Children.
Trips.
Music.
Sitting beside hospital beds before it is too late.
He said:
“Have you talked to her?”
Alexander frowned.
“I sit here.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
The man looked toward his sister.
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
Daniel thought of Claire’s last month.
He had said too much and not enough.
“I do.”
Alexander looked.
“Tell her you were wrong.”
“About what?”
“Whatever keeps you from talking.”
That evening Alexander asked everyone to leave.
Daniel did.
Lena later told him only that Alexander stayed three hours.
No medical change.
Victoria remained unconscious.
But when Daniel saw Alexander the following week, the man looked lighter.
Not happy.
Less burdened by unsaid things.
That was its own form of medicine.
Three weeks passed.
Emma returned to school.
Daniel returned fully to work.
Life resumed the irritating habit of continuing.
Customers needed pipes repaired.
A water heater failed at 6 a.m.
Emma forgot a library book.
Rachel started dating someone Daniel disliked for no defensible reason.
Groceries ran out.
Claire’s anniversary came.
Daniel usually spent that day alone.
This year he took Emma to cemetery.
They brought yellow tulips because Claire hated roses.
Emma sat cross-legged beside the grave.
“I read to Victoria again.”
Daniel nodded.
“I know.”
“Aunt Rachel took me.”
“I know.”
“She still sleeping.”
“Yeah.”
Emma pulled grass.
“Do you think Mom knows her?”
Daniel looked at headstone.
“No.”
“In heaven.”
He smiled faintly.
“I don't know how that works.”
“Mom would probably talk to everybody.”
“That part seems accurate.”
Emma looked at him.
“Are you sad?”
“Yes.”
“Still?”
“Always a little.”
“Even when happy?”
Daniel thought.
“Especially sometimes.”
Emma seemed to understand.
Children often understood grief better than adults because they did not expect consistency.
She leaned against him.
Daniel touched the headstone.
“I played your song for someone.”
His voice cracked.
Emma looked away politely.
He continued:
“She couldn’t hear me.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe not.”
“But I played.”
Wind moved through cemetery trees.
Daniel whispered:
“I think you would’ve liked that.”
He imagined Claire saying:
About time.
He laughed through tears.
Two months after Daniel first entered Room 812, Victoria remained unconscious.
Doctors had changed terminology.
Not coma now, Alexander explained.
Disorder of consciousness.
Periods where her brain activity suggested cycles.
Eyes still closed most of time.
No purposeful communication.
No reliable command following.
Daniel did not pretend to understand all of it.
He understood only the part that mattered:
Victoria had not come back.
Not in the way everyone wanted.
Her room changed.
Fresh flowers now.