Read The Night Ferry for Free Online Page A

she said was this: “I am going to have lots of babies because they wil love me and never leave me.” I don’t know why she talked like this. She treated love and friendship like a smal creature trapped in a blizzard, fighting for survival. Maybe she knew something then that I didn’t.

    5
    Another morning. The sun is shining somewhere. I can see blue sky bunched between buildings and a construction crane etched in charcoal against the light. I cannot say how many days have passed since the accident—four or fourteen. Colors are the same—the air, the trees, the buildings—nothing has changed.
    I have been to the hospital every day, avoiding the waiting room and Cate’s family. I sit in the cafeteria or wander the corridors, trying to draw comfort from the technology and the smiles of the staff.
    Cate is in a medical y induced coma. Machines are helping her to breathe. According to the hospital bul etin she suffered a perforated lung, a broken back and multiple fractures to both her legs. The back of her skul was pulverized but two operations have stopped the bleeding.
    I spoke to the neurosurgeon yesterday. He said the coma was a good thing. Cate’s body had shut down and was trying to repair itself.
    “What about brain damage?” I asked him.
    He toyed with his stethoscope and wouldn’t look me in the eye. “The human brain is the most perfectly designed piece of equipment in the known universe,” he explained.
    “Unfortunately, it is not designed to withstand a ton of metal of high speed.”
    “Which means?”
    “We classify severe head injury as a coma score of eight or less. Mrs. Beaumont has a score of four. It is a very severe head injury.” At eleven o’clock the ICU posts another bul etin. Cate’s condition hasn’t changed. I bump into Jarrod in the cafeteria and we drink coffee and talk about everyday incidental things: jobs and families, the price of eggs, the frailty of modern paper bags. The conversation is punctuated by long pauses as though silence has become part of the language.
    “The doctors say she was never pregnant,” he says. “She didn’t lose the baby. There was no miscarriage or termination. Mum and Dad are beside themselves. They don’t know what to think.”
    “She must have had a reason.”
    “Yeah, wel , I can’t think of one.” A trickle of air from the ceiling vents ruffles his hair.
    “Do you think Felix knew?”
    “I guess. How do you keep a secret like that from your husband?” He glances at his watch. “Have you been to see her?”
    “No.”
    “Come on.”
    Jarrod leads me upstairs to the intensive care unit, along painful y white corridors that al look the same. Only two visitors per patient are al owed in the ICU. Masks must be worn and hands must be scrubbed with disinfectant.
    Jarrod isn’t coming with me. “There’s someone already with her,” he says, adding as an afterthought, “She won’t bite.” My stomach drops. It’s too late to back out.
    The curtains are open and daylight casts a square on the floor. Mrs. El iot in her wheelchair is trapped in the light like a hologram, her skin as pale and fine as white china.
    Cate lies beside her, hostage to a tangle of tubing, plasma bags and stainless steel. Needles are driven into her veins and her head is swathed in bandages. Monitors and machines blink and buzz, reducing her existence to a digital computer game.
    I want her to wake now. I want her eyes to open and for her to pluck away the breathing tube like a strand of hair caught in the corner of her mouth.
    Wordlessly, Mrs. El iot points to a chair beside the bed. “The last time I watched my daughter sleeping she was eight years old. She had come down with pneumonia. I think she caught it at one of those public swimming pools. Every time she coughed it sounded like someone drowning on dry land.” I reach across the marble sheets and take Cate’s fingers in mine. I can feel her mother’s eyes upon me. A cold scrutiny. She does not want