Blue Bloods (Blue Bloods 1)

Schuyler could see Jack saying something angrily to Mimi, and she overheard bits of his harangue, "stepped over the line ... You could have killed him ... Remember what the Wardens said..."

She stood there, not knowing what to do, when Bliss and Dylan appeared. Dylan took one look at the compromising tableau. "Let me guess, he was with Mimi Force?"

Schuyler nodded. "I think it's time we blow this joint."

"I couldn't agree more," Bliss replied.

Schuyler gave Jack one last look. He was still arguing with his sister. He didn't even notice that she was leaving.

Catherine Carver's Diary

20th of December, 1620

Plymouth, Massachusetts

The men have been gone for days now, and still there is no word. We are frightened. They should have arrived there and returned by now, with news of the colony. But all is silent. The children keep me company and we make time pass by reading aloud from the books I was able to bring over. If only we could leave this ship - it is always wet and terribly crowded, but the structures are not yet ready. The men are allowed to camp ashore, but we must remain here in this dark place.

I am afraid, but I comfort myself with the knowledge that I will know if John and the rest of the company are lost. So far, I have not felt nor seen anything in my visions. There is doubt among the colony as to whether we have truly escaped. Rumors are spreading that on of them is here, hidden among us - there is much whispering and suspicion. The Billington boy has been missing, they said. Disappeared. Taken. But someone remembers that he could have gone with the Roanoke party, so no one is worried for now. We watch, and wait, holding our breath.

CHAPTER 17

Eversince Schuyler could remember, she had spent every Sunday at the hospital. When she was younger, she and her grandmother would take a cab all the way to the uppermost reaches of Manhattan. Schuyler was such a familiar face, the guards never even gave her a visitor's badge anymore but simply waved her through. Now that she was older, Cordelia rarely joined her on the weekly visits, and Schuyler made the trip solo.

She walked past the emergency room, through the glassed-in lobby, and past the giftshop selling balloons and flowers. She bought a newspaper from the stand and walked to the back elevator. Her mother was on the top floor, in a private room that was outfitted like a suite in one of the city's best hotels.

Unlike most people, Schuyler did not find hospitals depressing. She had spent too much of her childhood there, zooming up and down the hallways in a borrowed wheelchair, playing games of hide and seek with the nurses and orderlies. She ate every Sunday brunch in the basement cafeteria, where the servers would pile her plate high with bacon, eggs, and waffles.

She passed her mother's regular nurse in the hallway.

"It's a good day," the nurse informed her, smiling.

"Oh. Great." Schuyler smiled back. Her mother had been in a coma for most of Schuyler's life. A few months after giving birth to her, Allegra had suffered an aneurysm and gone into shock. Most days, she lay placidly on the bed, not moving, barely breathing.

But on ?good? days, something happened - a flutter underneath the closed eyelids, the movement of her big toe, a twitch in her cheek. Once in a while, her mother sighed for no reason. They were small, infinitesimal signs of a vibrant woman trapped in the cocoon of a living death.

Schuyler remembered the doctor's final prognosis, made almost ten years ago. "All of her organs are functioning. She is perfectly healthy, except for one thing. Somehow, her mind is closed to her body. She has normal sleep and wake patterns, and she is not brain dead by any means. The neurons are firing. But she remains unconscious. It is a mystery." Surprisingly, the doctors were still convinced there was a chance she could wake up given the right circumstances. "Sometimes, it's a song. Or a voice from the past. Something triggers them, and they wake up. Really, she could wake up at any time."

Certainly, Cordelia believed it was true and encouraged Schuyler to read to Allegra so that her mother would know her voice and perhaps respond to it.

Schuyler said thank you to the nurse and peeked through the small glass window cut in the door so that the nurses could check in on their patients without having to disturb them.

There was a man inside the room.

She kept her hand on the knob, without turning it. She looked through the glass again.

The man was gone.

Schuyler blinked. She swore she had seen a man. A gray-haired man, in a dark suit, kneeling by her mother's bedside, holding her hand, his back turned to the door. His shoulders had been shaking and it looked like he was crying.

But when she looked through the glass again, there was nothing.

This was the second time now. Schuyler wasn't as much troubled as curious. The first time she'd glimpsed him was several months ago, when she'd left the room for a moment to fetch a glass of water. When she'd returned to the room, she was startled to see someone there. Out of the corner of her eye, she'd seen a man standing by the curtains, looking out the window at the Hudson River below. But the moment she had entered, he had disappeared. She hadn't seen his face - just his back and his neat gray hair.