Cold Cold Heart Read Free Page B

to be restrained. And yet she wasn’t awake. She responded to commands to squeeze the hand of the doctor, of the nurse, of her mother. But she wasn’t awake. She spoke words that suggested she was aware of the physical world—
hot
,
cold
,
hard
,
soft
. She answered when asked who she was—
Dana
. But she didn’t seem to recognize the voices of people she knew, some she had known for years, if not her whole life.
    The physical therapist came every morning to prop Dana up in the chair beside the bed because movement was good for her. She would sit in the chair moving her arms and legs randomly, as if she were a marionette, her invisible strings being manipulated by an unseen hand.
    But she had yet to open her eyes.
    She stirred now, moving one arm, batting at Lynda. Her right leg bent at the knee, then pushed down again and again in a stomping motion. The rhythm of the heart monitor picked up.
    â€œDana, sweetheart, it’s Mom. It’s all right,” Lynda said, trying to touch her daughter’s shoulder. Dana whimpered and tried to wrench away. “It’s okay, honey. You’re safe now. Everything is going to be fine.”
    Agitated, Dana mumbled and thrashed and clawed with her left hand at her neck brace, tearing it off and flinging it aside. She hated the brace. She fussed and fought every time someone tried to put it on her. She tore it off every chance she had.
    â€œDana, calm down. You need to calm down.”
    â€œNo, no, no, no, no,
no! No! No!
”
    Lynda could feel her own heart rate and blood pressure rising. She tried again to touch her daughter’s flailing arm.
    â€œ
No! No! No! No!
”
    One of the night-shift nurses came into the room, a small, stout woman with a shorn hedge of maroon hair. “She has a lot to say today,” she said cheerfully, checking the monitors. “I heard she was pretty loud this afternoon.”
    Lynda stepped back out of her way as she moved efficiently around the bed. “It’s so unnerving.”
    â€œI know it is, but the more she says, the more she moves, the closer she is to waking up. And that’s a good thing.” She turned her attention to Dana. “Dana, you have to rein it in. You’re getting too wild and crazy here. We can’t have you thrashing around.”
    She tried to push Dana’s arm gently downward to restrain her wrist. Dana flailed harder, striking the nurse in the chest with a loose fist, then grabbing at her scrub top. She rolled to her left side and tried to throw her right leg over the bed railing.
    Lynda stepped closer. “Please don’t restrain her. It only upsets her more.”
    â€œWe can’t have her throw herself out of bed.”
    â€œDana,” Lynda said, leaning down, putting her hand gently on her daughter’s shoulder. “Dana, it’s all right. You’re all right. You have to quiet down, sweetheart.”
    â€œNo, no, no, no,” Dana responded, but with a softer voice. She was running out of steam, the brief burst of adrenaline waning.
    Lynda leaned closer still and began to sing softly the song she had rocked her daughter to sleep with from the time she was a baby.“
Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly . . .
”
    The words touched her in a very different way than they had all those years ago. The song took on a very different meaning. Dana was the broken bird. She would have to learn to fly all over again. She would have to rise from tragedy, and Lynda was the one waiting for that moment to arrive.
    Tears rose in her eyes. Her voice trembled as she sang. She touched Dana’s swollen cheek in a place that wasn’t black-and-blue. She touched the pad of her thumb ever so softly to her daughter’s lips.
    Dana let go a sigh and stilled. Slowly her left eye opened—just a slit, just enough that Lynda could see the blue. She was afraid to move, afraid to take a