I turned to see Dr. Lasky.
"You will have to obey the hospital rules. You work here as a nurse's aide, I understand, so you should know how important it is that we all--"
"Pierre moved his finger, Doctor. I felt it. If I can stay with him. longer . . ."
"We have to let the nurses do their work and--"
I felt Pierre's fingers move again and cried out. When I turned back to him, his eyelids fluttered.
"Pierre," I said. "Show them. Show them."
His lids fluttered harder and, like eyes that had been closed for centuries, slowly opened.
"Go get Dr. LeFevre," Dr. Lasky ordered the nurse. She hurried away.
I continued to stroke Pierre's hand, cajoling him. "Come on, Pierre. That's it. Try. Come back to us." His eyes remained open.
"That's good," Dr. Lasky muttered behind me. "Hello, Pierre," I said. "Are you feeling better? Do you want to go home soon?"
He turned his head slowly toward me. I saw his lips moving, so I bent down to bring my ear close. He was just putting out enough breath to be heard in a whisper.
"Get Mommy," he said. "Make her come home."
"Oh, yes, Pierre. Yes. I will." I hugged him. "He spoke to me, Doctor!"
"Excellent," Dr. Lasky said and turned to greet Dr. LeFevre, who was rushing toward us. I stepped back as the two of them examined Pierre, and then I decided to go out and get Daddy. I found him in the cafeteria, hovering over a cup of coffee. When I told him the news, his eyes brightened and his face regained some color. The two of us hurried back.
Afterward, outside in the corridor, with Daddy and Dr. Lasky at my side, Dr. LeFevre asked me to repeat what I had said and done to get Pierre's reaction. She nodded as she listened.
"You must get your mother home to him soon," she said. "If not, he could relapse again, and I'm afraid each time that happens, he will retreat deeper and deeper inside himself until he becomes irretrievable. Do you understand?"
"Yes," I said and looked at Daddy, who just nodded, a look of terror in his eyes.
"With the diuretic working, we've at least stemmed the threat of acute renal failure for the time being," Dr. Lasky said. "But what happened before can certainly happen again," he cautioned. Neither doctor wanted to leave us with false hope. Their words, although realistic, were as sharp as darts.
Daddy and I returned to Pierre to reassure him we were going to find Mommy and bring her to see him as soon as we could. He listened and then closed his eyes. He was just sleeping now. The great effort to claw his way up and out of the grave his mind was constructing around him had exhausted him. We left him resting comfortably.
"What if Ruby doesn't return, Pearl? What if she never returns?" Daddy asked as we drove home from the hospital.
"She'll come back. She has to."
"Why? She doesn't know what's happening. We can't find her; we can't get a message to her." He shook his head. "If she doesn't come back, poor Pierre . . ."
"We'll sit and we'll think of what else to do, Daddy. We'll find her," I promised, although for the moment I hadn't the slightest idea what we should do next.
The doctors' words lingered like bruised and angry clouds waiting to drop a storm over us. Pierre remained on the brink of oblivion, and we were helpless.
Mommy wasn't there when we returned home, and there had been no phone calls from her or from anyone in the bayou. Daddy phoned Aunt Jeanne and explained the situation. She promised to send out everyone she could and make as many phone calls as she could to people in the area. She said she would contact the police up there for us, too.
"If we don't hear anything tonight or tomorrow morning, we should search for her again, Daddy," I said.
"Search where? We went to the shack and to Cypress Woods. I have no idea where else she might go up there. That part of her life is like a fantasy to me. For all I know there are places and people she never mentioned or that she did mention but I don't remember. You know all of her grandmere's friends are gone. What can we do. . . ride around the back roads, searching the swamps?"
"That would be better than just sitting here, wouldn't it?"
"I don't know, Pearl." He shook his head. "I don't know. What if we go up there, get lost on some back road, and she calls here? No, all we can do is wait."
Neither he nor I had much of an appetite for dinner, but we sat and nibbled. All of the servants were quiet, their faces worried. The house had a funereal atmosphere. No one closed a door hard; everyone tiptoed through the corridors and spoke in whispers. There was no music, no radio or television, just the constant ticking of the grandfather clock followed by its hollow, reverberating gong to announce the passage of time, the flow of minutes without any word from or of Mommy. When Daddy and I gazed at each other, we thought but didn't speak the same thought: back in the hospital, Pierre was waiting, teetering on a tightrope above the dark chasm of gloom that would swallow him and lock him up forever in unconsciousness and finally death. I felt sure that in his mind he saw death as a doorway beyond which Jean stood, waiting.