The Awakening of Dr. Brown

Chapter 12

Phoenix had made it only as far as the second-floor landing. She sat on the top step with her arms clasped around her legs and her knees tucked up to her chin, eyes wide-open and staring into the lurking shadows. She was shivering uncontrollably, shivering with a fear she didn’t understand, with a cold that had nothing to do with degrees on a thermometer, and a strange desolation that blanketed her whole being like a damp, musty fog.

Joanna, don’t you dawdle, you get that milk and hurry right on back, now, you hear? I’m depending on you. Promise me, now.

I will, Momma. I’ll come right back, I promise…

Smells drifted up from the floor below-the familiar smells of mildew, human waste and decay…and a cooking smell, acrid and pervasive. Somebody was burning dinner. Something made a rustling sound in the trash that had collected in the corners of the stairs. Shuddering, she drew her feet closer. Somewhere a baby began to cry.

Waves of revulsion washed through her, leaving her weak and hollow. She drew deep, strengthening breaths-and coughed. The burned cooking smell from downstairs was stronger.

Bracing one hand on a wall so coated with grime that the graffiti hardly stood out at all, she rose stiffly to her feet and lifted her eyes to stare upward into the shadowy stairwell. One more floor to go.

The third floor. That was where the boy, Michael, lived. Lived with his aunt, now that his mother was dead. She’d go there…knock on his door…and tell him what? That she was sorry? She didn’t know. She hadn’t thought that far. It was just that…she could feel his hand creeping into hers, like a baby animal snuggling close to its mother for comfort. She could see the sadness in his strange golden eyes as he looked up at her…

Momma, why do I always have to be the one to go? Why can’t Jonathan?

Joanna, you know your brother’s not as strong as you are. Doctor says he has to be careful not to get too tired…

I don’t care! I get tired, too. I have to work all the time. I always have to watch Chrissy, and I never get to play. I hate her! I hate Jonathon. And I hate you!

A tear rolled down her cheek. She brushed it away as she plodded, one step after another up the stairs, but others followed. Finally, halfway between the second floor and the third she paused to mop at her face with the hem of her shirt. But for some reason, her eyes just kept burning. She sniffed-hard-and erupted into violent coughing. The smell-the burning food smell-was so strong it was choking her.

No-not a food smell. Smoke.

Smoke was drifting up the stairwell, reaching with ghostly tentacles, spreading like fake, stage fog, the kind that comes from dry ice. She could hear something now, too-a faint, far-off crackling sound.

Fear came first. It spiked through her like a lance, pinioning her to the spot. Paralyzed, unable to breathe, she closed her eyes tightly and clamped her hands over her ears, trying to shut out the screams. Momma! Jonathan…Chrissy! Where are you? Momma!

But the screams were inside her own head.

She never knew how she’d come to be there, but suddenly she was running down a hallway, hammering on doors with her fists and screaming, “Fire! Fire-get out! You have to get out!” Screaming until her throat was raw. Screaming and banging until doors opened to angry faces…slowly comprehending faces…frightened faces. And in the midst of that chaos, her mind was rejecting it all, insisting with the adamance of a stubborn child, No-no, this can’t be happening. It can’t be happening, not to me!

Angrily now she herded them down the hallway toward the stairs-children and old people, some half-dressed, some crying…some too dazed to even be scared. Inwardly raging, she felt almost glad to have an excuse to scream at someone, a reason to vent her fury at the Fates who would play such a cruel joke on her. Not me! Why is this happening again…to me?

The understanding came to her gently, more like a sunrise than a thunderclap. The screams and shouts and poundings faded and she entered a strange kind of calm, almost like a dream. Of course you, Joanna. Of course you.

In the dream she heard whispers, voices from the past. Doveman’s voice, saying, “…Look in the place where I was when I lost it.” She’d come full circle, Joanna had. The Fates had brought her back to the place where she’d lost herself, twenty-five years before. For reasons she couldn’t begin to understand, she was being given another chance. A chance to find Joanna.

On the second floor the smoke was thicker. Doors were opening even before she got to them, people finally roused by the commotion, coming out to see what was going on and meeting with the black, choking cloud.

“Get down!” Joanna screamed at them. “Stay low, but hurry! Get out! Run!”

Down the stairs she went, elbowing people aside, stumbling, half falling, lungs screaming for air. It was her nightmare come to life-the blackness and choking smoke…the colors of fire, flames licking up a door frame, hissing across the ceiling…and a strange keening sound that she realized finally was coming from her own throat.

From somewhere nearby she heard glass breaking. People were all around her, pushing past her, some crying and choking, others eerily silent, all running, running for the front door and the clean clear air outside. She kept trying to make headway in the opposite direction, certain there must be someone else left inside, certain that only she could save them. But as in her nightmare, no matter how hard she tried, her legs would not propel her forward. She felt herself being carried along with the crowd, helpless as a leaf in a torrent.

Then she was outside, moving like a sleepwalker through the crowd of people that had gathered in the street…dark shapes with shocked faces, eyes staring past her at the smoke that had begun to billow from broken windows. Somewhere in the distance sirens wailed, getting louder, coming nearer. Someone clutched at her arm and she jerked around, startled and uncomprehending.

A woman stood there, arms wrapped protectively around the baby clinging in terror to her neck. The woman was shouting at her, her face contorted with anguish and fear, screaming words Joanna couldn’t hear. The noise and the wailing of the sirens filled her ears, filled all the space inside her head. Clapping her hands over her hears, she bent her head close to the woman’s and shouted, “What?”

“It’s Michael! I can’t find Michael! I don’t know what happened to him-I thought he was right there. Oh, Lord- Oh, Jesus…I don’t what I’ll do if anything happens to him. First his momma and now…”

Michael. The little boy whose mother had died. The child she and Ethan had spent the day with Saturday, in the park. The child who had stood in front of his mother’s apartment and gazed up at her with lost, golden eyes. She remembered the feel of his small hand stealing into hers, felt it so vividly she looked down and was surprised not to see him there.

She clutched the woman with both hands just as the sirens yelped and died, so her voice grated loud in the comparative silence. “You think he’s still in there?”

The woman’s head bobbed frantically. “He mighta went to his old place-I know he had the key. He’d do that sometimes, when he was missin’ his momma bad. It’s the first one you come to, right at the top-”

But Joanna was already running, pushing through the crowd with her panther’s stride, making for the cracked concrete steps that would take her back into the burning building. Back into Hell. Back into her own half-forgotten past.

Ethan unbuckled his seat belt and hitched himself forward. “What’s going on? Why are we stopping?”

Tom Applegate shrugged. “Can’t see, sir. An emergency of some sort-they’ve got the street blocked off.”

“Some kind of mess up ahead,” Rupert Dove muttered, tapping his gnarled fingers on one bony knee.

Ethan demanded harshly, “Can’t we get through some other way?” Urgency jumped and twitched in all his muscles; he felt a tightness in his chest and a churning in his belly he couldn’t explain, except that he knew he had to see Joanna-or Phoenix, or whomever she decided she wanted to be; it no longer mattered to him, and he wanted, needed, to tell her that-now.

Tom lifted a hand from the steering wheel in a gesture of helplessness. His eyes met Ethan’s in the rearview mirror-steady, uncompromising but not without compassion. Staring back at him, Ethan knew what he had to do. Without a moment’s hesitation, he reached for the door handle.

“You ain’t goin’ without me,” Rupert Dove wheezed as he pushed his own door open. Ethan heard the old man’s raspy breathing close behind him as he wove his way between idling cars, wading across the streams of headlights and through clouds of engine exhaust. Just as he reached the sidewalk, Tom Applegate pushed past him, swearing, to take his customary place in the lead. Behind them in the clogged street, horns began to bleat futilely.

Two blocks farther on they found the street filled with fire engines and police and EMS vehicles. Beyond the police barricades shadowy figures were going efficiently about their business in a world turned chaotic, moving quickly, shouting orders, wrestling equipment, or bending quietly over silent shapes huddled on stoops and curbs. Outside the barricades people stood clumped together in groups, holding each other, some weeping, some just staring at the frantic scene with dazed and empty eyes.

With Tom running interference, Ethan pushed his way through the crowds and vehicles. He spotted Kenny Baumgartner near an EMS wagon and waved at him as he approached one of the cops manning the barricade. “I’m a doctor,” he shouted. “I can help.”

The cop looked over at Kenny, who yelled, “It’s okay, he’s a doctor. Let him in.” He shifted the barricade enough to let Ethan through, then moved to block Tom Applegate and Rupert Dove when they would have followed.

“They’re with me,” Ethan said, but Tom already had his I.D. out.

“Where he goes, I go,” the Secret Service agent said flatly. The cop gave the I.D. a glance, then looked up…and up…at Tom’s impassive face, and moved aside. He looked as if he wanted to step in again when Rupert Dove moved to follow in Tom’s wake, then thought better of it and waved him on through.

Ethan waded toward The Gardens through a swampy quagmire of déjà vu. Had it been so short a time since he’d been here? A few days that seemed like hours-or a lifetime. It seemed the same to him in so many ways-the darkness, the aura of tragedy and disbelief and shock-and yet so much was not the same. Then he’d been one of the shadowy figures going about his work with detached calm, his emotions safely shut away in the protected Eden of his quiet place. Now he was one of them-the shattered and frightened ones, caught unawares by capricious disaster, his emotions all out in the open, unshielded, unguarded and unprepared. Joanna…Joanna… His fear for her was like a beast, tearing at his insides. It would not listen to arguments and reason. No use telling it she might not be here at all, and that if she had come, in all likelihood she’d have escaped the building along with everyone else. On some primitive level of awareness he knew. He knew.

A baby’s crying penetrated the worry that cloaked him, and then a woman’s voice, bright and shrill with hysteria. It seemed somehow familiar to him. Focusing on the sound, he saw a woman clutching a sobbing, hiccuping baby, struggling in the determined grip of a paramedic. A new fear joined the beast already gnawing at his insides as he recognized Michael’s aunt, Tamara.

He had no memory of how he got to her, only of touching her arm and finding it dangerously cold and clammy. He joined the paramedic in trying to get her to sit down on the steps of the EMS truck, but she turned on him, clawing blindly at his shoulders, her voice shredded, made almost inaudible by her terror and grief. “Oh, God-Michael’s in there. Michael’s in there. She went after him, but they ain’t come back. Oh, God-somebody go-”

“She? Who went after him? Who?” His throat brought up the words, and it was like coughing up glass.

“I don’t know her name…” Tamara’s knees were buckling. As Ethan and the paramedic eased her and her baby to the ground, she gasped out, “She was with y’all the other day when you brought Michael-”

Ethan turned blindly-and ran straight into a solid wall named Special Agent Tom Applegate. Breathing hard through his nose, he said flatly, “I’m going after her.”

The Secret Service man’s voice was just as unequivocal. “Sir, the only way you’re going in there is over my dead body.”

Something primative leaped inside Ethan’s chest. Adrenaline surged through his muscles. His fists curled. The next thing he knew he was caught in a viselike embrace, and his arms were pinioned to his sides. Near his ear Tom’s quiet voice, breaking a little, was saying, “Sir, I’m sorry…I can’t let you go in there. You know I can’t. I’m sorry…”

Seconds passed. Ethan’s sanity balanced on a razor’s edge. Then a long quivering breath dragged agonizingly through his chest. “All right,” he breathed. “All right…”

“Sir, let the firefighters do their job. They’ll find her. If she’s in there, they’ll do everything they can to bring her out.”

But will it be in time? Will everything be enough? “Yeah…okay. All right…”

The bands around him eased. He drew another excruciating breath; his heart was racing, every beat torture. Dazed and shaking like a sleepwalker woken up too suddenly, he pulled away from the Secret Service man and looked around. But it was another few seconds before he was able to make full sense of his surroundings, and when he did, realization slammed him in the chest. Pivoting, he clutched a handful of Tom Applegate’s shirt.

“Where’s Rupert Dove?”

There were some advantages after all, Doveman thought, to being old. Old age made a person invisible, especially to the young. Young folks concentrating hard on doing a worrisome and difficult job paid no mind to an old black man-not until it was too late. He heard the shouts that followed him up the steps of the corner row house, but he paid them no mind. Then he was inside the burning building, and couldn’t hear them, anyway.

The noise of the fire filled his ears, filled his head, filled his mind, suffocating thought. Ahead of him through the swirling, billowing smoke, he could see the stairs. Pulling the tail of his shirt over his face, he focused on them, held his breath and began to climb.

He knew just where she’d be. He’d spotted that third-floor window, the first one on the side, the one with the crumpled ledge and the remains of a broken balcony hanging off the bricks. The one where that boy’s poor momma had died. Doveman knew his Joanna. If she’d gone after the boy, that’s where she’d look for him. If she was alive, that’s where she’d be.

And she was alive, Doveman was sure of that. The Lord wouldn’t have brought her all this way to take her now, not when she was so close to the Promised Land…

Momma? Where are you? It’s dark, and I’m scared. I can’t see you, Momma…

I’m here, baby. Put out your hand…see? Just hold on to me. Everything’s going to be all right…

“Momma? Momma!”

“It’s okay, baby, I’m coming,” Joanna shouted. Coughing racked her again as she crawled along the floor, feeling her way through the choking darkness, but it was mixed now with sobs of sheer relief. “Keep calling, Michael. Keep calling so I can find you…”

“Mom-ma! I can’t see you!” The voice was closer now. And angry rather than afraid.

“I’m coming, Michael, I’m coming…” And all at once she could see him, over by a window-a dark head-shape in a backward baseball cap, silhouetted against the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles outside. “Here I am, Michael, I see you.” And she was laughing…coughing, choking and laughing with relief and joy. “Put out your hand, see? Just hold on to me. Everything’s going to be all right…” She felt a hand creep into hers, like a little lost thing seeking shelter. She reached out, and a pair of thin arms wrapped themselves around her neck. A cheek came against hers, leaving it wet with tears. “It’s okay,” she croaked, patting the child’s shaking back. “Okay.”

Trying to peel the boy’s arms from her neck was like bending wire. “Michael, now listen,” she said firmly. “We have to crawl now, okay? Like this…and hold your breath as long as you can-like when you swim underwater. Okay? Let’s go…”

But out in the hallway the smoke was thicker, taking up all the space, even down near the floor. Michael began to whimper. “I can’t breathe…I can’t…breathe!”

Joanna tried desperately not to breathe. Then she was desperate to breathe…and found that she couldn’t. It was just like her nightmare-there was no air for breathing.

With her last ounce of strength she gathered Michael into her arms, lurched to her feet and staggered toward the stairs. Darkness closed in, and she was falling…falling…

Then…as in her old nightmare, just when she was sure the darkness would take her forever, she felt strong arms around her, and a cracked voice murmuring comforting words in her ear: “It’s okay, baby-girl…you gonna be all right now. Doveman’s got you under his wings…”

Ethan was standing on the edge of the chaos, hugging himself and shivering in the muggy night, hearing his teeth chatter as he stared through glittering, flickering patterns of light and darkness. When a cry went up from someone in the moving crowd of emergency personnel, he started upright, his body tensing as if it had received a powerful jolt of electricity. Cheers followed, and a smattering of applause, and the crowd surged forward as one body toward the entrance of the burning building. Ethan felt himself moving with them, with no idea how he’d come to be.

A small cluster of people had appeared at the top of the steps, seemingly disgorged from the doorway along with billows of smoke and the snapping, creaking, cracking sound of collapsing timbers. A strange-looking assembly it was-two firefighters in breathing masks and full protective gear supporting one elderly man, who held cradled in his arms a woman-who carried in her arms a child-and all of them barely recognizable, covered from head to toe with soot.

As paramedics rushed forward to relieve the exhausted firefighters of their burden, Ethan struggled to join them.

“Please,” he croaked, looking into Tom Applegate’s eyes.

The Secret Service man hesitated only a moment, then nodded and let him go.

He got to Joanna just as a paramedic was fitting an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. She struggled against it, eyes blazing like pieces of a sunny day in her blackened face, until Ethan, down on one knee beside her, laid a restraining hand on the paramedic’s arm. She spoke to him, then, in a voice like blowing sand, and he had to lean down close to hear.

“Help…them. Doveman…”

Something fierce and bright exploded inside him. It rushed through his chest and exploded from his lips in a sound-not words, just a gust of breath, as if someone had punched him hard in the stomach. He felt himself shattering, saw his heart and soul and every preconceived notion he’d ever had of goodness and character and courage and strength lying in glittering shards all around him. For the first time in his life he felt that he was seeing things clearly, all those things and one more: Love. There they were, all laid out before him in one ravaged, smoke-blackened face. Joanna’s face.

“Doveman…” she whispered again, pleading.

“I will, I promise,” he said, forcing the words through the terrible ache inside him.

He nodded to the paramedic, who replaced the mask. Joanna’s eyes drifted closed.

Dragging in great gulps of air, Ethan surged to his feet. He stood for a moment, swaying slightly, trying to slow the frantic pace of his heart, trying to orient himself in a world that seemed suddenly to have spun out of his control. The only concrete thing in his life just then was the woman lying at his feet. The only thing he knew for certain was that leaving her just then was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

He touched the paramedic’s shoulder and croaked, “Take good care of her.” Then he went to find Michael and Rupert Dove.

Michael he found with no trouble. All he had to do was follow the racket, because his aunt Tamara was hovering over the paramedics who were trying to tend to him, sobbing and scolding at the same time with the shrill ferocity of overwhelming maternal relief. “Boy, what were you thinkin’? I’m gonna skin you alive-what am I gonna do if you get killed? What’s your momma gonna think? Don’t you ever do that again, you hear me?”

Ethan stopped long enough to assure both himself and Tamara that the boy’s condition was far from life-threatening, which in the latter case took some doing. It was only when she realized who she was talking to that she finally stopped her agitated pacing to whisper, “Dr. Brown…he’s really gonna be okay? You sure? Praise God, he’s gonna be okay…” Then she sank to the curb and began to rock herself and her baby back and forth, back and forth, crying in soft, exhausted whimpers.

“Where’s the other one?” Ethan quietly asked the young female paramedic who was checking Michael’s vitals. “The old man-the one who brought them out.”

The paramedic jerked her head. “Over there, last I saw.”

“Thanks…”

In a quiet eddy behind an EMS wagon he found a little knot of people working in grim and frenzied silence. Wading through them, he crouched over the still body of Rupert Dove. “What’ve we got?” he asked hoarsely.

Kenny Baumgartner glanced up at him and pulled the stethoscope out of his ears. “Lost him once,” he said tersely. “He’s back now, though. We’re ’bout ready to roll.”

Ethan nodded. “Let’s go.”

Kenny gave him a surprised look as he got to his feet. “You coming along, Doc? I didn’t think this was your night-”

“I’m coming,” said Ethan softly. He looked down at the haggard and blackened face of the old piano man, mostly hidden now behind the oxygen mask. “You know who that is?”

“Well,” said Kenny, “I hear he’s one helluva hero.”

“Yeah. He’s also Rupert Dove.”

“The Doveman? You kiddin’ me?”

Ethan shook his head. “We’re not losing him.” He felt calm in his mind for the first time since he’d climbed out of the dark sedan back there in the street, and filled with a tense resolve. This was a battle he was used to, a battle he was trained to win. A battle he was determined to win. Because there was just no way in hell he was going to let the Doveman die. Not here, and not now.

Not until Joanna’d had a chance to say goodbye.

“No, sir,” Kenny said, “not if I have anything to say about it. Okay, guys, let’s move!” Moving in perfect sync, the team of paramedics popped the gurney and rolled it to the wagon.

Just as they got there the sky opened up the way it can do sometimes in the east, in June. The rain fell straight down, heavy and hard, with a rushing sound like the beating of wings.

Ethan sat in a hard plastic chair and watched her sleep. He’d lost track of what time of day or night it was, or how long he’d been there. Outside, beyond the hospital walls, the world waited; word had gotten out that the rock-and-roll icon known as Phoenix and her legendary piano man Rupert Dove had been injured in a row house fire, and that the president’s son was somehow involved.

In here, though, all was quiet. The hospital went about its business as usual; routine noises faded in and out of his awareness, like the ticking of a clock.

He hadn’t been able to take his eyes from her face, still a dusky-gray from the residue of smoke they hadn’t quite gotten washed off, but with a lovely pink glow showing through, her hair splashed like spilled ink across the pillows and down over her neck and breasts, a spiderwebbing of it clinging to the dampness of one cheek like a fine filigree of black lace. He’d been able to find again the endearing little flaws he’d noticed that first day, the first time he’d seen her in person-the tiny lines near her eyes, the smudges, deep purple, now, the sprinkle of freckles across the tops of her cheeks-and had memorized them all. He wondered if he would ever again be able to close his eyes and not see her face in every detail…so vulnerable and unguarded…just like this.

He’d been expecting her to look different, as if his thinking of her as Joanna Dunn instead of Phoenix would have changed her in some fundamental way. It had taken him a while, sitting here alone with her, but it had finally come to him that she was who she had always been. That it was he who had changed. Though she was the one lying helpless in a hospital bed, it was he who felt stripped naked…he who was vulnerable and unprotected.

He’d accused her of hiding her true self with her disguises, but now he wondered if he’d been doing the same thing himself, all his life. His childhood shyness had grown into reserve, then hardened into detachment masquerading as quiet self-confidence. But what if all it had really been was another kind of mask-what was it she liked to call it? Protective coloring? Yes…protective coloring, a way of camouflaging his feelings to keep them safe from the terrifying dangers of involvement.

And now he’d lost that protection. Here he stood, all out in the open, soft and squishy as one of those sea creatures that sheds its shell and then has to wait for the new one underneath to harden. Except that he was very much afraid his shell was never going to grow back, that from now on he was going to feel like this-desperately fragile, vulnerable and afraid. Was this what it was like to love someone? He wondered if he would ever feel safe again.

Tearing his eyes away from her face, finally, he reached for her hand and raised it to his lips, then simply sat and gazed at it. They’d made an effort to clean it up some, he noticed, but grime still lingered around the short, unmanicured nails, making it seem more than ever like the hand of a child-a grubby one, now. Slowly, he raised it again and pressed his lips to the palm. Then he folded it into a fist and enclosed it in both of his. Bowing his head over his clasped hands, he closed his eyes and silently spoke the words he knew he’d never be able to say to her out loud. Please…hold me. Protect me. My heart is here, now…in your hand. I’ve placed it in your keeping.

“Jeez, Doc, am I that bad off?” Raspy as a file, her voice scraped across his raw and tender nerves. Speechless, shot through with adrenaline and shaky as a newly awakened child, he held on to her hand like a burglar caught with the goods. Her smile quirked sideways; her eyes regarded him calmly, shining like broken pieces of sky. “What are you doing, praying?”

On the last word she erupted into racking coughs. Ethan rose and, relinquishing her hand, picked up a basin from the tray beside her bed. He held it for her until the spasms had subsided, then said calmly, “Not praying-just…thinking.”

“Oh, yeah? What about?” Her sideways glance seemed wary.

He didn’t reply, and after taking sips of water from the straw he held for her, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and lay back on the pillows with an exhausted sigh. A moment later, though, she sat up again, her eyes going wide. “Oh, God-are they all right?” Her voice was a painful croak. “They are, aren’t they? That little boy-”

“Michael’s fine-he’s going home later today.”

“Doveman?” And her face was suddenly still, her eyes stark with fear. She’d already read the truth in his.

“He’s been waiting for you,” Ethan said gently. “I’ll take you to him now.”

The wheelchair made whispering sounds on the smooth hospital floor. To Phoenix the sounds seemed like voices just out of earshot, voices of people she’d loved…and lost.

She felt chilled…stone-cold. And more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.

The chair paused at a doorway. Beyond a half-glass partition she could hear the quiet beeping of monitors, see a nurse moving about with efficient and soundless steps. Of the person who lay on the bed, she could see only one hand, lying stark and black as a gnarled old tree root against the pristine white. When the chair moved forward again she reached out a hand and clutched at the door frame, stopping it.

“I can’t,” she whispered fiercely. “I can’t.”

Ethan’s hand lay gently on her shoulder; as if she were drowning and he’d thrown her a life preserver, she grabbed at it and held on. “He’s not in any pain,” he said softly.

Pain? But what about me? I feel like my heart’s being torn out through my throat. A sob spiked through her and emerged as a faint, desperate laugh.

After a moment she nodded and the chair began to move, though she still clung like a child to Ethan’s hand.

“But it’s hard, so hard to say goodbye…”

It’s what happens between hello and goodbye that matters, baby-girl…

“Hey, Doveman, how’re y’doin’?” Her voice sounded loud and harsh, like a sputtering chainsaw. She reached for the hand that was lying on the sheets and took it in both of hers. It felt cool and papery…almost weightless.

His eyes opened about halfway and focused on her. “Hey, baby-girl,” he whispered. His lips curved in a smile.

There were fewer tubes than she’d have expected, but the doc had told her what that meant. Doveman was DNR-Do Not Resuscitate. Because he had end-stage lung cancer and wouldn’t have lived much longer anyway, even if the smoke and heat from the fire hadn’t destroyed what was left of his lungs. Doveman was dying, and he hadn’t told her.

She felt herself being buffeted about as if by cruel, freezing winds. She felt herself breaking apart inside, shattering into a million tiny pieces.

It’s okay, baby-girl…ol’ Doveman’s got you under his wings.

She heard herself whimper like a lost child, “Doveman, don’t go…”

“Got to, child. It’s like I told you. It’s time…”

“I won’t let you go!” The child was angry now, railing futilely against that over which she had no control.

His chuckle was a soft whiskery noise, like dry leaves rustling. “These ol’ lungs been shot for years…wouldn’t a’ had much longer anyway. This is a good time to go…now I know you gonna be okay…”

“Okay! How can you say that?” How would she ever be okay again? “What will I do without you?” She was trembling…desolate. Closing her eyes, she held his hand against her cheek and felt it grow wet with her tears. Frail and lost, she whispered, “Who’s going to sing to me when I have my nightmares?”

For a few moments the silence in the room was broken only by the beeping of the monitor, while Doveman’s tired eyes looked past Joanna’s bowed head and straight into Ethan’s. Then, with a tremendous effort he croaked, “Can you sing, boy?”

Ethan, knowing exactly what was being asked of him, didn’t hesitate. With a fierce and protective resolve burgeoning inside him, he nodded. “Yes, sir, I can.”

“There, you see?” Gently withdrawing his hand from Joanna’s, he placed it on her head as if he were bestowing a blessing…then let it slide down to her shoulder, where it covered and briefly squeezed Ethan’s. “You got nothing to worry about…” His eyelids drifted closed.

Joanna gave a little cry and clutched at his hand. Gently, as he might have touched a newborn baby, Ethan stroked her hair. He said, “He’ll sleep now…”

“I’m not leaving him.” Her voice was hard, breaking. She looked up at Ethan with tear-silvered eyes…then took a deep breath and wiped a cheek dry before she quietly added, “I want to stay.”

Ethan nodded, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave her. He stood beside her and gently stroked her hair while she held on to her old piano man’s hand.

It was only later, when the line on the screen had gone flat and the beeper sang its sad one-note farewell, that she finally said it:

“Goodbye…”