I swallowed hard and then got out my phone.
The text was from Bree: “Come now or you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”
I started to run.
Ten minutes later, I went through the door of the ICU, trying to keep my emotions from ruining me all over again.
When I reached the doorway to John’s room, Billie, Bree, and Nana Mama were all sobbing.
I thought I’d come too late, that I’d done my best friend and brother the ultimate disservice, and not been there when he took his last breath.
Then I realized they were all sobbing for joy.
“It’s a miracle, Alex,” Bree said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Look.”
I stepped inside the crowded room. A nurse and a doctor were working feverishly on John. He was still on his back in bed, still on the ventilator, still hitched up to a dozen different monitors.
But his eyes were open and roving lazily.
Chapter 22
We sat with John for hours as more of the drugs wore off. They removed his breathing tube, and he came more and more to consciousness.
John did not acknowledge his name when Billie called it softly, trying to get him to turn his head to her. At first Sampson seemed not even to know where he was, as if he were lost in some dream.
But then, after the first nap, he did hear his wife, and his face lolled toward her. Then he moved his fingers and toes on command, and lifted both arms.
When I sat beside him and held his hand, his lips kept opening as if he wanted to talk. No sound came out, and he appeared frustrated.
“It’s okay, buddy,” I said, holding tight. “We know you love us.”
Sampson relaxed and slept again. When he awoke, Elizabeth Navilus, a top speech-language pathologist, was waiting. She was part of a team of specialists rotating through the room, performing the various exams on the JFK Coma Recovery Scale, a method of diagnosing the extent of brain damage.
Navilus ran Sampson through a brief battery of tests. She found that John’s cognitive awareness as expressed through his language comprehension was growing by the moment. But he was having trouble speaking. The best he could do was chew at the air and hum.
It crushed me.
Out in the waiting area, Navilus told us to take hope from the fact that head trauma patients often exhibit understanding before being able to respond.
Later, when Nana Mama had left for home to cook dinner, and Bree to the office, and Billie to the cafeteria, I sat by John’s side.
“I was there when you were shot,” I told him. “It was Soneji. Or someone who looked just like him.”
Sampson blinked, and then nodded.
“I came close to catching him this morning,” I said. “He was watching when we dug up Soneji’s body.”
He looked away and closed his eyes.
“I’m going to get him, John,” I said. “I promise you.”
He barely nodded before sagging off to sleep.
Sitting there, watching him, I felt better, stronger, and more humbled and in debt to my Lord and savior than ever before. The idea of Sampson dying must have been as much of an abomination to God as I thought it was.
If that wasn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.
Chapter 23