She doubted she could, but she was willing to try. Heart pounding, she circled around to the patient’s head and was about to insert the laryngoscope into his mouth when she noticed the man’s eyelids were flickering.

She straightened in surprise. “He’s conscious.”

“What?”

“I think he’s awake!”

“Then why isn’t he breathing?”

“Bag him again!” said Claire, stepping aside to let the respiratory tech back in. As the mask was replaced, as more oxygen was forced into the man’s lungs, Claire swiftly reviewed the situation. The man’s eyelids were indeed twitching, as though he was struggling to open them. Yet he was not breathing, and his limbs remained flaccid.

“What’s the history?” she asked.

“Came in through the ER this afternoon,” said McNally. “He’s a volunteer fireman who collapsed at the scene. We don’t know if it was smoke inhalation or a cardiac event-they had to drag him out of the building. We admitted him for superficial burns and a possible MI.”

“He’s been doing fine up here,” an ICU nurse said. “In fact, he was talking to me just a little while ago. I gave him his dose of gentamicin and he suddenly went bradycardic. That’s when I realized he’d stopped breathing.”

“Why’s he getting gentamicin?” asked Claire.

“The burns. One of the wounds got pretty contaminated.”

“Look, we can’t keep bagging him all night,” said McNally. “Did you call the surgeon?”

“Done,” a nurse answered.

“Then let’s get him prepped for the tracheotomy.”

Claire said, “He may not need one, Gordon.”

McNally looked skeptical. “I couldn’t get that ET tube in. Can you?”

“Let’s try something else first.” Claire turned to the nurse. “Give him an amp of calcium chloride, IV."

The nurse glanced questioningly at McNally, who shook his head in puzzlement.

“Why on earth are you giving calcium?” he asked.

“Just before he stopped breathing,” said Claire, “he got the antibiotic, right?”

“Yeah, for the open burn wound.”

“Then he had the respiratory arrest. But he hasn’t lost consciousness. I think he’s still awake. What does that mean?”

Suddenly McNally understood. “Neuromuscular paralysis. From the gentamicin?”

She nodded. “I've never seen it happen, but it’s been reported. And it’s reversed by calcium.”

“I’m giving the calcium chloride now,” said the nurse. Everyone watched. The prolonged silence was broken only by the intermittent whoosh of oxygen being bagged through the mask. The patient’s eyelids responded first. Slowly they fluttered open, and he looked up, struggling to focus on Claire’s face.

“He’s moving air!” said the respiratory tech.

Seconds later, the patient coughed, took a noisy breath, and coughed again. He reached up and tried to push away the mask.

“I think he wants to talk,” said Claire. “Let him speak.”

The patient responded with a look of profound relief as the mask was removed from his face.

“Sir, did you want to say something?” Claire asked.

The man nodded. Everyone leaned forward, eager to hear his first words.

“Please,” he whispered.

“Yes?” prompted Claire.

“Let’s not… do that… again.”

As laughter broke out all around her, Claire patted the man on the shoulder.

Then she looked at the nurses. “I think we can cancel the tracheotomy.”

“I’m glad someone around here still has a sense of humor,” McNally said as he and Claire walked out of the cubicle a few minutes later. “It’s been pretty grim recently.” He paused in the nurses’ station and looked at the bank of monitors.

“I don’t know where we’re going to put anyone else.”

Claire was startled to see eight cardiac rhythms tracing across the screens. She swung around, her gaze sweeping the ICU in disbelief.

Every bed was filled.

“What on earth has been going on?” said Claire. “When I made rounds this morning, there was only my one patient in here.”

“It started on my shift. First a little girl with a skull fracture. Then a wreck up on Barnstown Road. Then some nutty kid sets his house on fire.” McNally shook his head. “It’s been going nonstop in the ER all day, and the patients still keep coming in.”

Over the hospital address system, they heard the page: “Dr. McNally to the ER.

Dr. McNally to the ER.”

He sighed and turned to leave. “It must be the full moon.”

Noah shed his jacket and lay it across the boulder. The granite felt warm, a day’s worth of sunshine radiating back from the stone. Turning, he squinted across the lake. The afternoon was windless, the water a glassy, brilliant mirror reflecting sky and leafless trees.

“I wish it was summer again, said Amelia.

He looked up at her. She was perched on the highest rock, chin resting on her blue-jeaned knees. Her blond hair was tucked behind one ear, revealing the streak of healing flesh on her temple. He wondered if she’d have a scar, and almost wished there would be one-just a small scar, so she would never forget him. Every morning, looking in her mirror, she’d see that faint trace of the bullet and would remember Noah Elliot.

Amelia tilted her face toward the sun. “I wish we could skip winter. Just one winter.”

He clambered up onto her rock and sat down beside her. Not too close, not too far. Almost, but not quite, touching. “I don’t know, I’m kind of looking forward to it.”

“You haven’t seen what it’s like here.”

“So what is it like?”

She stared across the lake with what was almost an expression of dread. “In a few weeks, it’ll start to freeze over. First there’ll be patches of ice along the shore. By December, it’ll be frozen all the way across, thick enough to walk on. That’s when it starts to make these sounds at night.”

“What sounds?”

“Like someone moaning. Like someone in pain.”

He started to laugh, but then she looked at him, and he fell silent.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she said. “Sometimes I wake up at night and I think I’m having a nightmare. But it’s just the lake. Making those horrible sounds.”

“How can it?”

“Mrs. Horatio says She stopped, remembering that Mrs. Horatio was dead. She looked back at the water. “It’s because of the ice. The water freezes and expands. It’s always pushing, pushing against the banks, trying to escape, but it can’t because it’s trapped. That’s when you hear the moaning. It’s the pressure building up, building until it can’t take any more. Until it finally crushes itself.” She murmured: “No wonder it makes such terrible sounds.”

He tried to imagine what the lake would look like in January. The snow drifting against the banks, the water turned to a glaring sheet of ice. But today the sun was bright in his eyes, and with the warmth radiating off the stone, the only images that came to mind were of summer.

“Where do the frogs go?” he asked.

She turned to him. “What?”

“The frogs. And the fish and things. I mean, the ducks all migrate, they get away from here. But what do the frogs do? Do you think they just freeze up like green Popsicles?”

He’d meant to make her laugh, and he was glad to see a smile appear on her face.

“No, they don’t become Popsicles, silly. They bury themselves in the mud, way at the bottom.” She picked up a pebble and tossed it into the water. “We used to have lots and lots of frogs around here. I remember catching bucketfuls of them when I was little.”

“Used to?”

“There aren’t so many now. Mrs. Horatio says Again, that pause of remembered loss. Again, that sad sigh before she continued. “She said that it could be acid rain.”

“But I heard plenty of frogs this summer. I used to sit here and listen to them.”

“I wish I’d known about you then,” she said wistfully.

“I knew about you.”

She looked at him in puzzlement. Reddening, he averted his gaze. “I used to watch you in school,” he said. “Every lunchtime in the cafeteria, I’d be looking at you. I guess you didn’t notice.”