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…”

Chapter 13

Back in her room, Joanna sat staring at the narrow white bed, the head cranked up and the covers rumpled, just as she’d left it. Now it looked to her like the set from a TV hospital show; except for the wheelchair under her and Ethan’s hands on her shoulders, nothing seemed real. The bed was a movie prop, made of cardboard and tissue paper; it would collapse if she tried to sit on it. The window was just a painted rectangle on a cardboard wall.