When Rose Wakes Read Free Page A

which—since her awakening—she had learned could only mean Aunt Suzette had been watching over her. The two women were her guardians and took turns sitting with her. While Rose went through painful physical therapy, they would talk to her about the world, educating her about all the things she had forgotten. And after those sessions, one or both aunts would sit with her, sometimes massaging her leg muscles to relieve the tension there, and they would watch television.
    Aunt Suzette loved the Food Network, while Aunt Fay preferred the History Channel. But when Rose managed to get some time to herself, or when her guardians fell asleep in their chairs, she used the remote control to skim through channels, watching a little bit of everything, trying to block out the terrible pain in her arms and legs. Physical therapy was agony. All through her coma, her aunts and the nurses had exercised her limbs to prevent the muscles from atrophying and the tendons and ligaments from shortening. The doctors seemed satisfied with the results and confident that she would be able to live an ordinary life—in fact, they were constantly amazed by the speed of her progress—but when the physical therapistswere putting her through her paces, Rose thought of them as her torturers.
    Or she had. In the past few days the pain had become more manageable and she finally believed that she would one day be able to walk, even run, without torment. At last she had come to think of the therapists as her saviors. But the closer she came to being able to leave the hospital, the more she yearned to do so.
    “Oh, good, you’re awake!” Aunt Suzette said, entering the room. “It’s late, you know. Only an hour before PT, but that gives you time to have some breakfast. I asked the nurse to leave the tray for you.”
    She gestured to the rolling table beside the bed. A plastic container of bitter orange juice sat beside a metal-covered plate, her breakfast shrouded in mystery. The thought made Rose smile. The only mystery about the meals here was how the facility managed to make every meal taste as bland as the last. Yesterday morning she’d had scrambled eggs and breakfast sausages and found it difficult, closing her eyes, to tell the difference in flavor. Texture, yes, but both tasted greasy and salty, obviously fried in the same pan.
    “Great,” Rose said, smiling. She would never complain, not to her aunts and not to the staff. They had taken care of her all this time. But she did find it ironic that Aunt Suzette, who loved watching those cooking shows, thought Rose might actually be enjoying the food in this place.
    Sitting up, Rose grimaced at the tightness of her muscles, but her discomfort was so diminished now that she was barely conscious of it. She swung the rolling table around, bringing the tray in front of her, and uncovered the plate to discover fresh melon, waffles, and three undercooked strips of bacon. Despite her revulsion at the fatty bacon, her stomach growled with hunger. Considering that she hadn’t been able to eat much by way of solids for the first couple of days, she thought she was doing rather well. At least the melon looked edible—after all, it was the only thing on the plate that was supposed to be cold.
    “Is everything all right?” Aunt Suzette asked, standing at the end of the bed.
    Rose glanced at the window, where prisms caught the sun and little figures made of sticks and twine spun in the barely noticeable late September breeze. She smiled, thinking about the way the doctors had been forced to indulge Suzette’s and Fay’s superstitions. Her aunts could be very charming and persuasive, but if charm didn’t work, they simply used their status as slightly odd middle-aged women to bulldoze over objections.
    “Those things aren’t working,” Rose said, nodding toward the windows.
    “What?” Aunt Suzette said, a flicker of alarm crossing her face. “What makes you say that?”
    “I had those dreams again