Danielle Steel - Honor Thyself

Carole lay on her bed, watching them, and turned her head several times to follow them with her eyes. Anthony kissed her too, and her eyes were filled with questions, and then Jason came to stand beside her and held her hand. Stevie stood back against the wall, smiling at her, but Carole didn't seem to notice her. It was possible that she couldn't focus yet from a distance.

“You've made us very happy today,” Jason said to his ex-wife with a loving smile, as he kept her hand in his own. She looked at him blankly. It took her a long time but she finally formed a single word and said it to him.

“Tii… rr … ed … tired.”

“I know you're tired, sweetheart,” he said gently. “You've been asleep for a long time.”

“I love you, Mom,” Chloe added, and Anthony echoed her words. Carole stared at them as though she didn't know what that meant, and then spoke again.

“Waa … ter.” She pointed to the glass with a weak hand, and the nurse held it to her lips. It reminded Stevie suddenly of Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker. They were starting way back at the beginning. But at least they were headed in the right direction now. Carole said nothing directly to any of them, and said none of their names. She just watched them. They stayed with her till noon, and then they left her. Carole looked exhausted, and her voice, the two times she spoke, didn't sound like her own. Stevie suspected she was still hoarse from the respirator, which had been removed not long before. Her throat sounded sore, and her eyes looked huge in her face. She had lost a lot of weight, and had been thin before. But she was still beautiful, even now. More so than ever, however wan. She looked as though she could have been playing Mimi in La Bohème. She seemed like a tragic heroine as she lay there, but hopefully for all of them, the tragedy was over.

Jason met with the doctor again late that afternoon. Chloe had decided to go shopping again, this time to celebrate. Retail therapy, as Stevie called it. And Anthony was at the gym, working out. They felt a lot better, and less guilty about returning to normal activities and life. They had even eaten a huge lunch at Le Voltaire, which was Carole's favorite restaurant in Paris, as they knew well. Jason said it was a celebration lunch for her.

The doctor in charge said that Carole's MRI and CT scans looked good, as they had for a while. There was no visible damage to her brain, which seemed remarkable. The initial small tears in the nerves had already healed. But there was also no way to assess how much memory loss she'd sustained, or to predict how many of her normal brain functions would return. Only time would tell. She was still acknowledging people when they spoke to her, and had said a few more words that afternoon, most of which related to her physical state and nothing else. She had said “cold” when the nurse opened the window, and “ow” when they took blood from her arm, and again when they readjusted her IV. She was responsive to pain and sensation, but she looked blank when the doctor asked her questions that went beyond yes and no. When they asked her her name, she shook her head. They told her it was Carole, and she shrugged. It was of no apparent interest to her. And the nurse said that when they called her by name, she didn't respond. And since she didn't know her own name, it was unlikely that she remembered theirs. More important, the doctor was fairly certain that for the moment Carole had no recollection of who they were.

Jason refused to be discouraged by it, and when he reported it to Stevie later on, he said it was just a matter of time. He had a firm grip on hope again. Maybe too firm, Stevie thought. She had already acknowledged to herself the possibility that Carole might never be the same again. She was awake, but there was a long way to go before Carole would be herself, if she ever would be again. It was still a question with no answer.

There was a leak to the press at the hospital again that day, and the next morning, the press reported that Carole Barber was out of her coma. She had already been off the critical list for several days. She still remained a hot news item. And it was obvious to Stevie that someone at the hospital was getting paid for news about Carole. It wouldn't have been unusual, even in the States, but it seemed disgusting to her anyway. It came with the territory of being a star, but seemed like a high price to pay. There were allusions in the article to the fact that she might be permanently brain-damaged. But the photograph they ran with the story was gorgeous. It had been taken ten years before, in her prime, although she still looked damn good now, before the bombing anyway. And all things considered, she looked pretty good for a woman with a brain injury and who had survived a bomb at close range.

The police came to visit her, once they knew that she was awake. The doctor let them speak to her briefly but within minutes, it was evident to them that she had no memory of the bombing or anything else. They left with no further information from her.

Jason and the children continued to visit Carole, as did Stevie, and she continued to add words to her repertoire. Book. Blanket. Thirsty. No! She was very emphatic on that one, particularly when they came to take blood, and she pulled her arm away the last time and glared at the nurse and called her “bad,” which made them all smile. They took her blood anyway, she burst into tears, looked surprised, and said “cry.” Stevie talked to her as though she were normal, and sometimes Carole just sat and stared at her for hours, saying nothing. She could sit up now, but she still couldn't put words into a sentence, or say their names. It was clear by the day before Thanksgiving, three days after she'd awakened, that she had no idea whatsoever who they were. She recognized no one, not even her children. They were all upset by it, but Chloe was the most distressed.

“She doesn't even know me!” Chloe said with tears in her eyes when she left the hospital with her father to go back to the hotel.

“She will, sweetheart. Give her time.”

“What if she stays like that?” She voiced their worst fear. No one else had dared to say it.

“We'll take her to the best doctors in the world,” Jason reassured her, and he meant it.

Stevie was worried about it too. She continued to have conversations with Carole, while her friend and employer looked blank. She smiled once in a while at the things Stevie said, but there wasn't even a spark of memory for who Stevie was in her eyes. Smiling was new for her. And laughing was too. It frightened Carole the first time she did it, and she instantly burst into tears. It was like watching a baby. She had a lot of ground to cover, and hard work ahead. The speech therapist was working with her. They had found a British one who pushed Carole hard. She told Carole her name and asked her to repeat it many times. She hoped that the patterning would cause a spark, but thus far nothing did.

On Thanksgiving morning Stevie told her what day it was and what it meant in the States. She told her what they would have at the meal, and Carole looked intrigued. Stevie hoped it had jolted her memory, but it hadn't.

“Turkey. What's that?” She said it like she'd never heard the word before, and Stevie smiled.

“It's a bird we'll eat for lunch.”

“Sounds disgusting,” Carole said, making a face, and Stevie laughed.

“Sometimes it is. It's a tradition.”

“Feathers?” Carole asked with interest. It was down to basics. Birds had feathers. She remembered that much at least.

“No. Stuffing. Yum.” She described the stuffing to her, as Carole listened with interest.

“Hard,” she said then, as tears filled her eyes. “To talk. Words. Can't find them.” She looked frustrated for the first time.