“This was not our deal,” she said. “I distinctly remember that you promised to be okay. So, I’m going to assume you’ll honor that.” She wiped her eyes and leaned down to kiss his swollen cheek. “Mom and Dad send their prayers. Marah is with them right now. And Tully is flying over to be with us; you know how pissed she’ll be if you don’t give her your full attention. You might as well wake up now before she badgers you to death.” She tripped over the last word, winced, straightening by sheer dint of will. “I didn’t mean that,” she whispered, gripping the bedrails tightly. “Can you hear me, John Ryan? Let me know you’re in there.” She reached down, took his hand in hers. “Squeeze my hand, baby. You can do it.” Then: “Say something, damn it. I won’t even yell at you for scaring the shit out of me. Not right away, anyway.”

“Mrs. Ryan?”

Kate hadn’t even heard the door open. When she turned, there was a man standing not more than ten feet away from her.

“I’m Dr. Carl Schmidt. I am in charge of your husband’s care.”

The polite thing to do would have been to let go, cross the room, and shake Dr. Schmidt’s hand, and for all her life Kate had done things correctly, but now she couldn’t move, couldn’t pretend to be okay. “And?” was all she could say.

“He has suffered a serious head injury, as you no doubt know. He is heavily sedated right now, so we cannot do a comprehensive testing of his brain function. He received excellent medical care in Baghdad. The doctors there removed a section of his skull—”

“They what?”

“Removed a section of his skull to allow the brain to swell. Do not worry. This is most routine in such an injury.”

She wanted to say that an appendectomy was routine, but didn’t dare. “Why are his eyes bandaged?”

“We don’t know yet if—”

The door behind him banged open, cracked against the wall. Tully burst into the room—there was no other word for it—and stopped dead. She was breathing hard and her face was suspiciously bright. “Sorry it took me so long, Katie. No one would tell me where the hell you were.”

“I am sorry,” the doctor said. “It is family only in here.”

“She is family,” Kate said, reaching for Tully’s hand. Tully batted away her hand and pulled her into a hug; they cried together, holding on, until finally Kate drew back, wiping her eyes.

The doctor said, “We do not know yet if he will be blind. These are things we will know if he wakes up.”

“When he wakes up,” Tully said, but her voice was unsteady.

“The next forty-eight hours will tell us much news,” the doctor said seamlessly, as if he hadn’t been interrupted.