Smiling, she went in search of her cameraman. They’d start with some establishing shots—background, hospital interior and exterior, that sort of thing. They’d hide the camera as much as they needed to. Fortunately, everyone who mattered knew that Kate had given Tully full access to visit Johnny.

She went to the front door and stepped out into the cold gray afternoon. Her cameraman was standing off to the side, away from the group of reporters. At her signal, he hid his camera under his quilted goose-down coat and headed toward her.

Kate sat in Dr. Schmidt’s office, listening. “So the swelling isn’t going down,” she said, trying not to twist her sweaty hands together. She was so tired, it was a struggle simply to keep her eyes open.

“Not as quickly as we would wish. If soon there is not some improvement I am thinking we will go to surgery again.”

She nodded.

“Do not worry yet, Mrs. Ryan. Your husband is very strong. We can see that he is fighting hard.”

“How can you tell?”

“Why, because he is still alive. A weaker man would not be here now.”

She tried to take strength from that, to truly believe it, but hope was becoming difficult to hold on to. Each passing day had sanded her down, weakened the walls of her denial; in places, fear called itself truth and poked through.

Dr. Schmidt stood. “I must to see a patient now. I will walk with you part of the way back to Mr. Ryan’s room.”

She nodded and fell into step beside him. For a moment, with him beside her talking in his soft, authoritative voice, she felt a longing for her father.

“Well, this is where I must turn a different way,” Dr. Schmidt said, pointing down the hallway toward the radiology department.

Kate nodded. She would have mumbled a simple goodbye, but she didn’t trust her voice, and the last thing she wanted to do was to show her weakness.

She stood in the hallway, watching him walk away from her. Near the end of the corridor, he merged into the white-clad sea of bodies and disappeared.

With a sigh, she headed back to Johnny’s room. If she was lucky, Tully was there now. Just her friend’s presence was a huge help. Honestly, Kate didn’t know how she would have made it through the past days without Tully. They’d played cards and told stories and even sang a few old songs together, hoping Johnny would want to wake up to tell them to be quiet. Last night, Tully had found an old episode of The Partridge Family broadcast in German. She’d cracked Kate up with her own made-up dialogue that had David Cassidy hot for his TV sister. The nurses had even come in to tell them to be quiet.