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"Mrs. Ryan, what word do you have on his condition?"

Now she was being escorted to the hospital. As she approached the entrance, she saw reporters clotted out front. Someone in the crowd must have recognized her, because they turned in unison, like some suddenly roused beast, and pushed forward.

For sixteen hours, Kate rode an emotional pendulum that swung between hope and despair. At first she'd focused on details -- calling her parents, packing Marah's things, filling out paperwork. The busy-work had been a lifesaver; without it, there was nothing to do but worry. On the flight, she'd taken sleeping pills for the first time in her life, and though her sleep had been oozy, black, and restless, it was infinitely better than being awake.

"-- or opened his eyes?"

"Is it a head injury?"

"Has he spoken --"

She didn't slow down. If there was one thing a producer's wife knew, it was how to move through the press. They were being as respectful as they knew how to be, given their profession. Although Johnny was one of them and they knew that it could have happened to any of them, a story was a story.

"You must be Mrs. Ryan," she said in heavily accented English.

They'd clearly been alerted to her arrival, because a heavyset woman in a white uniform and starched nurse's cap strode toward her, smiling sympathetically.

"I am."

"I will take you to your husband's room. The doctor will arrive shortly to speak at you."

"No comment." She pushed through the crowd and entered the hospital. It was like all such institutions -- blank walls, utilitarian flooring, crisply uniformed people bustling down wide corridors.

He looked frail and broken, like a child in his parents' bed. She stopped, realizing a second too late that she'd spent too much time imagining a reunion and not enough anticipating this reality. This man bore only the shallowest resemblance to her vibrant, handsome husband.

Kate nodded.

Thankfully, the woman didn't make small talk as they rode up the elevator. On the third floor, they strode past the nurses' station and turned into his room.

His head was sheathed in white bandages. The entire left side of his face was swollen and discolored; both his eyes were bandaged. Machines and lines and IVs were clustered around him.

Kate took the most difficult step of her life. Until that moment, she hadn't even realized that she'd stopped moving. "He's usually so strong."

The nurse patted her shoulder and gave her a gentle push toward the bed. "He is alive," she said. "This is what you should see when you look at him."

Behind her, the door shut quietly, and she knew they were alone now, she and this man who was and wasn't her Johnny.

They were the words Kate needed to hear. She had a job here; the time for feeling too much and falling apart would come later when she was alone. "Thank you," she said to the nurse, and walked toward the bed.

"He needs you to be strong now."

"This was not our deal," she said. "I distinctly remember that you promised to be okay. So, I'm going to assume you'll honor that." She wiped her eyes and leaned down to kiss his swollen cheek. "Mom and Dad send their prayers. Marah is with them right now. And Tully is flying over to be with us; you know how pissed she'll be if you don't give her your full attention. You might as well wake up now before she badgers you to death." She tripped over the last word, winced, straightening by sheer dint of will. "I didn't mean that," she whispered, gripping the bedrails tightly. "Can you hear me, John Ryan? Let me know you're in there." She reached down, took his hand in hers. "Squeeze my hand, baby. You can do it." Then: "Say something, damn it. I won't even yell at you for scaring the shit out of me. Not right away, anyway."

"I'm Dr. Carl Schmidt. I am in charge of your husband's care."

"Removed a section of his skull to allow the brain to swell. Do not worry. This is most routine in such an injury."

Kate hadn't even heard the door open. When she turned, there was a man standing not more than ten feet away from her.

The polite thing to do would have been to let go, cross the room, and shake Dr. Schmidt's hand, and for all her life Kate had done things correctly, but now she couldn't move, couldn't pretend to be okay. "And?" was all she could say.

"They what?"

"He has suffered a serious head injury, as you no doubt know. He is heavily sedated right now, so we cannot do a comprehensive testing of his brain function. He received excellent medical care in Baghdad. The doctors there removed a section of his skull --"

"Mrs. Ryan?"

She wanted to say that an appendectomy was routine, but didn't dare. "Why are his eyes bandaged?"

"We don't know yet if --"

The door behind him banged open, cracked against the wall. Tully burst into the room -- there was no other word for it -- and stopped dead. She was breathing hard and her face was suspiciously bright. "Sorry it took me so long, Katie. No one would tell me where the hell you were."

The doctor said, "We do not know yet if he will be blind. These are things we will know if he wakes up."

"She is family," Kate said, reaching for Tully's hand. Tully batted away her hand and pulled her into a hug; they cried together, holding on, until finally Kate drew back, wiping her eyes.

"I am sorry," the doctor said. "It is family only in here."

Forty-eight hours. It sounded like a lifetime.

"The next forty-eight hours will tell us much news," the doctor said seamlessly, as if he hadn't been interrupted.

"When he wakes up," Tully said, but her voice was unsteady.

"Keep talking to him," the doctor said. "This couldn't hurt, yes?"

Kate nodded, stepping aside as the doctor moved to the bed and checked Johnny. He made a few notes on the chart and then left.

The minute he was gone, Tully took Kate by the shoulders, gave her a little shake. "We are not going to believe any bad stuff. Herr Doctor doesn't know Johnny Ryan. We do. He promised to come home to you and Marah and he's a man who keeps his promises."

Alone but for the empty tables, they stared at each other.

For the next six hours they stayed there, beside his bed. Kate would talk for as long as she could; when she ran out of steam or started to cry, Tully would step in, picking up the conversation.

Tully's mere presence buoyed Kate, kept her afloat. The strength that had been so quick to leave her came back. "You'd better listen to her, Johnny. You know what a bitch she can be when she's wrong."

Kate looked up. "What do you mean?"

Tully shrugged and sipped her coffee. "You saw the reporters out front. He's a big story, Katie."

"The nurse told me they tried to take pictures of him as he was being wheeled in. One reporter even tried to bribe one of the orderlies on the floor to get a picture of his bandaged face. Cockroaches. No offense."

"What are you going to do about the press?"

Somewhere in the middle of the night -- Kate had no conception of what time it was -- they went down to the empty cafeteria and bought food from vending machines and sat down at a table near the window.

"You think he wants the world to know that he might be blind or brain-damaged? How could he get work again? No way. This story stays contained until I know how he is."

"They took off a piece of his skull. What do you think?" Kate shuddered. "The world has no business looking under his bandages."

"I'm not the only one who believes in it."

"He wouldn't want them to know."

"It's news, Kate," Tully said softly. "If you gave me an exclusive, I could protect you."

Tully covered Kate's hand with her own. "Let me handle the media for you. Just me. That way you don't even have to think about it."

It was a direct reminder of the thing Johnny and Tully shared, that bond which had always excluded Kate. She wanted to make a smart-ass remark, but she was too tired. She hadn't slept well in weeks and every muscle and sinew in her body ached.

"If it weren't for the damn news, he wouldn't be fighting for his life right now."

"They said he might be brain-damaged?"

"Are you kidding? He's a journalist. He'd certainly advocate giving his colleagues -- or at least one colleague -- his story."

"None taken. And we're not all that way, Katie."

Kate smiled for the first time in probably twenty-four hours. "What would I do without you, Tully?"

"Are you kidding me? Three days I wait for your call and when you do bother to call, it's to say you need more time?"

Tully leaned closer to the pay phone, trying to squeeze a small bit of privacy out of a very public place. "The family isn't ready to go public yet, Maury. The doctors are respecting their wishes. Surely you can understand that."

"Understand it? Who gives a shit if I understand it? This is world news, Tully, not some damn sorority gossip circle. CNN has reported that he has a head injury --"

"I'll get you something."

"Get me the story today and I'll move you into the news nook next week."

"That's officially unconfirmed."

Tully thought for a moment she'd imagined the promise. "You mean it?"

"You have twenty-four hours, Tully. At the end of that time you can be a hero or a zero. It's up to you."

"Damn it, Tully. You're putting me in a hell of a spot. The higher-ups are pissed off. There was talk this morning of pulling you off the story. Dick wants to send --"

Tully heard him slam the phone down. Through the glass windows of the empty lobby, she could see the reporters clustered along the sidewalk. For three days they'd been waiting for official word on Johnny's condition. In the meantime, they'd reported the known facts -- the events that led up to the bombing, the field reports of his injuries, and his backstory in Central America. Additionally, they'd used this to springboard on to other tangentially related general stories, things like the danger to journalists covering wars, the specific challenges of Desert Storm, and the myriad types of injuries that commonly accompany bombings.

She stood there, wondering how in the hell she was going to do this. Everything needed to be done exactly right so that both Maury and Kate got what they wanted. It was up to Tully to make it all happen, and if she did this one thing well, it might change her future. She'd die before she'd let Edna down, and like Edna had said, Tully could do her job and still protect Kate. She'd have to break the story, but how she did it was what mattered.

Carefully. Tactfully. No mention of brain damage or potential blindness. That way everyone got what they wanted.

All her life she'd dreamed of that job, imagined it as the start of everything. She couldn't let go of the opportunity to have it. Surely Kate would understand the importance of that.

The news nook.

Smiling, she went in search of her cameraman. They'd start with some establishing shots -- background, hospital interior and exterior, that sort of thing. They'd hide the camera as much as they needed to. Fortunately, everyone who mattered knew that Kate had given Tully full access to visit Johnny.

She went to the front door and stepped out into the cold gray afternoon. Her cameraman was standing off to the side, away from the group of reporters. At her signal, he hid his camera under his quilted goose-down coat and headed toward her.

Kate sat in Dr. Schmidt's office, listening. "So the swelling isn't going down," she said, trying not to twist her sweaty hands together. She was so tired, it was a struggle simply to keep her eyes open.

Of course.

"Not as quickly as we would wish. If soon there is not some improvement I am thinking we will go to surgery again."

She nodded.

"How can you tell?"

"Do not worry yet, Mrs. Ryan. Your husband is very strong. We can see that he is fighting hard."

She tried to take strength from that, to truly believe it, but hope was becoming difficult to hold on to. Each passing day had sanded her down, weakened the walls of her denial; in places, fear called itself truth and poked through.

"Why, because he is still alive. A weaker man would not be here now."

She nodded and fell into step beside him. For a moment, with him beside her talking in his soft, authoritative voice, she felt a longing for her father.

"Well, this is where I must turn a different way," Dr. Schmidt said, pointing down the hallway toward the radiology department.

Dr. Schmidt stood. "I must to see a patient now. I will walk with you part of the way back to Mr. Ryan's room."

Kate nodded. She would have mumbled a simple goodbye, but she didn't trust her voice, and the last thing she wanted to do was to show her weakness.

She stood in the hallway, watching him walk away from her. Near the end of the corridor, he merged into the white-clad sea of bodies and disappeared.

She ran down the hall, grabbed the man's puffy coat sleeve, and spun him around. "What in the hell are you doing?" She shoved him so hard he stumbled back, almost fell. It felt good, so good she wished she'd punched him in the face. "Scavenger," she hissed, switching off the camera with one stab of her finger.

Kate turned a corner and saw a tall, long-haired man in a puffy blue coat and ragged jeans standing at the door to Johnny's room. A black video camera rested on his shoulder. He was shooting now; she could tell by the red light on the camera.

With a sigh, she headed back to Johnny's room. If she was lucky, Tully was there now. Just her friend's presence was a huge help. Honestly, Kate didn't know how she would have made it through the past days without Tully. They'd played cards and told stories and even sang a few old songs together, hoping Johnny would want to wake up to tell them to be quiet. Last night, Tully had found an old episode of The Partridge Family broadcast in German. She'd cracked Kate up with her own made-up dialogue that had David Cassidy hot for his TV sister. The nurses had even come in to tell them to be quiet.

"It's not what you think."

That was when she saw Tully. Her best friend stood at the end of Johnny's bed, dressed in a red V-neck sweater and black pants, her hair and makeup camera-ready, holding a microphone.

"You're not reporting on Johnny's condition?"

"Oh, my God," Kate whispered.

"I am, you know I am, but I was going to talk to you about it. Explain everything. I came up to ask you --"

"With a cameraman," Kate said, stepping back.

Tully ran over to her, pleading. "My boss called. They're going to fire me if I don't get this story. I knew you'd understand if I just told you the truth. You know the news and how much this means to me, but I would never do anything to hurt you or Johnny."

"How dare you! You're supposed to be my friend."

"I am your friend." Tully's voice took on an edge of panic. The look in her eyes was so unfamiliar it took Kate a moment to recognize it: fear. "I shouldn't have started filming, I admit it, but I didn't think you'd mind. Johnny sure as hell wouldn't. He's a newsman, like me. Like you used to be. He knows that the story --"

Kate slapped Tully across the face as hard as she could. "He's not your story. He's my husband." On that last word, Kate's voice broke. "Get out. Get away." When Tully didn't move, Kate screamed, "Now. Get the hell out of this room. It's family only."

Beside Johnny's bed, an alarm blared.

White-clad nurses streamed into the room, pushed Kate and Tully aside. They transferred him to a gurney and wheeled him out of the room.

"Get out," she said dully.

Kate stood there, staring at the empty sheets of his bed.

Tully grabbed her sleeve. "Come on, Katie. We're best friends forever. No matter what. Remember? You need me now."

"Katie --"

It wasn't until she was on the second floor, alone in the women's bathroom, staring at the green metal door of the stall, that she cried.

"You are hardly the kind of friend I need." She wrenched free and ran out of the room.

Hours later, Kate sat alone in the family waiting room. At times throughout the day there had been others in here, groups of huddled, glassy-eyed people waiting for news of their loved ones. Now, however, the volunteer at the desk had gone home and the room was empty.

Never before had time crawled so slowly. She had nothing to do, no way to trick her mind into thinking about something else. She tried to flip through the magazines, but none were in English and the pictures didn't hold her attention. Even a phone call home hadn't helped. Without Tully here to buoy her, she felt herself sinking into despair.

"Mrs. Ryan?"

Kate got quickly to her feet. "Hello, Doctor. How did the surgery go?"

It was enough that he was still alive.

"Thank you."

As they passed the nurses' station, he said, "Do you wish me to page your friend, Tallulah? Certainly you don't desire to be alone now."

"He is most well. There was extensive bleeding in his brain, which we think accounts for the continued swelling. We have now stopped it. Perhaps this will give us reason for new hope, yes? Shall I walk you back to his room?"

"I don't want to be alone now, that's true," Kate said. "But Tallulah is no longer welcome here."

"Ah. Well. You must keep believing that he will wake up. I have seen many so-called miracles in my years here. Often, I think faith has its part to play."

He paused at the closed door of Johnny's room and looked down at her. "I did not say that faith was easy; merely that it was necessary. And you are here, are you not, by his side? This takes its own kind of courage, yes?" He patted her shoulder and left her standing by the door.

"I'm afraid to get my hopes up," she said quietly.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there, alone in the stark white hospital; in time, though, she went inside and sat down. In a quiet, halting voice, she closed her eyes and talked to him. About what, she couldn't have said. All she knew was that a voice could offer light in a dark place, and light could lead you out.

She unfolded from the chair and stood beside the bed, feeling stiff and sore. "Hey, handsome," she murmured, leaning down to kiss Johnny's cheek. The bandages on his eyes had been removed; she could see now how bruised and swollen his left eye was. "No more bleeding in the brain allowed, okay? When you need attention just try the old-fashioned ways, like getting mad or kissing me."

The next thing she knew, it was morning. Sunlight glowed through the exterior window, illuminating the beige linoleum floor tiles and gray-white walls.

No response.

Idly she flipped through the channels, looking for something in English.

She kept talking until she ran out of things to say. Finally she turned on the television that hung in the corner. It came on with a thunk and a buzz and showed a grainy black and white picture. "The machine you love so much," she said bitterly, reaching down for his hand. Taking his dry, slack fingers in hers, she held on to him. Leaning down, she kissed his cheek and lingered there. Though he smelled of hospitals and disinfectants and medicines, if she tried hard enough, believed strongly enough, she could smell the familiar essence of him. "The TV is on. You're big news."

Tully's face filled the screen.

She was standing in front of the hospital with her microphone held up to her mouth. Captions along the bottom of the screen translated her words: "For days the world has wondered and worried about John Patrick Ryan, the TV news producer who was seriously injured when a bomb exploded near the Al-Rashid Hotel. Although funeral services were held yesterday for the reporter, Arthur Gulder, who was with him, the Ryan family and the German hospital remained unavailable to journalists. And how can we blame them? This is a time of deep personal tragedy for the Ryan family. John -- Johnny to his friends -- suffered a serious head trauma in the explosion. A complicated medical procedure was performed on him at an army hospital near Baghdad. Specialists tell me that without this life-saving surgery on site, Mr. Ryan would not have survived."

The picture on screen changed. Now Tully was standing beside Johnny's bed. He lay motionless on the white sheets, his head and eyes bandaged. Though the camera lingered on Johnny for only an instant before returning to Tully's face, the image of him was hard to forget.

"Mr. Ryan's prognosis is uncertain. The specialists with whom I spoke said it is a waiting game to see if the swelling in his brain recedes. If it does, he has an excellent chance of survival. If not…" Her voice trailed off as she moved around to the end of the bed. There, she looked directly into the camera. "Everything about this case is uncertain right now, except this: This is a story of heroes, both in the war zone and at home. John Ryan wanted to bring this story to the American people, and I know him well enough to say that he knew the risks he was taking and wouldn't have made another choice. And while he was covering the war, his wife, Kathleen, was at home with their one-year-old daughter, believing that what her husband was doing was important. Like any soldier's wife, it was her sacrifice as much as his that made it possible for John Ryan to do his job." The picture cut back to Tully on the hospital steps. "This is Tallulah Hart, reporting from Germany. And may I say, Bryant, that our prayers are certainly with the Ryan family today."

She felt a flutter-soft movement against her palm. It was so gentle that at first she almost didn't notice. Frowning, she glanced down.

He squeezed her hand. It was barely a squeeze, really; normally it wouldn't even qualify as a touch, but now it made her laugh and cry at the same time.

Kate stared at the television long after the segment had ended. "She made us look like heroes," she said to the empty room. "Even me."

Johnny slowly opened his eyes.

"Johnny?" she whispered, half afraid that she was making this up, that the stress had finally cracked her. "Can you see me?"

"Can you see me?" she asked again, leaning close. "Close your eyes once if you can see me."

She kissed his cheek, his forehead, his cracked, dry lips. "Do you know where you are?" she finally asked, pulling back, hitting the nurses' button.

Slowly, he closed his eyes.

She could see the confusion in his eyes and it scared her. "How about me? Do you know who I am?"

He stared up at her, swallowed hard. Slowly, he opened his mouth and said, "My… Katie."

"Yes. Now I suggest you go to the cafeteria and have some lunch. You have lost too much weight this week."

Smiling, she headed for the door. She was nearly there when he called her name again. She turned. "Yes?"

"Yes," she said, bursting into tears. "I'm your Katie."

Kate smiled. "I'm lucky to have him."

He made an it's-nothing gesture with his hand. "This is my job."

The next seventy-two hours were a whirlwind of meetings, procedures, tests, and medication adjustments. Kate accompanied Johnny to consultations with ophthalmologists, psychiatrists, physical therapists, speech and occupational therapists, and, of course, Dr. Schmidt. Everyone, it seemed, had to sign off on Johnny's recovery before she could move him to a rehabilitation center near home.

"There are not many reporters left, but is it acceptable to report on your husband's condition? We would very much like them to leave."

"Certainly. Now go. I will return your husband to his room when the tests are finished."

"He is lucky to have you," Dr. Schmidt said at the conclusion of their meeting.

"Really?"

Kate rose. "Thank you, Dr. Schmidt. For everything."

"Excellent."

Kate made her way through the tables to the window. Outside, the sky was a dark, steely gray; any moment it would start to rain or snow.

The cafeteria was mostly empty on this late Thursday afternoon. There were a few groups of employees gathered around the rectangular tables and a few families ordering food. It was easy to tell which group was which. The employees were laughing and talking while they ate; the patients' families were quiet and still, staring down at their food and looking up at the clock every few minutes.

Even with the distortion of the glass, she could see how tired she looked, how spent.

"I'll think about it."

Kate left his office and went to the elevator at the end of the hall.

It was odd, but somehow it was harder to be alone with her relief than with her despair. Then, she'd wanted mostly to sit quietly and blank out her mind and try to imagine the best. Now she wanted to laugh with someone, to smile and raise a glass in celebration and say she'd known all along it would end like this.

Tully.

No. Not someone.

"You look like you could use a drink."

Turning away from the window, she went over to the table and sat down.

For all of Kate's life, Tully had been the first line of celebration, the party just waiting to happen. Her best friend would toast crossing the street safely if that was what Kate wanted.

Kate looked up. Tully stood there, dressed in crisp black jeans and a white boat-necked angora sweater. Although her hair and makeup were perfect, she looked tired. And nervous.

"You're still here?"

Kate stared at the Styrofoam cup in Tully's hand. She knew it was her favorite -- Earl Grey -- doctored with just the right amount of sugar.

It was the only apology Tully knew how to make for what she'd done. If Kate accepted it, she knew that the episode would have to be forgotten -- the betrayal and the slap would have to dissolve into nothing so they could step back onto the track that had connected their lives. No regrets, no grudges. They'd be TullyandKate again, or as close to that as grown women could be.

"You thought I'd leave you?" Tully tried to smile, but it wasn't the real thing. "I brought you a cup of tea."

Kate looked at her friend for a long time. She wanted the gift of words -- I'm sorry -- but knew they'd never come. Tully simply wasn't wired that way. Kate had never known exactly how it had happened, Tully's inability to apologize, but she suspected that it had something to do with Cloud. There was some bit of her best friend that had been damaged beyond repair as a child, and this, somehow, was the scar. Finally, she reached for the cup, saying, "Thanks."

Tully's eyes pleaded for forgiveness and understanding, but what she said was, "I'm getting the news nook for next week. It's a replacement gig, but it's a start."

"The story was good," she said evenly.

Kate thought, So that's what you sold me out for, but knew she couldn't say it. Instead, she said, "Congratulations."

Tully held out the cup of tea. "Take it, Katie. Please."

Soon, Tully had Kate laughing. That was the thing about best friends. Like sisters and mothers, they could piss you off and make you cry and break your heart, but in the end, when the chips were down, they were there, making you laugh even in your darkest hours.

Tully grinned and sat down beside her. Before she'd even scooted up to the table, she was talking.