Against the crisp white linen of her narrow bed, Carolyn looked frail and utterly fragile, her swollen face the texture and color of rotten fruit. Plastic tubes everywhere. That’s how I looked in al-Remal, Jenna thought. Philippe came for me. I was lucky. I lived. God willing, God willing, Carolyn will be lucky, too.

“Dr. Sorrel?” A sallow, weary-looking man in surgeon’s green.

“Yes.”

“Stan Morgan. You’re the primary care?” “No. Just a friend of the family.”

“Oh. Well, doctor, I don’t know how much you want to know about this.” “Just the prognosis.”

Morgan grimaced. “Not good, I’m afraid, although it’s still early. We could lose her. Even if we don’t, we may be looking at Wysiwyg here.” Jenna understood just enough computerese to know that “wysiwyg” meant “what you see is what you get.” “Irreversible coma?”

Morgan rattled off some technical details of trauma, hemorrhage, oxy- gen deprivation. What it amounted to was that, if Carolyn lived at all, it would be in a vegetative state.

A death sentence, Jenna thought. And all because Carolyn had loved Cameron Chandler.

O

Josh had been joined by Carolyn’s mother, a petite, delicately lovely china doll of a woman. Jenna hugged the boy, feeling she had let him down, and murmured a few empty words of comfort to his grandmother.

“You and Carolyn must be good friends,” said Margaret Porter.

“I … yes, we’re good friends.” She said it more to comfort Mrs. Porter than to ease her own conscience. She knew all too well how Cameron had isolated Carolyn from anyone who wanted to be her friend—anyone who might interfere with his control.

“I’m glad,” Mrs. Porter sighed. “She’ll need her friends around her if she … when she …”

“I know,” Jenna said softly. “And her friends will be there for her, I promise.” “She was such a good girl,” Mrs. Porter murmured. “Never any trouble.”

Don’t talk about her that way, Jenna wanted to say. It sounds as if she’s already gone. But she simply nodded. “I think they’ll let you see her now. Just be pre- pared. She’s very badly hurt. But sometimes these things look worse than they are.” Words, empty words.

O

Night. The lights of the city looked like close but intensely lonely stars. Visiting hours had ended. Josh and his grandmother were going to the Chandler home after all; the hospital discouraged overnight stays by patients’ relatives, and it was clear that they could do nothing more here. Karim had arrived after school and was going with his friend.

Exhausted both mentally and physically, Jenna stopped in the hospital cafeteria for a desperately needed cup of tea. But the steaming liquid did little to soothe her troubled spirit or ease her guilt.