Waiting for the Moon

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"His name, Mother. What's the man's name?" "Who?"

Ian controlled an explosion by sheer force of will. "The man who brought her here."

"Oh, that. I can't remember now."

"Jesus .. ."

She frowned in concentration. "No, I would remember if he'd been called Jesus.... I believe it started with a B. Or perhaps an I?."

"Oh, Mother." He leaned forward and closed his eyes, rubbing his temples.

"Why?" She didn't look at him, stared at the ribbon she worked so madly in her hands.

"Who the hell is she? And where did she come from? And how did she get injured?"

She stopped suddenly, looked at him. "Oh." Her voice was a whisper, throaty with the same shame he

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saw in her hazel eyes. "He said something about a boating accident."

Disgusted, he turned away, stared dully at his patient. Jesus, they might never know who this woman is. Or was.

"How will she live?" Maeve asked in a timid

voice.

He didn't even try to understand the question. "What

do you mean?"

"Will she be ... normal?"

There was a holy reverence in his mother's voice when she said the word normal. It was so important to her, being normal, and he supposed he understood why. She'd never been normal a day in her life. He sighed, feeling suddenly drained. "I don't know. It's unlikely."

Maeve squeezed her eyes shut, rocking faster, turning the ribbon through her fingers. "I hope she's normal... in the head. She would want to be normal."

He turned away, unable to look at her, unable to see her pain and know it mirrored his own, and know that neither one of them could change it. "Yes, Mother. Wouldn't we all?"

Ian studied the woman's maimed face, searching for some hint of the person beneath the bandages and the bruises. She smelled of wax and acid and blood; it was a smell he knew well, one that lingered in the halls of New York Hospital, clung stubbornly to the operating rooms. No amount of soap and water could remove it? and not nearly enough was spent in the effort.

The smell of death. He dumped another bucketful of ice beside her head, tucking the freezing chunks close to her bandaged skull.

Then he set the empty bucket on the floor. It hit the hardwood with a tinny clank that he barely heard. Backing away from the bed, he turned to the open window and stared out.

The storm had long since passed. Fog had rolled in,

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impenetrable and moody; the thick haze lay huddled along the shoreline. Somewhere the sun was rising, casting uncertain light through the gray-white shroud, but from this window, there was nothing but the stifling gloom.

Will she be normal?

He couldn't forget the question. Once, he might have cared only that she survived. But if nothing else, the past few years had taught him that there was life? breathing, heart-pumping animation?and there was life. He understood the pain of abnormality now, the agony of isolation. Of being wrenchingly different from your fellow man. No longer could he tell himself that life at any cost was a triumph.

He squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head against the cold, damp glass of the window. Don't give her half a life, God. Make it all or nothing.