"Yes, you fool," I snarled. "To the hospital."
"The hospital." Paul shook his head. "But Suze - "
"Just do it!"
Paul did it. I know he thought it was futile, but he did it. He got the keys, then came back and helped me carry Jesse to my mom's car. It wasn't easy, but between the two of us, we managed. I'd have dragged him the whole way by myself if I'd had to.
Then we were on the road, Paul driving while I continued to hold Jesse's head in my arms. I didn't think then that what I was doing was futile. Maybe, I kept thinking, the hospital could save him. Medicine had made so many advances in the past 150 years. Why couldn't it save a man who'd just traveled to another time, through another dimension? Why couldn't it?
Except that it couldn't.
Oh, they tried. At the hospital. They came running out with a gurney when Paul went in to tell them we had an unconscious man in the car. They hooked Jesse up to an oxygen mask while the emergency room doctor grilled me. Had he taken drugs? Had too much to drink? Had a seizure? A headache? Complained of pain in his arm?
There was no medical explanation for the coma Jesse was in. That's what the doctor came out and told me, hours later. None that he had been able to determine so far. A CT scan might tell him more. Did I happen to know what kind of insurance Jesse had? His Social Security number, maybe? A phone number for his next of kin?
At 6:00 in the morning, they admitted him. At 7:00, I called my mother, and told her where I was - at the hospital with a friend. At 8:00, I phoned the only person I could think of who might possibly have some idea what to do.
Father Dominic had gotten back from San Francisco the night before. He listened to what I had to say without remark. "Father Dominic, I did . . . I think I did something awful. I didn't mean to, but . . . Jesse's here. The real Jesse. The live one. We're at the hospital. Please come."
He came. When I saw his tall, strong figure approaching the hard plastic seat I'd been sitting in for hours, I nearly collapsed all over again.
But I didn't. I stood up and, a second later, was in his arms.
"What did you do?" he kept murmuring over and over. He wasn't talking to just me, either. Paul was there, too. "What did you two do?"
"Something bad," I said, lifting my tear-stained face from his shirt. "But we didn't mean it."
"We were trying to save him," Paul said sheepishly. "His life. We almost did - "
"Until I brought him back," I said. "Oh, Father Dominic - "
He shushed me and went into the room where Jesse lay, so still, the blanket over him barely stirring with each shallow breath. Ghost Jesse, I now realized, would have looked better - more alive - than Alive Jesse did.
Father Dominic crossed himself, he was so startled by what he saw. A nurse was there, taking Jesse's pulse and writing the results down on a clipboard. She smiled sadly when she saw Father Dominic, then left the room.
Father Dominic looked down at Jesse. For the first time, I noticed that the lenses of his glasses were kind of fogged up.
He didn't say anything.
"They want to know what kind of insurance he has," I said bitterly, "before they do more tests."
"I . . . see," Father Dominic said.
"I don't see what more tests are going to tell them," Paul said.
"You don't know," I snapped, lashing out at Paul because I couldn't lash out at the person who most deserved it . . . myself. "Maybe there's something they can do. Maybe there's - "
"Isn't your grandfather here somewhere?" Father Dominic asked Paul.
Paul lifted his gaze from Jesse's unconscious form.
"Yeah," he said. "I mean, yes, sir. I think so."
"Perhaps you should go and pay him a visit." Father Dominic's voice was calm. His presence, I had to admit, was soothing. "If he's conscious, perhaps he'll be able to offer us some advice."
Paul's chin slid out truculently. "He won't talk to me," Paul insisted. "Even if he is awake - "
"I think," Father Dominic said quietly, "that if there is a lesson to be learned from all of this, it's that life is fleeting and if there are fences to mend, you had best mend them quickly, before it's too late. Go and make amends with your grandfather."
Paul opened his mouth to protest, but Father Dominic shot him a look that snapped his lips shut. With one final glance at me, Paul left the room, looking aggrieved.
"Don't be too angry with him, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "He thought he was doing right."
I was too tired to argue. Much.
"He thought he was robbing me of Jesse," I said. "Even his memory."
Father Dominic shrugged. "In the end, Susannah, that might actually have been kinder, don't you think? Kinder than this, anyway." He nodded his head at Jesse's unconscious form.
Well, that much was true.
"He would have had to leave, anyway, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "Someday."
"I know." The knot in my throat throbbed.
Which was when I remembered. There'd been a ghost in Father Dom's life, as well. The ghost of a girl he'd loved, maybe even as much as I loved Jesse.
"I . . ." I could barely speak, the lump in my throat had swelled to such gigantic proportions. "I'm sorry, Father Dominic. I forgot."
Father Dom just smiled sadly and touched my arm.
"Don't be too hard on him," he said, meaning Paul. Then, with a final glance at Jesse, he said, "There isn't much I can think of to do. But the insurance situation. That I think I can take care of. I'll be back soon. Can I bring you anything? Have you eaten?"
The thought of trying to swallow anything down past the mass in my throat was so ludicrous, I actually laughed a little.
"No, thanks," I said.
"All right." Father Dominic started from the room. At the doorway, however, he paused and looked back.
"I'm sorry, Susannah," he said quietly. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when . . . it happened. And I'm more sorry than I can say that it had to end this way."
And with that, he was gone.
I stood there for a moment, not doing anything, not thinking a thing. Then the true meaning of his words sunk in.
And I lost it.
Because Father Dominic was right. This was the end. I could deny it as much as I wanted, but this was it. Jesse was dying, right before my eyes, and there was nothing, nothing on earth, that I could do for him.
And it was my fault. My own fault he was leaving me. Sure, I could comfort myself that wherever he was, it had to be better than the half-life he'd had with me.
But that didn't make it hurt any less.
I fell into the chair beside Jesse's hospital bed. I couldn't see, I was crying so hard. Not out loud. I didn't want any nurse to come running with a bunch of tranquilizers or anything. What I really wanted, I realized, was my mom. No, not my mom. My dad. Where was my dad now, when I really needed him?
"Susannah."
I thought about Jesse's grave, the one marked by the headstone Father Dominic and I had paid for. What was in that grave now, if Jesse's body was here? Nothing. It was empty.
But not for long. No, not for long.
"Susannah."
And back in his own time? What were Mr. and Mrs. O'Neil doing right now? Probably combing through the rubble of what had been their barn. They'd find one skeleton for sure. But would they know it wasn't Jesse's? Would Jesse's family have closure or would they wonder forever what had happened to their beloved son and brother?
No. They had no way of knowing the body was Diego's. They'd think it was Jesse. The de Silvas would have a funeral. But for the wrong man.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Great. Someone was there. Someone was watching me cry my eyes out. Nice. Let the girl have a little time to grieve, would you, please?
"Go away," I snapped, lifting my head. "Can't you see I'm - "
That's when I noticed that the figure beside me was glowing.
Chapter twenty
I must have jumped about a mile and a half into the air, I was that startled. I know I sprang from the chair, so fast that I knocked it over. I stood there, my chest heaving, my eyes suddenly bone dry, and stared.