“That’s not the point,” he told him. “The point is you’ve been in a coma for three days and how do we know you won’t lapse back into one in the next minute or hour or day?”

His smile was thin. “We don’t. But if I do, you can bring me back here.” He held out his arm—the one with the IV running into it—to Schoch. “Would you remove that, please?”

She shook her head. “Not without doctor’s orders.”

“Okay, then. I’ll do it myself.”

“Christ, Dad,” Jack said as his father began peeling off the tape that held the line in place.

“All right, all right,” Schoch said. “I’ll take it out for you. Just let me get a tray.”

As she lumbered out, Jack looked at Anya. She hadn’t said a word through all this. He looked at his father who had lowered the top of his hospital gown and was peeling off the cardiac monitor leads.

“Can’t you convince him?” he said to her. “I obviously can’t.”

Oyv popped his head out of her big straw bag as Anya shook hers. “I should be making his decisions? He’s not crazy.”

“He’s acting crazy.”

“He wants to leave the hospital because he feels fine. What’s so crazy about that?”

Thanks for the help, he thought. He’d feel a lot better if his father would stay just one more day, to make sure his condition was stable. He had to find a way around his reckless stubbornness.

Anya was staring at him. “Switch places. What would you do in his situation?”

I’d get the hell out of here and go home, he thought. But he couldn’t say that.

“I’m lots younger and—”

Oyv dropped back down into the bag as an anxious looking Nurse Schoch came charging into the room, carrying a tray. She stopped at the foot of the bed and shook her head as she stared at the cardiac leads scattered across the sheet.

“I figured that was what you were doing when the monitor flatlined, but I had to be sure.”

A few minutes later, Dad had a gauze patch taped over the spot where the IV had been. He stood and looked around.

“All I need now are my clothes.”

“They had to throw them out.” Here was the angle Jack had been looking for. “They were too bloody to keep. You know what? Why don’t you hang out here one more night and I’ll come back first thing in the morning with some of your clothes. How does that sound?”

“Terrible. I’ll wear this if I have to.”

Jack thought of refusing to drive him home, but what would that accomplish? All he had to do was call a cab.