Rhythms of footfalls are intensifying outside my hospital room. It must be morning. Immobile, all I can do is count beats. I must have spent days here—who knows, maybe even weeks—or else I wouldn’t be able to tell time by means of listening to echoes.
It’s a new skill, a new gain for me, barely significant enough to offset the loss of something far more important: my identity. Even so, I’m proud. I pat myself on the back. Mentally.
By their patter, I know that two pairs of shoes have just stepped into the room. It doesn’t take much to figure out who is standing in them. The two nurses prattle about having to change my feeding tube. In a blink, a craving comes over me.
Oh, what I would give for a decent donut! I drool at the thought of dunking it into a bowl filled with smooth, warm, vanilla-flavored sugar glaze, then lifting it to my mouth for a quick lick.
One of the nurses wipes the dribble off my chin. I wish she would stop handling me. I wish I could turn my head away.
Meanwhile, my stomach is growling. I’m so hungry. At this point, never mind pastry. I’ll take any real food—even peas and carrots, which normally I hate. Being able to chew them would cast me back among the living.
In this sorry state, I’ve come to acquire a new affinity with vegetables. Maybe they have feelings, too. Maybe they dread being poked about with a fork, just as much as I fear being injected. Maybe being sucked down that dark, cavernous windpipe to be consumed by something yet unknown is repulsive to them. I think that at long last, I understand carrots and peas. So no, I’m never going to put them in my mouth again.
Seriously, I prefer donuts.
“Oh my! Accident?” asks one nurse, while pumping liquid food into my stomach with a syringe.
“No, worse than that,” says the other one. By comparison, her voice is lower and more mature. It is also secretive.
“What can be worse than an accident?”
“Don’t even ask.”
“Fine, then. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Like what?”
“Like, what d’you want to be, ten years from now?”
There’s a faint sound—maybe the older nurse is scratching her head—which leaves the question unanswered.
Oh, the things I’d say, if only I could revive my vocal cords! I’d shout, “Ten years, are you kidding me? Who cares! I just want to make it through today!”
But on second thought, I want more than that, much more. I strain my vocal cords in a desperate attempt to cry out, “I want to wake up from this nightmare, at the snap of my fingers. I want to walk away from this bed. Most of all, I want to know who I am. Is that too much to ask?”
Coma Confidential
(Volume I of Ash Suspense Thrillers with a Dash of Romance)
Paperback ★ Hardcover
Audiobook
Ash finds herself in the ER diagnosed with coma. She has no memory of what has happened to her, but what she can do--despite what everyone around her might think--is listen to the conversations of her visitors. Will she survive the power outage in the hospital and then, being kidnapped out of it?
