"Then what do you make of what she just said?" Lou asked her, having given up on me. "Earlier this morning she was fine. Knew who I was, everything. Then the minute Mor­gan comes in, she starts making up that loony jabber."

The sanguine Mrs. Reilly just shrugged as if it didn't re­ally matter.

For my own part, I didn't necessarily like him implying my arrival had caused her to relapse into her dream world of terror. It seemed to me that whenever I showed up, she started trying to tell me what was really eating away at her soul.

Well, I told myself finally, maybe she's regressed back to when we were kids, when we only had each other to share our secrets with. What if we've rebonded in some new, spe­

cial way? It would be natural, actually. She's trying to reach out to me, like long ago.

Now she appeared to be dozing off, exhausted, her head tipping downward toward her blue hospital shift. Mrs. Reilly took that as a hint, and slowly began wheeling her toward the bedroom, leaving me alone with Lou.

I glanced over at him, thinking more and more that I had to do something, track down what had happened to her. I wanted to do it for me, but even more for him. I'd never seen him so despondent. Maybe it was the thing scholars call the curse of rising expectations. Back when she was hardly more than a vegetable, he was overjoyed by a flickering eyelid. Now that she was talking, he wanted all of her back. Instead, though, it seemed as if she had returned to us for a moment, only to be snatched away again. I could tell it was killing him.

"Look, I'm sorry that when I showed up, she started going off the deep end." I wanted desperately to help, but at that moment I felt powerless. "Maybe I should just stay away for a while."

"Nah, she loves having you here. Don't worry. But any­way, Dave said something about you taking a couple of days off. Maybe I can use that time to be here with her and settle her down." Then he grimly took out her locket and rubbed its worn silver in his fingers, his eyes brimming with his heartache. "This is all just so damned confusing."

Was he telling me, indirectly, that I should go away and leave them alone? First Hannah Klein rejects me, and now et tu, Lou? Maybe, I thought, he's taking out his despair on me, blaming me for her relapse. Truthfully, I guess I was blaming myself a bit too.