Chapter 7: What My Soul Does When I Am Asleep by Stephen Simpson

It has been two weeks, and I am bored stiff. It feels as if I am literally cut off from my world and am on this little island of desolation. My grandma has a password on her computer, and every time I try to ask her for it, my mum elbows me to stay quiet. I can go online on my phone, but with roaming and the cost of it, I am not sure if I am prepared to be without my phone by the time we get back home. If I go online now, and we get home, and my dad gets the bill, I will, without debate or any discussion, be without a phone for months. Perhaps even until I can afford my own. My life is basically going on without me, people are posting and sharing things, but I am not included in the buzz, and it is a strange and lonely feeling. My thumbs itch to type a message. I do not want to live in a world without internet access.

Every single day we wake up, have breakfast and then we set off to go to the hospital. Visiting hours is twice a day, and maybe the guilt feelings that were sown at home have taken root in my mother, because she refuses to miss even one visit, and she won’t let me or Isaac stay at my grandma's house on our own.

I wake up each morning in exactly the same position I went to sleep in, which is not that bad because at least it is dreamless, but the mattress is awful, and when I crawl out of bed each morning I have aches and pains in places I did not even know existed in my body. Especially my shoulders. It feels as if it takes me hours before I can move my arms without sharp pains shooting into my neck.

For two weeks, I have wondered who is behind the curtain in the other bed in my grandma's hospital room. The person in the other bed has had no visitors at all.

The one time Isaac and I dared each other to peek behind the light blue divide, my dad just happened to be paying attention to us, and it did not end too well for me. Apparently, as the eldest I must, surely, know right from wrong, and not lead Isaac into temptation.

This whole situation is working on everybody's nerves.

Today, we arrive at the hospital early and wait with the other people for the large double blue doors to open, which will admit us into the ward and also indicates the visiting hour has started.

Instead of waiting aimlessly, Isaac and I walk to the vending machine on the far side of the waiting area and get a chocolate bar each. The exchange rate is awesome, and we can buy so much more for our money than at home.

My dad calls, “Come, you two.”

Then we all herd into the ward.

As I walk into my grandma's hospital room, the first thing I notice is the absence of the light blue curtain. Did the person eventually wake up from their deep sleep? I feel excited about the change in the sameness of every day.

I walk around my grandma's bed and am standing between it and the other bed. From the corner of my eye, I look over at the other bed. I did not want to be rude and stare at him openly. His eyes are closed but he could open them at any time and see me being curious, and that could be embarrassing.

Although he is just lying there on his back, his face positioned up to the ceiling, he is cute. Really cute.

My mum and dad are busy with my grandma, smiling and talking with her. She cannot really talk back because her words come out all slurred, which must be frustrating to her.

I inch myself slowly to the foot-end of the other bed. Standing at the end of his bed, I look down at the blue folder on the large table across his bed. I glance at my mum and dad while I finger the edges of the folder. I am curious to know more about him. I have this strange compulsion to know his name.

I look up at him, and his eyes pop open. Then I almost swallow my tongue as I feel a hand on my shoulder. I step back and into the nurse standing behind me. It is the same nurse who greeted us the first day we arrived.

“Sorry to scare you,” she says as she starts to pull the curtain closed.

“He’s awake.” I point at him as I look at the nurse.

“It’s just a muscle spasm. He is still fast asleep.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

She looks at me for a moment, and then she smiles. “He is in a coma, and it's a fate only comparable to death. He had a massive head injury and is trapped.”

“Will he ever wake up?”

She busies herself with checking his vitals. “Maybe.”

“It’s sad that he never gets any visitors.”

She looks up at me again. “You could visit him. Maybe you could talk to him for a little bit.”

I take a step backward. “I wouldn’t know what to say.”

She suggests, “Why don’t you read him a story, then? Only if you want to.”

I move closer to my grandma’s bed. “I’m not sure.”

She pulls the curtain all the way closed. “Think about it. If you decide it is something you would like to do, let me know, and I’ll leave the curtain open for visiting hours.”

I sit down next to my grandma’s bed and cannot help glancing back at the blue curtain behind me. I feel sorry for him, just lying there and nobody is even visiting him. It is sad.

When we leave my grandma's room after visiting hours are over, we walk past the nurses’ station and the nurse I spoke to earlier looks up at me expectantly. I smile and nod my head, but as soon as I am walking out of the ward, I feel scared. I should never have agreed.

In the car, I look out the window at the passing scenery and people. I could help him, couldn’t I? It will make the days less boring and I will be doing a good deed at the same time.

“Mum?”

She moves her head a little to glance at me sideways. “Yeah?”

“You know the other person in grandma's room?”

“Yes?”

“The nurse suggested today I should read to him.”

“What?” my dad asks without taking his eyes off the road.

Involuntarily I roll my eyes. “He never gets any visitors, and he looks about my age. It would be a nice thing to do, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know if it would be such a good idea, Gaby,” my dad says.

“It would be a nice thing to do,” my mum says at the exact same time.

“Sarah. No.”

“Why not?”

The conversation shifts from between my mum and me to them, so I settle back into my seat and wonder what I should read to him. This is worse than the decision I made to read to him. The bigger dilemma is to choose the right story. Will he be into stories with dragons and villains, maybe fantasy and magic? I pull my tablet from my bag, and then open my Kindle App. I scroll through the books on my device and decide against every single one of them. They are all romantic. Stories full of love and angst. Imagine if he could hear me; it would be beyond embarrassing.

“Mum?”

She interrupts my dad. “Gabriel, you are just being silly. She'll be in the same room as us. What is it, Gaby?”

“So… Can we stop at a bookshop?”

“Don’t you have something on your tablet?”

“I checked, and there’s nothing I can actually read out loud to a boy.”

“We’ll stop at the mall. I need to get some things for dinner tonight, anyway.”

My dad changes lanes and, not long after, we pull into a parking space at the mall.

At the bookseller, the sales assistant helps me to pick a book that will appeal to both boys and girls. “It has a little bit of everything,” she says, and luckily it is something I will also be interested in reading, so it could be a mutually beneficial experience.

When we walk into my grandma's room that night, the blue curtain is pulled all the way back, and it is unbelievable how nervous I am feeling. He is sleeping, and he is not even going to know who you are, I keep telling myself.

After I say hello to my grandma, my mum nudges me and lifts her eyebrows in the direction of the other bed in the room.

Begrudgingly, I move away from my grandma’s bed and cross the small space between the two beds. I pull a chair closer to his bed and lean toward him. I did not want my mum, my dad, my grandma, or Isaac to hear me.

I start reading softly, and then his eyes jump open again.

The same nurse from earlier today is standing on the other side of the bed. Mortified, I wonder how long she has been standing there.

I look up at her and, trying to distract her attention away from me, I say, “His eyes are open again.”

She frowns a little. “They only seem to open when you are near.”

Continue reading Chapter 8/19

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