fiction | Peter Farrar

COMAS

AT FIRST I SAW straight up to a ceiling. Tiny holes in paint fine as skin pores. Crack jagging across a corner. Wisps of dirty cobwebs.
    They didn’t notice my eyes open. My brother eased cards down. Concentration was his favourite game. Addicted, he told me once. Just like a pack a day all smoked down to the butt. Or glasses of scotch, hot and rolling like a girlfriend’s tongue down his throat. And by the window stood my mother, older than I remembered. She leaned on glass, gazing out at trees bare in winter.
    “Mum,” my brother said. She turned from the window, her shoulder over haze and soft light. “He’s awake.”
    She looked at me. Her worn face spasmed. She rushed over, ricocheting off a table.
    “Oh God, my God, he’s back!”, she turned to my brother. Her hands smoothed my forehead, over and over, pushing hair back. Her face lowered, cheek flattening against mine. My brother loomed into view. “Call a nurse!”, she said across a pillow. He rushed away. “You’re back with us. Can you hear me? Thought there was no way. Doctors told me that you know. Said you had all this brain damage. But I knew. Never gave up. Held your hand every day. Read you your favourite books. Thank you Virginia Woolf.” She laughed.
    Skin around her throat was mottled red. She mopped her tears off my cheeks. They glistened under her eyes like those silvery trails snails leave. A nurse appeared, face bobbing behind my mother. She looked from me to a line of numbers glowing on a screen. The nurse’s voice cut through my mother’s. She asked if I could speak. I tried, summoned breath, concentrated, the word I wanted to say like a weight I couldn’t lift.
    “Move your eyes side to side if you can hear me,” the nurse said. Left to right they swiveled.
    “A miracle,” my mother said, hand over her mouth.
    “A beginning,” the nurse said, drawing back.
    “Who would have thought?”, my brother said. “After three years. Who would have thought?”

NIGHTS WEREN’T ALL that different. Still and black with shapes jutting. Might as well still be in a coma. They even pulled the curtain shut. With my oxygen disconnected, tried to speak again. Tried a single word, say it so that it would hang and hover in the dark. Pictured it in mid air, dangling softly as a smoke ring. It moved in me as sides of my throat tried to shape it. Then a nurse scuffed out of the gloom.
    “Everything okay?”, she asked. “Blood pressure a little up,” she said to the line of numbers.
    They spoon fed me breakfast. Fruit puree they called it. It smeared over my lips and face. The nurse opened her mouth in little gulps as the spoon slid between my lips.
    The curtains opened. From up here saw a rain squall engulfing suburbs, angling down like a shaft of grey torch light. My brother arrived. Knew it was him even though couldn’t turn my head. He was always in a hurry, his voice and footsteps giving it away.
    “How are you?”, he said. “Even Jesus couldn’t stage what you’ve done. Talk about a second coming. Bet those three years were worth the wait when you had that sponge bath this morning!” He sat at the end of the bed. His eyes swept around the room the way moths circle lights.
    “Guess you’ll be speaking soon,” he said quietly. “Probably start with lifting a finger. Pointing to cards with yes or no written on them. Then your first word. What will it be? Beer? Smokes? Julie? Julie’s long gone mate. She kept it up for six months. Sat right there, next to you. So close you touched her every time you breathed out. But it was like she was slipping into her own coma. Saying less every week. So I told her to go. Get on with her life. Was tough on her but she stopped coming. Good old mum never forgave her but it was for the best.”
    The squall was gone. Streets and gardens glistened. If they opened the window I’d hear the sluicing of passing cars. Musty scent of rain like smell of soil watered at the end of a hot day would blow in. Icy drizzle graze my face.
    “Mate,” he said. “Thought I’d better visit early, before the others. It’s just . . . I don’t want anything said. When you are able to talk I mean.” He smiled nervously, sliding up to my end of the bed. “Been hard enough. Mum so depressed with everything that happened. The old man taken off and all. You probably don’t know about that either. Well he shot through. Visits you now and then. Probably so he can have that cup of tea off the trolley that would normally be meant for you. Anyway, she’s been through a lot. Wouldn’t want her to know what happened with you . . . with us.”
    Would have backed away if I could. Walked out on his tanned face, blotched orange of dried bait and nicotine on fingers. But couldn’t escape him or that memory. It’d been hot for days, they’d been predicting storms. Each night thunder rumbled out of horizons, dry winds blowing against our skins crusting with salt. Julie, my brother and I met at the beach to watch the lightning. We’d been competing for Julie, trying to top each other’s jokes, stealing little brushes against her skin. Then we brawled, rolling over and over, his sand-coated chest scraping over me until we slapped into cold water. I’d strained to hold him under lapping waves that slopped over his face. Held him in rage, until he coughed and Julie ran away. We argued all the way to the pier. Even when I shouted to leave me alone and I’d walked over its timbers to the end, where the orange light flashed. He’d come up behind me, hands thudding into my back, so that I fell into the clusters of black mussels and planks below.
    “Never a day when I don’t think of it,” he said. “Was just that second. A heartbeat of blind anger. Mate, I’ll do anything, just don’t tell Mum. She thinks you slipped. That made it easier on her. Christ, I’d give you Julie, or anything you want.” He stiffened. “Well, it worked out that way. Julie and me. We both went through so much. All that time comforting each other grew into being together.”
    He put his hand over mine. The back of it flexed as he squeezed, even though I couldn’t feel it. His gaze raked over me. Then he left. Went to call after him. You bastard, you’ve had your three years, you’ve got Julie, you’ve got your legs.
    Outside rain fell again. It blew soundlessly to the window, streaking along glass. A nurse came in, smiling, unhooking the clipboard at the end of my bed. She wrote, asking me how I was and leaving without an answer.
    My father walked in. A woman I’d never seen before wound her arms around him.
    “Here he is,” he said. “It’s a crime you know. Lying here, rotting away. They should have turned their machines off the day he arrived. What good does it do? People can’t get on with their lives.”
    The woman looked up at him. She was so much shorter. She must be forever looking up into his nose, over the scroll of his bottom lip.
    “We were never close,” he said. “He couldn’t do anything I showed him. Stood over him in the shed, showing him how to cut circles out of wood. How to build a letterbox, dog kennel. Couldn’t get it. Just find him in his room writing poetry. Told him you’ll never get anywhere. Learn the practicals. But not him. Once we’d talked about the weather we’d just stare at walls, had nothing in common.”
    The woman nodded, slithering her arms around him further.
    “His eyes are open,” she said.
    My father tilted his head, concentrating on me. He took a step closer.
    “Son?” he said softly.
    “The oxygen has been taken off,” she said behind him.
    He bent down, face close to mine, so that I could see stubble, and veins in his eyes.
    “Can you hear me?”, he said slowly, as if I was stupid, as well as everything else. Flicked my eyes side to side.
    “See that? The way his eyes moved?”, she said, beside him now.
    “Just some kind of twitch,” he muttered, lifting his head away. “Incredible that his eyes are open but let’s face it, even if he could talk, we’d have little to say. It’d be the same, coma or no coma.”
    “He might be able to hear you!”, she said.
    He pushed a visitor’s chair across to her with his foot. She sat, handbag in lap. He leaned on the bed. Outside clouds hung low, scudding along, shapes of silken hills and valleys.
    My mother walked in. She hesitated in the doorway, her face hard.
    “You,” she said. My father’s girlfriend leapt up.
    “I’m entitled to be here,” he said. “He’s still my son.”
    She came over to me, unwinding a scarf.
    “How are you feeling?”, she asked me.
    My father shook his head.
    “Face it. Why don’t you realise? He isn’t going to sit up, tell you he’s great then ask you outside to shoot a few baskets! Stop living in denial. He’s a vegetable. It’s as if you are in your own coma that you can’t come out of to face it!”
    My mother closed her eyes, waiting for him to finish.
    “We’re going,” he said behind her shoulder. He stepped around into my view. “See you Son,” he said. “Couple of sets of tennis would be good next time.”
    His girlfriend stared at the floor.
    “Ron,” my mother called. “Come over here. Stand next to me.”
    The room went silent. Out in the corridor a trolley clacked by. He came over slowly, bending so that our faces drew level.
    “Have you heard what your father said? Move your eyes side to side twice for yes.”
    I flicked back and forth twice. The room blurred across eyes. My gaze finished at the window, seeing out to lines of cloud rather than his face. But even from the corners of eyes saw him draw back, face grim.
    “Doesn’t mean a thing. Stop putting the poor kid through your exams. It’s like you’ve brought him back from dog obedience school to do tricks.”
    “Wait,” she said, pushing on. “Look at him again.”
    Shyly my father leaned over once more. Sweat shone above his lip.
    “Do you love your father now?”, she said, drawing out the words. Bitter satisfaction gleamed in her eyes. I stared back at her. “Twice means yes. Once is no.”
I waited. Thought I’d cry and I wouldn’t be able to control what my eyes did anyway. Maybe my body couldn’t make tears. My parents’ breathing was out of time. Their arms almost touched. Held my eyes so still wasn’t even sure I’d blinked.
    “What’d I tell you?” he said, looking relieved. She hung her head. “What’s your next trick? Shock therapy? Transplant monkey tissue? Why not give him garlic? Might not bring back his brain but he’ll never catch a cold!” He spun towards his girlfriend, jerking his head towards the door.
    “They’ll do tests you know!”, my mother shouted after him. “They can check if there’s electrical impulses. Then you’ll see!”
    I heard him leave. Listened to each of his footsteps. His impatient swerve at the door. His wide strides along the corridor. His crooked path around the tea trolley. Every step until the hushed conversations of visitors and my mother’s sobbing layered over them. I would have gone back to being in a coma then but could only turn my eyes to the window, where it was becoming dark. They’d be pulling the curtains any minute now.

© Peter Farrar

Overland 185–summer 2006, pp.66–68