The following excerpt is from the opening text of the first chapter.
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Henry sat quietly, watching her breath flow gently in and out, like waves lapping almost silently on the shore of a mountain lake. She looked to all the world to be asleep, just dozing as people do. But she was not asleep, not in the usual sense. The proper word was coma. When he was young, he didn't know that coma and comma were different words. Now, again, he was not so sure. After all, a comma just signified a pause in the flow of thoughts, a brief rest before going on. And didn't a coma mean much the same thing?

Perhaps a coma was more like a comma followed by a question mark, indicating an element of doubt, an uncertainty as to whether the flow would continue later or just trail off and die of neglect or lack of interest. Yes, that was it. He looked at her hard now, trying to interpret her behavior. Long ago he had realized that we always behave and that all behavior is communicative, purposive. Even a catatonic is saying, in effect, "I am unwilling or unable to act." Was that what she was trying to tell him now? Was she still even there? It had been 92 hours since the "accident," four long days since Amelia had committed a single voluntary act. That was indeed a long, though far from record setting, pause. Yet somehow he knew. She was still, if not there, at least planning to return.

As he stared at her face he could almost swear he could see those iridescent green eyes staring out through closed lids, seeing everything and nothing, at once oblivious and omniscient. He stood slowly, absent-mindedly, and stepped across the hospital room to her side. His hand reached gently out, coming to rest palm down, between her breasts. Eyes closed, he felt her breathe, felt her heart droning on, like the beacon of a forgotten lighthouse, warbling on as long as the power continued, as long as the mechanism was operable, no ships in sight, none at all, not for a long time, maybe never again. Who knew?

He stood by her, feeling his hand move with her breath, tremble with her heart and it was strangely consoling. She was not dead, of that he was sure, not while her heart pumped, not while her lungs filled and emptied, filled and emptied. He knew what that was about, too.

This was not his first experience with coma. He had sat like this with his mother, 20 years ago, on her last night on Earth. She had lain quietly like this too. Her breath was, of course, more erratic, more like a buoy at the mouth of a large river, bouncing high then low, then abruptly then smoothly. And he didn't touch her breast as he did now. They were intimate too, but in a different way. Their intimacy was of an intensely mental and at times emotional nature, but not so much physical. Then, he had sat in stillness on a gray metal chair at the foot of her hospital bed, waiting, for what he did not know.

There had been no sound that morning save his mother's labored breathing. No one was stirring. The day shift had not yet arrived. Nothing filled the room then but her breathing, her breathing and the distant waft of alcohol and chlorine.

Several times she paused for a long time after an exhalation, as if debating whether to go ontake in another breath and another and another and he would drift into his own thoughts , but would then againlater she would repeat the pattern. This had happened countless times throughout the . A few minutes night and early morningThe day shift arrived, and still she breathed. The night shift straggled out, their white . rubbersqueaking politely on the corridor tiles. Breakfast preparations began. And on she -soled shoes breathedo'clock. . Until nearly ten

He was somewhere else, he had long since forgotten where, when she paused again. It took several seconds before he noticed the length of that pause. He jerked himself back to the room in which he'd left his body and stared at her intently. Seconds went by. Nothing. He felt his pulse lurch. Nothing. Then he stood abruptly, still unable to move closer. Silence. Too much time had passed now. This was not just another pause. He rushed out of the room looking up and down the hall for a doctor, a nurse, anyone in white. He snapped his head back and forth like a small child looking dutifully both ways before crossing a busy street, never mind that life hung in the balance. No one in sight. Then he shouted, first one way, then the other. He didn't remember what he had shouted. It might have been, "Help!" or "Somebody come quick!" or anything. It didn't matter now, any more than it had then. What mattered was that no one seemed to hear him.

He rushed back into the room to see if she had relented and taken another voluntary breath. Nothing. Back out into the hall, this time he saw a nurse at the nursing station and shouted to her. She ambled casually toward him, and he shouted louder for her to come quickly, as if the urgency of his voice would be contagious. She did pick up her pace a little, but still it was nowhere near the all-out sprint he wanted so desperately, that he expected.

Now that she was coming, he lunged back into the room, not knowing what else to do, still hoping that it was all a mistake, that she had been sneaking breaths while he wasn't looking, or breathing shallowly, invisibly. But she simply lay there with a stillness that even the moon would envy.

Then the nurse swooped in and, squeaking over to the bedside, groped for a pulse, first on the wrist, then the throat. Nothing. She turned to him and said the words, the words that had to be said, the words that were always said, by doctors, nurses, friends, family, lovers, and even strangers.

"She's gone."
That was all. Not that he needed the words to know. He had known for a minute now, or was it two? or three? But it wasn't real until he heard the words from the stranger in white, the healer's assistant.

He wanted to demand that she call a doctor, there must be something more to be done. It just doesn't end like that, not the life of one's only mother. Without a word, without a twitch, without a sound. Where were the heroics? The chest beating and last-ditch efforts? "She's gone," as if he'd dialed a wrong number. "She's gone," as if that's all there was to it.

The nurse didn't even pull the sheet up over her face, the way she was supposed to, the way it happened in the movies. She just turned on her squeaky heels and walked out of the room, leaving him there with only the earthly remains of his mother for company. He looked at her again. He tried to comprehend that she had really gone. But where? The question didn't even seem to make any sense. Where was there for her to go? Had he been more lucid, he might have just settled for an indefinite "away."

Now it was happening all over again. The vigil, the breathing, the waiting. But this time it was different. He knew that Amelia would be back. No one else believed it, not like he did. But no one else had had the dreams, the dreams where they talked and touched and laughed and cried, together, alive and well, both of them. No one else felt the vitality he did, standing next to her, his hand still resting lightly on her breast where he so loved to rest his head. No one else had been touched by her as he had, deep, to the core, to the epicenter of his very being, so intimately that she touched him still in ways he wouldn't even attempt to describe. For to describe, one must first comprehend, and that was not possible, not yet. When she returned, maybe then he would understand, maybe then he could grasp the force of their connection. For now, it was just a mystery, a puzzling, beautiful, and unspeakably valid truth.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, gingerly as if not to wake her, never moving his hand, and began to speak to her in soft, whipped cream tones, like music with the tempo removed.

"Good morning, love. I'm still here. I still love you. But then you know that, don't you. It's going to be a beautiful day. Just a few traces of cirrus clouds to keep the sky from being a bore. We wouldn't want that, would we?" He paused, as if giving her time to answer. In, out, in. Nothing more.

He sat silently then, looking out the window as the sun rose above the darkened mountains, as the moon set over the sea, and was soon lost in his own thoughts again, even as her breath slid in, out, in.

It was interesting, he thought, that life begins with an inhalation that is not preceded by an exhalation, and ends with an exhalation not followed by an inhalation. That means that we always have exactly the same number of each in our lives. Invariably. By definition. How curious, he mused, as her chest rose and set, rose and set, carrying his hand with it like a boat upon the tide.

And wasn't it the moon whose appearance must have stirred earth's dead oceans, breathing life into them gradually, over who knew how many millions of years, playing her magical tune to them like some huge, silver, cosmic pied piper. And did she sing too? "Come dance with me and I will give thee life." And they did. And she did. And now that lunar respiration, ancient as water, new as lava, moved in every living creature in our biosphere, maybe in the universe, and she's still there, playing her silver ball of a flute to keep time.

And isn't it woman who is so identified with the moon? And isn't it woman whose body, after a certain age, breathes with it? And isn't it that special, that magical part of her body which allows her to play her role in the perpetuation of her species? And isn't that the part too which dances with the moon, like lovers late at night in the light of that self-same orb?

And wasn't this woman's form laying before him born under the sign of Cancer, said to be ruled by the moon? And isn't it her breast upon which his hand rides, dory-like, in time with her own tide? And isn't that why he loves her so? Because she lets him ride with her, wants him to, needs him to. Even now, as her tide slips silently in, out, in, even as she is nowhere to be found.

Yes. She is not far away, and she will be back in the fullness of her own time. He doesn't care if they all think he's crazy, the doctors, the nurses, the friends, family, and strangers. He knows because she tells him, with every breath she takes. He knows because the moon rises, like it did last night, and sets, as it does now, and always rises again. He knows because as the earth breathes, it is alive, because as she breathes, she too lives. He knows because they are joined by that thin, powerful, invisible thread: breath. Hers. His. The earth's. Life's.

He sits on the edge of her bed, feeling the tide in her, and waits for her return.

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