Comatose Living

A 2,200-word Short Story / Coma Chameleon

A few years back, when I was really down on my luck, this guy I knew told me a story about his little brother which (being in that current state of mind) took root in my soul. It possessed me. I couldn’t get it out of my head. As soon as I heard this story, something changed, some critical part of my psyche had been altered. I’d been open to any and all suggestions, and for some reason this was the one that took hold. So, anyways, the story was this:

Anytime this guy’s little brother didn’t get his way, the kid would lie down on the floor and thrash around. And one day, when their mom told him he couldn’t get a 4^th glass of sweet peach tea, he commenced to doing his thing. Thrashing around. Laying on the floor on his side, he bent himself forward nearly touching toe-to-finger, then flung his head and arms backwards with all the speed and power he could muster, completely arching his back, nearly touching toe-to-finger in the backwards direction. He continued to repeat this motion for some time. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

Usually, this went on for a couple minutes till he tired himself out. Then he would stand up red-faced and go stamping out of the room in a flame-hot rage with his fists straight down at his sides, nerdily. Everyone in the room would laugh and return to whatever they’d been doing beforehand. But on this particular day, the boy would not stand back up and no one would laugh.

So, his family was sitting there, entirely disgusted and annoyed, once again watching him flail and thrash. They just sat staring at him with blank faces. He was moving along the ground as he flailed, inchworm fashion. Then, finally, as he bent forward and touched finger-to-toe, he loaded up all his power for a fully torqued fling (not realizing his altered positioning in the room) and threw his head back with all his might directly into the corner of a very thick mahogany coffee table leg.

The lights went out for him, and he has been in a coma ever since (or had been at the time, who knows now). I walked home that night from wherever the hell we were, doing whatever the hell we were doing, but that matters none. Because I had just one word on my mind, playing on repeat, like a hypnotic chant. Coma.

Coma coma coma, coma coma. Coma coma coma, coma coma. Coma coma coma, coma coma.

His little brother was being served night and day, taken care of, no rent to pay, linens changed, hospital gown changed, diaper changed. The life of a young prince. All from flailing into a coma. And I wanted in on that. The idea struck me. I could become a Coma Chameleon.

***

The next thing was a lot of beeping and then waking. To my right, a cop stood in the corner nearest the door, shuffling from one foot to the other chomping on a golf pencil, staring down at a folded crossword puzzle book. To my left was another patient in a bed, an old lady sat in a chair next to him.

I cleared my throat and said, “What happened?”

“Oh, you’re awake!”

“He’s awake?” The cop asked closing the crossword book and moving towards the other bed.

“No, not mine. Him,” the lady said, pointing to me.

The cop shifted his gaze towards me, then leaned back into the wall, “Oh…”

The lady rose from the visitor’s chair and walked to my side of the room. She sat down and patted me on the forearm.

“What happened?” I asked again.

“You’ve been out cold for the past 24 hours. I can’t tell you much other than that, I’m sure doctors will be in soon.”

There was a crackle on the cop’s walkie, he held it to his mouth and walked out into the hallway. The lady hopped from the chair with surprising speed as soon as the door closed behind him.

She ran to her bag on the other side of the room, pulling a cheeseburger from within. She unwrapped it quickly and shoved it towards the man in the other bed, paper rustling and crinkling.

“Here, hurry!” she whisper-yelled. He chewed, fast, with his eyes closed.

“Oh, he is awake? Should we let the cop know? He seemed—”.

“Shhh!” she hissed at me. “No! He hasn’t woken up.”

“What?” I said.

The police officer returned to the room clicking the walkie back onto his belt clip. The man’s mouth stopped moving. Every once in a while, he would open one eye very slightly, and if the cop was busy with the crossword he would cautiously and deliberately chew.

At 4:48 when the cop left a bit early for shift change, I decided to speak up.

“Hey, sorry, I don’t know your name, so you aren’t actually in a coma or asleep or whatever?” I asked.

“Nah, not really. It’s Jimothy. Jimmy.”

“What the hell, how long has this been going on?”

“Couple months now, I guess.”

“No way. You too?” I mumbled quietly to myself. “Why? Aren’t you bored out of your mind?”

“Man, yeah, kind of. At first it was just to avoid the cops. They’re trying to charge me with something for wrecking my jet ski into their patrol boat. But then I realized, man, it’s like, I don’t have to go to work, don’t have to pay my rent, don’t have to listen to my ex-wife bitch about what she thinks I owe her. I just get to lay here all day everyday man, it’s like my dream life. And my mom brings me food every day. What more could I want?”

“Damn it. You’re right. I wish I would have been able to hide my waking…”

“Dude, the doctor hasn’t come in yet, you’re good!”

“Wait, that’s true.” I said getting excited. “The cop saw me though...”

“That asshole wasn’t paying attention. The guy they post here changes constantly. And he won’t remember you even if he comes back, people come and go from that bed every day. Don’t worry man, you’re in the clear.”

***

So that’s how we spent the next week together, feigning comas, shitting and pissing into adult diapers, and eating homemade goods and pursed cheeseburgers from his mother, Barb. I was finally left alone, nothing from the outside world could impose itself on my peace of mind. It was going great.

That was until it was all shattered in one instant, by just a few feline follicles. The cop assigned to the room that day was a lively one who couldn’t sit still. He was pacing back and forth with loud thumping steps, and he appeared to have cat hair all over his uniform. These simple, fine, feline follicles would be the end of our hospital heyday. With each thudding step some hairs dislodged from his shoulders and took flight, twirling and swirling through the air right towards Jimmy. Jimmy sneezed. Comatose people don’t sneeze.

I laid with my eyes clamped tight. The first sneeze went by unnoticed. The cop didn’t even look up from his pacing path. The second time he sneezed I heard the cop stop in his tracks. He stood still and silent for a few moments. Then his boots stomped towards us, I could tell that he stopped right at the foot of Jimmy’s bed.

“Did he sneeze?” the cop asked Barb sitting in the chair by the bed.

“Oh, no of course not. That was me.”

“Are you sure he didn’t?”

“Definitely, yes. He didn’t sneeze officer, it was me.”

He left the room and came back with a nurse.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I heard him sneeze,” he said to her.

“Well, he doesn’t look like he’s awake, and it doesn’t look like there has been any recent changes to his vitals.”

“What if he’s faking it? Can you tickle him or something?” The cop dug his fingers into his Jimmy’s armpit.

“Hey!” Barb said.

“Sir, please don’t do that. I’m going to have to ask you to stop,” the nurse said.

The nurse left the room, and the cop followed her into the hallway. We could hear them talking to other—multiple—members of the staff.

“Man. Luckily I’m not ticklish under my arm but if he happens to try my feet next time... We got to get out of here, Ma.”

“It’s ok, I think he’ll let it go. I’ll keep saying it was me, the nurse wasn’t convinced at all, and that’s more important,” Barb said.

Shortly after the cop returned to the room, there was an unmistakable monstrous achoo that resounded from Jimmy’s bed.

“Yep, I frickin’ knew it!” the cop said and jogged out the door to find a nurse.

The cop and nurse returned to the room and started poking and prodding at Jimmy.

“It was me! It was me!” Barb continued to maintain. “I’m the sneezer, let my boy be, he’s in a coma for Christ’s sake!”

When they looked away and began whispering things to each other in muted tones, she motioned something to Jimmy and abruptly left the room crying. Real or fake I wasn’t able to ascertain, but either way it was an effective and believable exit for a grieving mother.

The nurse had found no signs of change in Jimmy so there was nothing that they could say about his condition. She walked close to my bed and moved my bangs out of my face, she said that they would have to assume Barb was the sneezer. There was a slight tongue-in-cheekiness about the way she said it. I felt my underarms perspire.

The cop paced the room and probably never took his eyes off Jimmy again.

He didn’t even leave the room at shift change, instead, he waited for the next cop to come in so he could relay what he thought had happened that day. The new cop agreed it was fishy and said he’d keep a sharp eye on Jimothy that evening, but by the sound of his voice he wasn’t all that invested in it.

Eventually, the man took his usual break to grab a meal down in the cafeteria.

“Come on,” Jimmy said. “They are going to be on to you next, real quick. We should get out of here. My mom went to go get the car.”

Jimmy hopped out of bed, closed and locked the door, and rolled his bed in front of it. Then he took his sheets from the bed and started knotting them together at a corner.

“Quick! Give me yours too.”

Having seen him standing for the very first time I realized how short he was. Maybe a full head shorter than me. I stood up and started tying my sheets together as well. Then we connected our two sheets each together to make four. I tied one end to the furnace underneath the window and tossed the other end out. It didn’t reach all the way to the ground, but we would only have to drop five or six feet.

We pulled out our IVs and helped each other bandage them up. I grabbed a few ointments, gauze, sanitizer, and surgical masks stationed near the sink and tied them up in a clean hospital gown taken from the wardrobe.

We knew we had about fifteen minutes before the cop came back. Jimmy paced the room. I stood at the window, watching the far-off entrance to the hospital parking lot. Finally, I saw little blue car come put-putting out of the parking and up the road towards us.

“Here she is, let’s go.”

We scaled the hospital wall, down the sheets and dropped onto the wet grass below. People were standing around and watching us, but no one said anything. We hopped into the car and Barb tried to emphatically punch the gas pedal, but the car’s little engine was too puny to peel out, so we drove off at a speed slightly higher than what was recommended for a parking lot. All three of us knocking our heads against the roof as we hopped speed bumps.

Once we got out onto the open road, we plunged our hands into a ziplock bag of cookies that Barb had brought while sharing a thermos of tea. We all decided we would drive to the coast and live together as best friends and family in a barn with no walls that we would rent for cheap from any old farmer we could find. There would be absolutely no mechanical beeping noises. We laughed and smiled and told jokes.

But then, I started looking at Jimmy and Barb for the first time up close, and through fully opened eyes. Smiling, laughing through yellowed crooked teeth. Smelling their old breath in this tight, cramped, tiny, tin can toy car that would be lucky to reach the coast without exploding. They wanted to disappear, to deceive, to skate by on the easiest identifiable path. What did they stand for, what did they do? They only wanted escape. I felt more ashamed than I ever had. When we finally pulled off at the first rest stop along the highway, I decided to remove my diaper.