“Then the room still needed them.”
Dana asked him the same question in a different way.
“Why do you keep doing this?”
Benjamin adjusted the strap of his work bag.
“Whether she wakes up is not really my business.”
“Then what is?”
“Nobody should be that alone.”
He left for work before Dana could reply.
On Wednesday, August 12, Benjamin arrived at two in the afternoon with a paper cup of coffee and the same book he had been reading four pages at a time for nearly a month.
It was Olivia’s ninetieth day in a coma.
Benjamin opened the blinds.
The goldenrod he had brought on Sunday still held its color. He sat in the chair, rested the book against one knee, and began to read.
He did not notice when Olivia opened her eyes.
Awareness returned to her in fragments.
First came sound. A low hum. A soft electronic rhythm. The faint turn of a page.
Then came light.
The ceiling above her was white and divided into square tiles. She did not recognize it.
Her chest felt heavy. Her throat was dry and painfully raw. She tried to swallow and could not understand why the movement required so much effort.
Olivia turned her head.
A wall of paintings filled her vision.
Fields. Water. A crooked tree. A parking structure beneath an enormous sky.
The pictures were small and imperfect, attached with strips of medical tape. They overlapped at the corners and covered nearly the entire wall.
Olivia remembered a traffic light.
She remembered Richard’s voice.
She remembered saying something about legal language.
She did not remember the paintings.
She turned her head the other way.
A stranger sat by the window.
He wore a faded work jacket and held a book in both hands. Paint remained beneath his fingernails.
Fear arrived before understanding.
Olivia tried to sit up.
Her body did not respond.
Her arms felt heavy and unfamiliar. Her legs might as well have belonged to someone else. The monitor beside her changed its tone.
She tried to speak.
Only a rough breath came out.
Benjamin looked up.
Their eyes met.
He saw the fear in her expression and immediately understood what he must look like from the bed: a large unknown man sitting in a hospital room where he had no obvious reason to be.
He stood slowly and moved toward the door, keeping his hands visible.
“I am getting the nurse,” he said. “You are safe.”
Then he stepped into the hallway.
“Dana.”
His voice carried farther than he intended.
“Dana, she is awake.”
The next several minutes filled room 412 with people.
Dana reached the bed first. Dr. Ellison came running from another floor. A respiratory therapist checked Olivia’s breathing while someone asked her to follow a light with her eyes.
“Olivia, can you hear me?”
She blinked.
“Can you look toward my voice?”
She did.
“Can you squeeze my hand?”
Her fingers moved slightly.
Dr. Ellison repeated the word remarkable twice before stopping himself.
Benjamin waited in the hallway with his book still in his hand. He did not try to watch through the door. When a nurse moved past him with equipment, he stepped closer to the wall to stay out of the way.
Nearly an hour passed before Olivia could hold a question in her mind long enough to form it.
Her voice emerged slowly, roughened by months of silence.
“Who… was… he?”
Dana understood.
She pulled the chair closer to the bed.
“His name is Benjamin Hayes.”
Olivia watched her.
“His mother is in room 416. He is not related to you. You had never met before today.”
Olivia’s eyes moved toward the paintings.
Dana followed her gaze.