With such an injury, coma is the rule rather than the exception.” He paused and spared her a very direct look. “That’s not to say he won’t eventually come out of it…”
“I hear a ‘but,’ Dr. Rossi,” she said coolly. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He flexed his fingers and expelled a long breath. Regret intensified the fatigue in his eyes, and she knew in that moment that she had yet to hear the worst. “Because of the proximity of cranial nerves,” he said, “there’s a high incidence of associated injuries.”
With every carefully chosen word, he increased her level of fear. But she’d had a lifetime’s practice at keeping her emotions in check, and it stood her in good stead now. Projecting a calm she was far from feeling, she asked, “What kind of injuries?”
“Impaired swallowing, paralysis of the vocal cords with subsequent phonation difficulties. Hemiplegia, or even quadriplegia. In layman’s terms, Signorina Blake, if your father recovers consciousness, he may be paralyzed in much the same way that he would had he suffered a massive stroke. The paralysis could extend down one, or both sides of his body.”
Alan Blake, the man who prided himself on running a marathon at age fifty-five, paralyzed? Unable to dominate the conversation at his frequent, ultrasophisticated dinner parties? Incapable of controlling his bodily functions?
Horrified by the implications, and filled with pity for the father who’d have spared little for her had their situations been reversed, Danielle spoke without thought for how her words might be interpreted. “You should have let him die! He’d be better off!”
“By whose assessment, signorina?” Carlo Rossi asked, his gray eyes suddenly as glacial as his voice. “Yours, or his?”
He thought she was cold and unfeeling, that she spoke out of selfishness. But he didn’t know her father, and trying to explain Alan Blake to a stranger would merely sound as if she was making excuses for herself. “Let me put it this way, Dr. Rossi,” she said. “Would you want to be kept alive under such conditions, trapped in a body that refused to obey you?”
“My personal preferences are irrelevant. I am committed to saving lives, not ending them. In your father’s case, I am painting a very dark picture in order to prepare you for the worst possible outcome. But there remains the slender chance that he will make a full recovery.”
“How long before you’ll know?”
Carlo Rossi raised his beautiful hands, palms up. “That I cannot say.”
“Hazard a guess, Doctor. Another week? A month?”
“I don’t second-guess God. I deal only with what I know. He could open his eyes today, tomorrow, next week or …”
“Or never?”
“Or never.” He watched her in silence a moment, then said with thinly veiled contempt, “I recognize your impatience to be done with this, Signorina Blake. You cannot put your own life on hold indefinitely. You have obligations other than those of a daughter to her father—to a husband and children, perhaps.”
“No. I’m not married.”
He curled his lip in disgust. “A lover, then? A career?”
“A career, certainly. I own a travel agency.”
“Which clearly matters more to you than your father. Why else would you wait so long to come to his bedside?”
She sat up poker-straight in the chair, and returned his glance unflinchingly. “It just so happens, Dr. Rossi, that I was on a cruise to Antarctica when this tragedy struck my father.”
“Cruise ships do not have telephones, these days? No electronic means of keeping in touch with the rest of the world?”
“Of course they do, but in this instance your sarcasm is misplaced, Doctor,” she said sharply. “Had your hospital left a message with my office staff, they would have been in touch immediately, and I’d have been here as soon as it was humanly possible. But the message was left on my home answering machine, and since I live alone…” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug.
“We had no other recourse,” he replied. “That was the only telephone number listed on your father’s passport, in the event the next of kin needed to be contacted.”
He steepled his fingers and observed her silently for a second or two. Eventually, he said, “Signorina, I regret that we have—”
Before he could continue, the door burst open and a young girl, a beautiful child with long dark braids hanging down her back, came flying into the room. “Papà!” she cried. Then, seeing he was not alone, she skidded to a stop and clapped a hand to her mouth. “Mi scusi! La disturbo, Papà?”
“Yes,” he said severely in English. “And you know better than to come in here without knocking first.”
“Ma Beatrice non e—”
“Remember your manners, Anita. My visitor does not speak Italian.” He spared Danielle a brief glance. “I am right, yes? You do not?”
“A very little only, but don’t worry about that.” Danielle collected her purse and stood up. “We’re pretty much finished anyway, aren’t we?”
“No, signora, we are not quite done,” he said evenly. “Please allow me a moment to attend to the reason for this interruption, then you and I will resume our discussion.”
Obediently she sat down again, and he turned to the child. “So, Anita, explain yourself.”
His words might have been forbidding, but the smile that accompanied them took away their sting, and the girl knew it. Big brown eyes dancing with excitement, she said, “I did not knock, Papà, because Beatrice has gone home already, so I thought you also had finished working for today. I wanted to tell you that Bianca has had her babies. She has four, Papà! I found them when I came home from school.”
“That is certainly earth-shaking news.” Laughing, he pulled the child into the curve of his arm and turned to Danielle. “In case you’re wondering, Bianca is our cat, and as I’m sure you’ve gathered, this is my daughter, Anita.”
Despite her annoyance with the father, Danielle smiled warmly at his lovely daughter. “Hello, Anita.”
Tucking her hands against the navy pleated skirt of her school uniform, the girl dipped her head and replied, “How do you do? I am pleased to meet you.”
“Very good,” her father said. “At this rate, your English will soon be better than mine.”
“Si?” She gazed at him adoringly and wound her arms around his neck. “How much better?”
He touched the tip of her nose with his forefinger. “Not so much that I let you forget the rules. I hope you didn’t come here by yourself today?”
“No, Papà.” She shook her head so exuberantly that her braids swung back and forth like long, shining ropes. “Calandria walked with me. She is waiting downstairs. We are going to the market to buy fish for Bianca. Calandria says we must take extra care of her now that she is a mother.”
“Calandria
