Not if I can help it.”

I think of the junk piles in Lost, the treasure troves of everything that people failed to alphabetize and control and put in its perfect place. I feel as though I should say something profound, like “sometimes you need to lose in order to find” or “there’s beauty in being lost.” But I don’t. Instead I take a bite of the cupcake. It’s sweet and rich and pretty much perfect.

He’s grinning at me. “Good, right?”

Mouth full, I nod.

He reaches over with a napkin and wipes my upper lip. “Bit of frosting.” For an instant, I freeze. His proximity, the warmth of his eyes... I think of Peter. Not real. Not real! But this man is. And he’s kind and smart. I want to seize him as if he’s an anchor in a storm, but I barely know him. “How did my mom help you? You said that when...” I trail off, not certain how to broach the topic of his father.

His smile fades, and for an instant, pain crosses his face.

I wish I hadn’t asked. “I’m sorry. If you don’t want to talk about it...”

“No, it’s okay.” The smile is back. He really has the nicest smile I’ve ever seen. I notice that others in the cafeteria, women in particular, are sneaking looks in our direction—at him admiringly and at me curiously. I realize I must be sitting with the catch of the hospital, and I don’t understand why he is being so overly kind to me. With Peter, his motivations were clear... Not real, I tell myself yet again. Dr. Barrett is talking, and I tell myself to listen. “My father’s death was unexpected. Seemed healthy. Went to the gym daily. No trace of heart problems. But he went out for a jog one day and collapsed. The paramedics were unable to revive him. Your mother helped me with the aftermath. My father was a...he would have said ‘collector,’ but he was a hoarder. I wanted to pitch it all immediately. She helped me sort through it. Came daily for about two months.”

How did I not know this? I was at work. She was partially retired.

“She talked about you all the time.” He smiles at me in a lopsided way that reminds me so strongly of Peter that my heart does a flip-flop inside my rib cage. “I know several of your embarrassing childhood stories, and you don’t know even one of mine. It’s distinctly unfair. But that’s why the cupcake. I feel like I already know you.” He falls silent, and he’s looking intensely into my eyes, seriously, as if he’s seeing straight to the core of me. I feel as though the world has sucked in to a bubble around us. All other sound fades. I am acutely aware of everything about him, from the way his scrubs hang on his shoulders, to the curve of his cheekbones, to the breath in his throat, to his grip on his coffee cup, but all I think is Peter, Peter, Peter. He runs his fingers through his hair nervously. He is real; Peter is not. “I apologize if all of this comes off as creepy. It’s just...I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time.”