While My Sister Sleeps. Barbara Delinsky
her own presence might go a little way toward making up to Kathryn for what she had not done earlier that day, Molly stayed longer. By two, though, she was falling asleep in her chair. ‘Are you sure I can’t drive you home?’ she asked her mother.
Kathryn barely looked up. ‘I can’t leave,’ she said and added, ‘Why weren’t you with her, Molly?’ with a speed suggesting she was brooding about just that.
‘I was at Snow Hill,’ Molly tried to explain. ‘The management meeting, remember? I didn’t know how long it would run. How could I commit to Robin?’ There was also the issue of the cat. But putting a cat before her sister was pathetic.
Kathryn didn’t ask how long the meeting had run. She didn’t even ask how it had gone. If she was brooding, it was about Molly’s negligence toward Robin, not about Snow Hill.
And Molly was guilty. That thought beat her down, before she finally broke the silence by asking, ‘Can I get you something, Mom? Coffee, maybe?’
‘No. But you can cover for me at work.’
Startled, Molly blew out a little breath. ‘I can’t go to work with Robin like this.’
‘You have to. I need you there.’
‘Can’t I do something here?’
‘There’s nothing to do here. There’s plenty to do at Snow Hill.’
‘What about Dad? Or Chris?’
‘No. You.’
She doesn’t want me around, Molly realized, her feeling of devastation growing. But she was too tired to beg for mercy, too wiped out even for tears. After asking Kathryn to call her if there was any change, she slipped out the door.
Molly’s cottage faced south, bringing year-round sun to the loft, while the forest behind the backyard shaded the bedrooms and scented the air with pine. Molly had learned of it by accident when its owner, who was leaving New Hampshire for Florida, came to the nursery looking for a home for dozens of plants. Now the owner wanted to renovate and sell, so Molly and Robin were being kicked out.
Molly thought the vintage kitchen was just fine. She loved the weathered feel of the wide-planked floors and casement windows. Although Robin complained that the place was drafty and the rooms dark, she didn’t really care where she lived. She was gone half the time–to Denver, Atlanta, London, L.A. If she wasn’t running a marathon, half marathon, or 10 K, she was leading a clinic or appearing at a charity event. Most of the boxes in the living room were Molly’s. Her sister didn’t have many things to pack.
Robin was happy to move. Molly was not, but she would go along, just to have Robin be her old self again.
Waiting for her mother’s call, Molly slept with the phone in her hand, far from soundly. She kept jolting awake with the hollow feeling of knowing something was wrong and not remembering what it was. Too soon she’d recall, then lie awake, frightened. Without Robin getting up to ice one body part or another, the house was eerily quiet.
At six a.m., needing companionship, Molly looked for the cat. It had eaten and used the litter. But the creature was nowhere to be found, though Molly searched even harder than she had the night before. She had been wasting time then, wanting Robin to wait for her for a change. How petty that had been. Brain damage was light years worse than a torn-up ankle or knee.
Of course, Robin may have woken up by now. But who to call? Molly couldn’t risk dialing her mother, didn’t want to waken her father, and Chris was no use. The station at the ICU would give only an official status report. Critical condition? She didn’t want to hear that.
So she watered and pruned the philodendron in the loft, picked hopeless leaves off an ill ficus, misted a recovering fern–all the while whispering sweet nothings to the plant until she ran out of sweet nothings to say, at which point she put on jeans and drove to the hospital. Preoccupied, she went straight to intensive care, hoping against hope that Robin’s eyes would be open. When they weren’t, her heart sank. The respirator was soughing, the machines blinking. Little had changed since she’d left the night before.
Kathryn was asleep in a chair by the bed, her head touching Robin’s hand. She stirred at Molly’s approach and, groggy, looked at her watch. Tiredly, she said, ‘I thought you’d be at the nursery by now.’
Molly’s eyes were on her sister. ‘How is she?’
‘The same.’
‘Has she woken up at all?’
‘No, but I’ve been talking to her,’ Kathryn said. ‘I know she hears. She isn’t moving, because she’s still traumatized. But we’re working on that, aren’t we, Robin?’ She stroked Robin’s face with the back of her hand. ‘We just need a little more time.’
Molly remembered what the doctor had said about the lack of response. It wasn’t a good sign. ‘Have they done the MRI?’
‘No. The neurologist won’t be here for another hour.’
Grateful that her mother wasn’t yelling about the wait, Molly gripped the handrail. Wake up, Robin, she urged and searched for movement under Robin’s eyelids. Dreaming would be a good sign.
But her lids remained smooth. Either she was deeply asleep or truly comatose. Come on, Robin, she cried with greater force.
‘Her run was going well until she fell,’ Kathryn remarked and brought Robin’s hand to her chin. ‘You’ll get back there, sweetie.’ She caught a quick breath.
Thinking she had seen something, Molly looked closer.
But Kathryn’s tone was light. ‘Uh-oh, Robin. I almost forgot. You’re supposed to meet with the Concord girls this afternoon. We’ll have to postpone.’ As she glanced up, she tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘Molly, will you make that call? She’s also scheduled to talk with a group of sixth graders on Friday in Hanover. Tell them she’s sick.’
‘Sick’ was a serious understatement, Molly knew. And how not to be sick in this place–with lights blinking, machines beeping, and the rhythmic hiss of the respirator as a steady reminder that the patient couldn’t breathe on her own? Between phones and alarms, it was even worse out in the hall.
Molly had had a break from it, but Kathryn had not. ‘You look exhausted, Mom. You need sleep.’
‘I’ll get it.’
‘When?’ she asked, but Kathryn didn’t answer. ‘How about breakfast?’
‘One of the nurses brought me juice. She said that the most important thing now is to talk.’
‘I can talk,’ Molly offered, desperate to help. ‘Why don’t you take my car and go home and change? Robin and I have lots to discuss. I need to know what to do with the boxes of sneakers in her closet.’
Kathryn shot her a look. ‘Don’t touch them.’
‘Do you know how old some of them are?’
‘Molly…’
Molly ignored the warning. There was normalcy in arguing. ‘We have to be out in a week, Mom. The sneakers can’t stay where they are.’
‘Then pack them up and bring them home with the rest of your things. When you find another place, we’ll move them there. And then, of course, there’s the issue of her car, which is parked on the side of the road somewhere between here and Norwich. I’ll send Chris to get that. I still can’t believe you didn’t drive her there.’
Molly couldn’t either, but that was hindsight. Right now, Robin made absolutely no show of hearing the conversation. And suddenly, for Molly to pretend that any part of this was normal didn’t work. To be talking about old sneakers, when the runner was on life support?