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pain—”
    “Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Gail interrupted. “I mean, it might signal she’s coming back to us.”
    “Patients in deep comas can still experience pain,” Warren said, his voice flat. “How fair is that?” he added.
    Casey could almost see him shaking his head. This was definitely her Warren, she thought, recognizing the familiar rhythms of his voice, the gentle cadence of his tone. Oh, Warren. You’ve found me. I knew you would. I knew you wouldn’t let me stay in this awful, dark place.
    “I can’t believe this is Casey,” Gail was saying. “The last time I saw her, she looked so beautiful, so full of life.”
    “She still looks beautiful,” Warren said, and Casey detected a hint of defensiveness in his voice. “The most beautiful girl in the world,” he said, his voice drifting away.
    Casey pictured his eyes filling with tears and knew he was fighting to keep them from falling. If only she could wipe away those tears, she thought. If only she could kiss him and make everything better.
    “What’d you girls talk about that day anyway?” he asked. “You never told me much about your lunch.”
    “There wasn’t much to tell,” Gail said, a little laugh bracketing each end of her short response. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember what we talked about. The usual, I guess.” She laughed again, although the soft sound was more sad than joyful. “I didn’t realize I should be attaching any more weight to it than normal. I didn’t realize it might be our last time together. Oh, God.” A loud sob cut through the air, like a sudden thunderclap.
    Oh, Gail. Please don’t cry. It’ll be all right. I’m going to get better. I promise.
    “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting,” Warren was saying. “This must bring back painful memories.”
    Casey pictured Gail lifting both shoulders in a gentle shrug, then tucking a few wayward curls behind her right ear. “Mike was in a hospice for two months before he died,” Gail said, talking about the husband she’d lost to leukemia five years earlier. “There wasn’t anything anybody could do but watch him fade away. But at least we had a few years to prepare,” she continued. “Although you’re never really prepared,” she added in the next breath. “Not when the person is so young.”
    “Casey isn’t going to die,” Warren insisted.
    He’s right. The doctors have misdiagnosed my condition. This whole thing is a big mistake.
    “I won’t even consider taking her off life support.”
    “Taking her off life support?” This time it was Gail who asked the question. “When did the doctors suggest taking her off life support?”
    “They haven’t. They agree it’s way too early to be thinking that way.”
    “Of course it is. Then who?”
    “Who do you think?”
    “Oh,” said Gail. “I didn’t realize Drew had been here lately.”
    My sister’s been here?
    “Are you kidding? She hasn’t been here since right after the accident. Says she can’t bear seeing her sister in this condition.”
    “Sounds like Drew,” Gail said.
    “She called last night for an update,” Warren continued. “When I told her there’d been no change, she demanded to know how long I was going to let Casey suffer this way. She said she’d known her a lot longer than I have, and that there’s no way her sister would want to be a vegetable for the rest of her life …”
    A vegetable? No, the doctors have made an unfortunate mistake. They’ve upset everyone unnecessarily.
    “… kept alive by a bunch of tubes and ventilators.”
    “That’s only until she starts breathing again on her own,” Gail said forcefully. It had been a long time since Casey had heard her friend sound so intense. “Casey will get through this. The broken bones will mend. Her body will repair itself. She’ll regain consciousness. You’ll see. Casey will be as good as she always was. This coma is just her body’s way of healing itself. We should be