When Cynthia Robinson and the girls got off the plane, it was eleven-thirty P.M. in London. Both of the girls had slept on the plane, for a while at least. But Cynthia had spent most of the flight lost in thought, and staring out the window. The full impact of what had happened to Bill was beginning to hit her. And she was anxious to see him. Maybe, with any luck at all, he would be out of the coma by the time they got to the hospital, and maybe, just maybe, the blow to his neck and spine wouldn't have any long-term effects. It was all she could hope for, for his sake.
It took them half an hour to get through customs, and Claridge's had a car waiting for them. They went straight to the hospital, and were there at one o'clock in the morning. The intensive care ward was still bustling at that hour, and four new trauma patients had come in just before Cynthia and her daughters arrived. But Cynthia had no problem making herself known to the nurses, or finding a doctor to talk to her about Bill. Cindy was good at things like that. She managed to stop a doctor on his way to Bill's room.
The same young surgeon who had spoken to Gordon earlier sat down with her in the hall, and spelled it all out for her, as Jane and Olivia listened. Bill was still in a coma, and there was no sign of any improvement so far. He had begun having a considerable amount of swelling in the spinal area, which was pressing on damaged nerves, and the fractures in his neck were severe. By the time the doctor had finished explaining it all to her, the outlook for Bill seemed very grim. And when Cynthia saw him, she was only slightly better prepared for the way he looked. He was trapped in a hideous-looking contraption on his neck, a full body brace, and he was covered with stitches and cuts and small lacerations and bruises. The nurses were watching him, the monitors beeped endlessly, and he was so deathly pale that both girls started crying when they saw his face. All Cindy could do was stare at him, and suddenly all the emotions she'd resisted since she'd heard the news overwhelmed her all at once. Tears welled up in her eyes, and he was no longer a conglomeration of symptoms and broken parts anymore, he was the boy she had fallen in love with in college, and she could see how desperately injured he was. It took all the strength she had to get control of herself again, and be of some support to her girls.
Jane and Olivia just stood in a corner of the room, hugging each other and crying silently, as one of the nurses adjusted the respirator, and Cindy slowly approached his bed. She touched his hand, and it didn't even feel like him, and she was crying too hard to bend down and kiss him. There was a terrible smell of disinfectant in the room. His chest was bare, and there were monitors taped to him everywhere.
“Hi, baby,” she whispered as she stood next to him. “It's me, Cindy.” She felt like a girl again, as she watched him, and a thousand images raced through her head, of the day she had met him, and the day she'd married him, the day she told him she was pregnant. So many memories and moments, and now he was lying here, and their lives were forever changed. She couldn't imagine how they would ever achieve normalcy again. And suddenly, she knew she didn't want him to die if he was impaired, she didn't care how damaged he was, she didn't want to lose him.
And for the first time in years, she realized that she still loved him. “I love you,” she said again and again, “I want you to open your eyes now. The girls are here. They want to talk to you, sweetheart.”
“He can't hear you, Mrs. Robinson,” one of the nurses said gently.
“You don't know that,” Cindy said firmly. She wasn't a woman one would have wanted to argue with, at the best of times, and at this particular moment, she did not want to hear what the nurse was saying to her. Besides, for years she had heard stories about people in comas who had heard what the people around them were saying. Cynthia continued talking to him, and she and the girls stayed with him for two hours, until a doctor checking him suggested that they get some rest themselves, and come back in the morning. There was no change whatsoever in Bill's condition so far.
“Do you think I should stay here with him?” Cindy asked the doctor. She hadn't come all the way from Connecticut to sit at Claridge's and not be with Bill. Besides, she wasn't entirely sure yet if she trusted them with him. She wanted to watch what they were doing. But at least she was impressed by the care he was getting, from all she could tell.
“I think you should go to the hotel. We'll call you if there's any change in his condition,” the doctor said firmly. He could see that this was a woman he would have to be direct with. There was no messing around, no hiding the facts from her. She wanted to know it all, and would settle for nothing less than that from him. “I promise you, we'll call you.” It had taken another half hour to convince her to leave. Their driver was waiting downstairs for them, and by then, it was nearly four o'clock in the morning. And Cynthia and the girls were exhausted when they left.
She had reserved a room at Claridge's for Olivia and Jane, and she was planning to stay in Bill's room. And as she opened the door with the key they'd given her, she had the same eerie feeling Gordon had had when he walked into Isabelle's room. She felt as though she were intruding. His briefcase was there, there were papers on several tables around the room, and a bunch of brochures from art galleries and museums, which seemed odd to her. When did he have time to visit museums? There were half a dozen American Express receipts too, and she saw that there was one from Harry's Bar, and another from Annabel's. But she also knew that he went there with friends and business acquaintances whenever he was in London. She didn't find that unusual, and it made her cry again when she put on his pajamas. She was suddenly terrified of losing him, and when she called the girls to see if they were all right, they were both crying. It had been an emotional day for all of them, and seeing their father had frightened them even more than it had their mother. It was hard to hold on to hope after seeing him. He looked so severely broken, and nearly dead.
Cynthia couldn't get the sound of the girls crying out of her head, so she put on a bathrobe over Bill's pajamas and walked down the hall to see them. She just wanted to give them a hug, and reassure them. And in the end, she sat down and spent a half hour with them. It was nearly five A.M. when she finally left them and went back to Bill's room. She lay there and cried into the pillow that still smelled of him, and she didn't fall asleep until six o'clock Friday morning.
When Cynthia awoke later that morning, she called the hospital to check on Bill, and they told her nothing had changed during the night. His vital signs were a little more stable than they had been, but he was still deeply unconscious. It was eleven in the morning by then, and Cindy felt as though she had been beaten with lead pipes all night. She checked on the girls, letting herself quietly into their room, and she found that they were still asleep. She went back to her own room, bathed and dressed, and shortly before noon, she was ready to go back to the hospital. She hated to wake the girls, and left them a note instead. She left it in their room, and told them she'd call from the hospital to let them know how their father was doing. She went downstairs to the car they had waiting for her, and gave the driver the address. And he talked about the accident on the way. The driver who had been killed had been one of his best friends. He told Cynthia how sorry he was about her husband, and she thanked him.
She found things much the same once she got to the hospital, and settled into the waiting room after talking to him for a while. She was waiting to see one of Bill's doctors. And as she sat there, she saw a man walk by. He was tall and distinguished looking, wearing a well-cut suit, and he had an aristocratic air of command that instantly caught her eye. He stopped to speak to the nurses at the desk, and she saw them shake their heads and look at him with a discouraged expression. His mouth set in a grim line, and he disappeared down the hall then, in the direction of Bill's room.
Cynthia couldn't help wondering what had brought him here. And later, she saw him come out of a room across the hall from Bill's, and come back to speak to one of the doctors in the hall. And then he left again, but Cynthia had the impression that he was locked in the same agonizing waiting game she was trapped in, waiting to see what would happen to someone severely ill. And she didn't know why, but she thought there was something odd about him. He seemed extremely uncomfortable in the intensive care ward, and she sensed both resistance and anger in him, as though he was deeply resentful that he had to be there at all. He seemed restless and awkward and ill at ease. She commented on it to one of the nurses when she went back into the room to see Bill.
What Cynthia didn't know then was that Isabelle had taken a turn for the worse, and they had just told Gordon that his wife's situation had become markedly less hopeful. Her numerous injuries were getting the best of her, and she was slipping deeper into the coma. They had decided not to operate again, they were certain that she couldn't withstand further trauma to her system. And he had gone back to the hotel, to call his office and wait for further news. He told his secretary he was staying in London over the weekend, without saying why, and then he called Teddy's nurses to check on him. Suddenly, he felt extraordinarily burdened by the responsibility of his son. He had never had to deal with any of that before. And he said nothing to Teddy, or the nurse, about his mother's situation. But Gordon was not pleased that these responsibilities had suddenly fallen on him.
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