Coma Boy

Coma Boy (working title) is my current novel, in its final stages of completion prior to seeking an agent. This section is Chapter 3 and was completed in Spring 2009.

Spring 2001

Peggy Strange first noticed that her son was stirring during her routine, after-work visit to Bethany House, the secluded specialist hospital where Adam had spent the first decade of his adult life along with the wasted coda of his childhood. In all that time, Peggy hadn't missed one single day's vigil at Adam's bedside, not one, and, as a result, had long since learned to recognise signs that gave away internal processes. A change in pitch of the rasp of his breathing might mean an infection of some sort. Stomach upsets were generally preceded by a yeasty smell. A sudden twitching of the head that ruffled up his pillow on the whole meant muscular cramps. Sometimes, she couldn't even say what these signs were, she just looked at Adam, stranded who-knew-where without bottle, cork or paper, and he was simply different. The dispensing chemist with the acre of garden and the tidy-little-sum-tucked-away-in-savings dissolved and an otherworldliness would take hold of her. She turned astrologer. Tea leaf reader. Medium to her son.

But today Peggy's different was a different sort of different and she was unable to pin down quite why. The only word that came to mind was electricity, and, though that made little sense to her, it did seem as if some sort of charge spread across the surface of Adam's skin, rather like the dark, flameless patches on the Christmas pudding she lit each year, more often than not in her own company but that was fine, really it was. For just a moment, Peggy's body withdrew, as if this charge was hungry and wanted to draw her in.

This was ridiculous. Ridiculous, ridiculous. All she'd have to do was lean over and grasp her son's warm, white, dark-haired wrist and this nonsense would come to a stop. Except the wrist twitched, briefly, then was still. What on earth? She pulled back, her own hand tingling. That charge again. And his eyes? Peggy brought herself close to the mound of starched white pillows against which her son was propped and inspected.

Adam's open-eyed periods, though rather creepy, no longer stirred up much hope. The doctors, with their tendency to re-iterate softly at each annual review how their occurrence was at random, had more or less made sure of that. Several times a year, they would simply open and stay open for anything between a few minutes and a few days. Nothing else would change. Not pulse, not blood pressure, just a tiny additional scratching on an ECG which could mean anything, so the doctors reminded her. Softly. Even so, in spite of reading up on vegetative states, there might still be a chance of Adam jerking into life, like after a penny dropped into one of the arcade machines on the pier, further up the estuary. This superstitious excitement could be snuffed out with a simple act. If she leaned into her son's gaze, looked into irises and pupils that were lifeless as cardboard, she would know that, whatever Adam's mind was seeing, it wasn't her. What a relief that would be. She would permit herself to laugh out loud at such foolishness and siphon off tears for later dispensing in the solitude of the bungalow.

More unsettling were the sounds. Mostly, these were grunts, like the grunts Bill would make, back when his sweaty, hairy body still slept beside hers. These, she could accept, mere mammalian goings-on beneath the level of the mind. Sometimes, however, slurred words came out, usually single ones – lily, morning, her, fags, away, how, can't. Short sentences also formed from time to time. The longest and most frequent of these was, quite bizarrely, she's in the water, any significance of which she was entirely unaware. Peggy had grown accustomed to these, too, even come to cherish them as evidence that her son still existed in some locked-away place, in spite of the doctors' explanations of randomly firing synapses. If only she could reach inside, spring that lock. She ought to be able to, she was his mother and there was surely no urge stronger in this world. So she would stroke the back of his head and await his return that, though most likely not now, would certainly be some day soon.

‘Everything's fine, Adam’ she would tell him. ‘Your silly old Mum's here. Everything is just fine.’

On this particular visit, during this particular open-eyed period, it was Adam's blinks that attracted her attention. These were agitated, like the rapid flutterings of someone having a heated debate, not his usual mindless and slow, almost drunken droopings of the lids and this time, when she leaned in, his eyes focused. It was unmistakeable. His pupils stretched out, shrank back and then stilled in each green-brown puddle of iris, holding steady as Peggy watched her son watch her.

No, surely not. Ridiculous, ridiculous.

She unplugged from those eyes, went to Adam's bedside shelf unit and overfilled a glass with tap water from an orange-lidded plastic jug.

Ridiculous, ridiculous.

As she gulped – and why precisely was she gulping? – she looked back at Adam on the bed.

Adam's eyes had followed her to where she stood. His head had even moved a little back into the mound of pillows as he strained to see her better. His lips had parted enough for a whistle.

Peggy drew the glass back from her lips. Some water slopped onto her fingers. Her hand was shaking. All of her was shaking. Her skin prickled with heat from cheeks to feet. A hot flush? Perhaps. She needed a ciggie. She was tired, very tired. She began fumbling in her handbag. What was it she was looking for?

Though Peggy would never admit that tiredness was the vindication of her existence, its causes were the mantra that she recited more or less constantly: the dispensing chemist's where she worked fulltime (plus overtime, not all of this paid) though badly managed, was also the busiest in the previously mentioned commuter town where she still lived. On top of her job and her daily visits to Bethany House, Peggy kept her bungalow and its acre of garden in immaculate condition, doing as much of the maintaining and improving as her ageing spine would let her. Above all, a close eye needed keeping on her hopeless, helpless family, which now included Bill's silly second wife, Jessica's useless long-term fiancé and their precious little daughter. If her attention wavered, as it had once been forced to do, given time the whole lot would doubtlessly topple into the same swirling pit of financial, moral and domestic hell which, for some reason, beckoned them back again and again and against which Peggy-s straight-talking and occasional bail-outs were the only protection. Such an effort would tire anyone, except just lately, the tiredness had become heavier and more darkly-packed and her increasingly erratic sleep was slowly losing potency as a tonic.

But such thoughts didn't get worked into Peggy's story. They were examples of poor, inconsistent writing and so she ripped up these pages and threw them on the floor.

Nonsense. Don't dwell, she would say. Better that she simply went outside to the little garden with the wooden footbridge over the fishpond, have a ciggie and watch the fish boil against each other in the water. Then, on her way back she would stop at the door of the nurses' station and tell them what had happened and they would laugh and say not to worry, it happens that way with them, too, had they really never told her? Because this was not how her son was going to wake up, and he was going to wake up, he was. When Adam did finally return, emerging through layers of consciousness like a mole burrowing up through the loam, Peggy knew she would be ready. She would have everything in order, including her wretched feelings. It would not be sudden. She would know what to do.

When Peggy looked at her son a third time, though he hadn't moved, he was no longer looking at her. Instead, his eyes were roaming in their sockets. He was taking in the room.

He was awake.

Yes.

No.

Yes.

Yes.

Peggy's body stiffened, as if doing so might control the shaking. That person looking through her son's open eyes – was it really her son? If not, then who was guiding his eyes around the room? Until now, Peggy had never, not for one moment, doubted that the son who would eventually wake up would be any different to the fifteen year old boy who had, without dropping hints first, breaking all contractual agreements, walked off the set. His body's transformation from boy to man was no more than a symptom of his condition and his recovery would restore him entirely. There would be no blemishes. That his newly-opened eyes could ever be wandering around in a stubbly face that darkened daily had simply never been part of the picture. This was as if he had left as one actor and returned as another.

And though she ached to look into those eyes – and Peggy really did feel an ache, just below her heart, beneath her ribs, like a stitch after mowing the lawn – she couldn't bring herself to plug in.

Not yet.

Not like this.

Help. She had to fetch help. That was what people did in such situations. Given strength and purpose again, she turned away from the searchlight stare of her son and, enforcing calm on her breathing, her step, her over-revving heart, she walked to the door of the nurses' station, spitting out between breaths: ’There's something happening, please come.’

The two duty nurses looked up from their paperwork, curious at first, then both stood, firm and efficient, though not yet excitable. As they left the station and Peggy began to follow, the ward seemed warmer, the air more starved of oxygen and a weight crushed her frame. It was like being buried in old blankets.

‘Are you feeling alright?’ asked one of the nurses. ‘You look pale. Do you need some air?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure’

‘Yes.’

But Peggy's guts betrayed her and began to spasm, her mouth flooding with drool. And though she was in a hospital, where sick and wee and poo were no more shameful or unexpected than a crossword clue, she was absolutely not going to fuss. They must worry about her son, not her. And so Peggy strode, taking care not to run, in the opposite direction to Adam's bed, to the ladies loos, where she splashed her face at the sink with the cold water that wasn't for drinking, then locked herself into a cubicle where she vomited violently into the toilet bowl, spattering the black shawl that flapped around her shoulders and thinking thank goodness this toilet bowl wasn't used by men.

Peggy rested there a while, slumped on the microbe-free lino, breathing in the cleaner-heavy air, leaning her head against the unsteady cubicle wall. From time to time, she bent back over the bowl, spitting into it, certain more vomit was on its way, but none was. She felt vaguely euphoric. Not because of the enormity of what was about to happen, but because of the enormity of what had just passed, like the moment after giving birth, exhausted from so many hours and mornings and months of effort, right before the scarlet-glistening child is presented to the mother and nothing can be the same again. Here, in the cubicle was such a moment of transition and it was all told through the body for once, not through morals and plots and stories.

Then the giddiness subsided and the blood began to return to her cheeks and after dry-swallowing one of her tablets, then another, Peggy returned to the ward and a world pregnant with words where her son was thrashing feebly like a tranquilised wild beast caught in a net. Cool again, she went to him, her eyes kept safely on the nurses around the bed, needing to feel one with them, to draw strength from them as she held his hand. The grip back was faint. Trusting. Did Adam recognise it was his mother?s hand he held? Would he know her at all?

‘A doctor is on his way,’ said the nurse. ‘I've just given him a shot to take the edge off.’

‘Thanks,’ said Peggy, failing to work out what one ought to say next and only managing a feeble: ‘Well this is all rather unexpected.’ There really was much too much else to say.

As Adam relaxed again into the pillows, she turned to him and said the line she'd revised and rehearsed to herself for close on thirteen years.

‘Welcome back.’ She traced the curve of his cheeks and chin with her fingers. Then, to stifle the tears, she improvised, smiling: ‘You've caused us all an awful lot of trouble.’

(Continues…)