Chapter 4

At four in the morning the night nurse walked me into bay four and put a stool by the bed. My son Oliver was alive. I made myself say it before I looked at him. The lights over the bed were white and low. Everything in him ran on a machine's clock now.

His left hand came up when I said his name. The right one lay open on the sheet, palm up, fingers half curled where somebody had set them down. I laid my finger across the palm. Nothing closed. I folded the fingers shut myself and let go. They came open again, slow, all four. I did it twice more.

"A clot went up during the repair," the night nurse said. "The right side, and the speech."

"He's seven," I said.

"I know. Talk to him. He can hear on that side. He just can't send anything back yet."

"Does he know I'm here?"

"Some of it gets through."

The pen from the desk downstairs was still in my coat, the chain hanging out of the pocket. I had promised to bring it straight back. I wound the chain round two fingers until the links printed white on the skin. With my other hand I kept working his fingers. Open, shut, open.

She wrote on her chart and looked across the bed at the empty chair.

"Is Dad parking? I can badge him in."

Somebody had pushed it square to the wall to get the trolley through. It had been empty since seven.

"No," I said.

She let that go and checked a line.

The surgeon came in at twenty past with the form I had signed. He rested it on the arm of the empty chair while he stripped his gloves. Then he turned it over on the tray table. The post-op section was open, and there were two lines at the bottom. One of them was for the second parent. He did not ask where that one was.

"The heart is good," he said. "The repair held."

"Say the rest in plain words."

"Right-side weakness. No speech yet."

I took the pen out, chain and all, and signed the first line. Then I signed the second with the same name. Dragging my hand clear smeared the 7:04 I had written on the skin into a blue blur.

"How long before he talks?"

"Weeks. Some children take months."

"What comes back?" I said. "The arm. The words. Tell me what comes back."

He held the form against his chest and took his time about it.

"He's seven, and his brain is still growing. That helps."

"That isn't an answer."

He looked at the open hand on the sheet, not at me. "Some of it comes back," he said. "I won't guess which."