Coma

by Emmy Ellis

  “Going to Jen’s?” he asked and leaned down. “Reckon I’ve got her in the bag.”

  “Huh?”

  He flicked his head in the direction of Jen’s office. “Her, Jen. Got her in the bag.”

  He whispered in my ear, “Like, she fancies me. And I’m gonna fuck her something good.”

  I clenched my jaw, and the muscles spasmed at the side of my face. I stared straight ahead, focusing my imagination on flowers, trees, and clouds.

  The guy laughed, straightened, shrugged, and smoothed down the front of his shirt. The scrape-clunk-scrape of his footsteps going down the corridor behind me churned my guts. That ugly fucker was going to pay.

  * * * *

  I pushed him out of my mind and acted normal in front of Jen.

  After the episode with the sofa—they’d gone out and bought a new one, and I hated it as much as the last one—I got brave over the years. Started staying out past my curfew, not giving a monkey’s fuck whether Mags whipped me on my return home. Didn’t give a shit about my ‘new best friend’. I’d decided the next time he came out to play I was going to bite that fucker off. Things were going to change.

  This particular night, I was later than I’d been before. I came home to find Mags and Scott lounging on that sofa, Mags seemingly drunk as ever.

  Scott acted like he had the right to tell me what to do and started going on about me not listening to Mags and not coming in on time. He called me an arsehole. That wasn’t a problem, he’d called me worse things.

  I stood in that living room doorway and wished myself the hell away from there. All the years of abuse crept into my mind, trickling in like sand, getting me antsy, defensive.

  Mags said something about a cat having my tongue, about me standing there like I’d done nothing wrong, and Scott chimed in, saying I ought to find somewhere else to live. When he stood, swaying, he asked Mags for the Sellotape. Something snapped in my mind. I ran into the kitchen, no conscious thought about what I was doing—I swear to God—and I snatched a knife out of the drawer.

  They followed me, both of them standing beside each other, a united front. Me against them, story of my life. Scott ripped the piss and said I didn’t have the balls to hurt him. The pair of them walked towards me.

  I warned him, said if he came near me I’d tell Mags what he’d done, and man was he a cocky bastard. He mimicked me.

  Every act of abuse that man had done to me played through my head. And he took the chance, dared me to tell Mags. The images spewed out of my mouth as words, streams of vomit that didn’t seem to want to stop.

  She gulped at the air, her mouth working with no sound coming out until my foul words lay on the floor before her in all their glory.

  Scott lunged at me with the Sellotape, held it out in front of him ready to slap it over my mouth. The sound of it snapping… I lunged, got my hands round that fucker’s throat and squeezed. Squeezed for the hurt, humiliation, the tears, the upset, and every goddamned thing I could think of. Mags yanked at my wrists, and I fought against her breaking my hold, but she was a feisty bitch. Always won, no matter what the contest.

  I lost my grip, and the force of me letting go flung me backwards. The back of my head cracked against the edge of one of the cupboards.

  My last conscious thought?

  Take me away, God. Please, just take me away.

  * * * *

  “Is that a scar on your cheek, Wayne?” Jen asked.

  “Yes. A slight one.”

  “Slight? Well, I can see it pretty clearly. Do you want to share how you got that? Is it anything I need to know?”

  “Mags did it.”

  “Ah, I should have guessed.”

  “Swiped the side of my face with a broken glass. I didn’t put my bag away quickly enough.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I had to tell the teachers I caught my cheek on a bramble bush. I’ve got a few scars from Mags.”

  I looked at her and raised my head from the back of my chair. She had a scrunched tissue in her hand, and the end of her nose was red.

  “Jen? Am I a bad man?”

  Her breath hitched in her throat. “No, Wayne. You’re not a bad man.” She swallowed and stood. Her black leather desk chair skidded across the wooden flooring from the force and came to rest against the wall under the window with a thud.

  “Ribena, Wayne?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She moved to her small fridge and reached inside for a carton. Had she just sobbed? Her hand moved up to her face, but I couldn’t see what she was doing with it as her back faced me. Panic fluttered in my belly, a swarm of locusts.

  She abruptly spun round and stepped towards me. I stared at her watery smile, watery eyes.

  “Here you are. I’ll make myself a coffee, and then we’ll have a little chat. There are a few things…a few things I need to get straight before we continue with your therapy.”

  Now my heart was in my shoe. It beat in between my big toe and the one next to it. “Okay.”

  I snapped the straw from the carton with shaky hands.

  Jen walked back to her desk and placed her coffee down. Her shoulders seemed less rigid, like all of her muscles had dissolved. She retrieved her chair, put it in its rightful place, and sat on it.

  I stared out of the window behind her. Thinking, thinking…

  “Right, then, Wayne.” Jen’s voice snapped at my thoughts. “Have you told me absolutely everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean it now. I have to have all the facts. All of them.” Jen’s face was stern, lips in a thin, straight line, eyebrows puckered.

  “I’ve told you all the things that cause me pain.” If I told her absolutely everything, I’d never get out of here. Our sessions would go on forever.

  “Right.” She sighed and slid her notebook across the desk towards her. “I’ve come to a decision. Based on what you’ve told me previous to today, I feel you are not a danger to society. I will write up my report and let Them Upstairs know that they can put you in the queue for a placement in the warden-controlled apartments when the next available slot comes up.”

  My heart skipped a few beats. “You’re shitting me?”

  She cleared her throat. “Sometimes things a patient tells me are literally between me and them, do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes, I don’t find it necessary to report every single conversation I have with my patients. In your case, I’m going to leave out the peas and the last incident with Scott, all right?”

  I jumped up out of my chair and, though slightly unsteady, attempted a half-arsed jig.

  “Wayne! You can stand?”

  “Yes. I was going to wait until we talked about the gym. I can walk a little bit”

  I butted my chair away with the backs of my knees, turned to my right, and shuffled slowly towards Jen’s sideboard, leaning my elbow on it, and turning to my left.

  Jen’s hands were a pyramid over her mouth and nose, and tears fell down her face.

  “Aww, now don’t you cry on me, Jen. If you cry, it’ll make me cry.”

  She swiped at her cheeks with her palms. “Wayne?” Her voice faltered, and she swallowed.

  “Yes, Jen?”

  “I’m so damn proud of you.”

  No one had ever said that to me before.

  I didn’t know what to do with it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I still visited Jen every day, but our sessions went down from three hours to two. It was a good job, really, as along with visiting Jen and going to the gym, I now attended speech therapy.

  At first I felt stupid. Kathy soon put me at ease, though.

  Her office was a bit claustrophobic: a small space, just about enough room to fit her desk, the patient’s chair, and a grey metal filing cabinet that had seen better days.

  Kathy looked about thirty-five. Long black hair that she sometimes wore loose—and when she did, it reached way past her waist—fine bone str
ucture, and a figure most females half her age would kill for. She favoured long, flowing dresses or skirts, roomy blouses, and plastic bangles.

  Kathy’s enthusiasm to cure my lisp swept me up and embraced me, swung me round the room in a waltz. Not literally, but that was kind of how I felt that first session. The world needed more people in it like Kathy.

  * * * *

  “Take it steady, Wayne,” Herbert said. “Don’t try to run before you can walk. Old saying, but very true.”

  At one time, I’d have referred to Herbert as an old duffer. He resembled Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses. You know, fuzzy white mullet, big ol’ bushy white beard. His stomach reminded me of a heavily pregnant woman with stick-thin limbs. A boiled egg on legs. He liked hand-knitted cardigans, all in hues of brown with leather elbow patches in the shape of my pills sewn on each arm.

  “Calves and shins feel a bit shaky, son?” Herbert asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, they will, but before you know it, you’ll be running a marathon.”

  Taking two steps wore me out to begin with. My legs didn’t feel strong enough to hold the rest of my body weight, and I plunked back down in my chair. Herbert followed me around with it, just in case.

  Herbert said, “What d’you think you’re going to do once you get to the apartments, son?”

  I frowned. “Do?”

  “Yeah, you know, what jobs are you interested in?”

  “Jobs? Didn’t know I could have a job. Thought I just lived there.”

  Herbert brought his hand up to his beard, rubbed it, the scrunch-swish-scrunch of the coarse hairs reminding me of those wire wool pads you scrubbed pans with.

  “No one’s explained what the apartments are all about yet, then?” he asked.

  “No. Jen said she’d explain it nearer the time.”

  “Hmmm.” Herbert sucked in his top lip, his bottom one protruding.

  I wondered if that beard tickled his nostrils and what he’d look like without it.

  “Tell you what, Wayne, you sit in your chair and do a few hand weights. I’ve just got to make a quick phone call.” Herbert ambled across the gym, his rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the parquet flooring. “Oh, and use the medium weights,” he called back over his shoulder. “Reckon you’re about ready for those.”

  Herbert pushed open the plastic swing door, placed his hands on his hips like an old woman, and glanced left. The door swung closed with a slap behind him.

  Who was Herbert going to call?

  I got on with exercising.

  Five minutes later, the heavy gym door sucked open, and Herbert plodded over with a booklet in his hand. “This is for you to read at your leisure. There’s no rush to decide. You won’t be going to the apartments until you can walk round this gym five times without being out of breath or stumbling.”

  The apartment booklet, more than just an eye opener, left me in awe after the first time I looked at its pages. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, maybe an apartment block in town, like those on TV, with the warden living on the ground floor. What I saw from the pictures shattered what I’d imagined.

  Set in acres and acres of ground, ‘The Apartments’ as the thick booklet proclaimed them to be, seemed to be a secluded community on the outskirts of town. I hadn’t heard about it while growing up, but there it was, a vast community of people placed together to grow and sort out their problems before moving on.

  From the aerial picture, the actual living quarters, fifty buildings that housed ten apartments apiece, had been fashioned into a kind of housing estate. Down one road, casinos, shops, and restaurants ensured that jobs were aplenty. There was even a brothel—which, in my opinion, being placed smack bang next to a church, was in pretty poor taste. Another road had all the industry type places: carpenters, steel works, factories. Road three—an adult school, a university campus, and (though why it had been built at all) a theme park.

  The other two roads housed all the wardens.

  “As you can see, Wayne, The Apartments is a vast complex.” Herbert took the booklet from me and turned to the contents page, running his fingertip down the page. “Take a gander inside all the places of employment, the church, the educational buildings. Have a good think about what you want to do when you get there.” Herbert placed the booklet on my lap. “You’ve got a few things you need to iron out, but if you stay on the straight and narrow, you’re a winner. Bit of advice…” Herbert leaned in close, so close his wiry beard tickled my cheek. “Don’t ever let anyone sway you from the honest path. No one. You get rid of them demons in your mind, and everything’ll work out. The minute you let one of those little devils in, shit hits the fan, right?”

  “Shit hits the fan?” I repeated.

  I stared into Herbert’s eyes. Something shifted across his pupils, almost like a white mist. I blinked, told myself to stop being such a dick.

  “So,” Herbert said. “Reckon you’ll like it there?”

  “Seeing this booklet just makes me want to try harder, get myself sorted.”

  * * * *

  “I hear Herbert showed you The Apartment booklet. What do you think?” Jen turned back to her sideboard and poured herself a coffee.

  “Looks great!”

  “What do you think you’ll do when you get there?” Jen stirred her coffee—no sugar this time—and walked over and placed it on her desk.

  “I want to go to university, learn new things.”

  Jen moved to the small fridge and took out a carton of Ribena. “What are you planning on learning?” She handed me my drink.

  “Thanks. Well, psychology is interesting. I kind of want to know why my brain acts like it does.”

  “Right. We’re at the point where we need to start wrapping up. Now, I know you’ve been hyped up with reading that booklet, but did you also have a think about any stray thoughts or events that you feel you need to clear out of your mind?”

  “Yes. Though they’re only small things.”

  Jen settled into her chair. “Sometimes the small things are what we find harder to understand. With the big events, we can make some sense of them, even though what Scott and Mags did makes no sense. Small things fester and grow into big things. You know that better than anyone.”

  I nodded and poked the drink straw into the silver moon.

  “So, when you’re ready, sit back and relax. Close your eyes and show me what you see.”

  I looked out of the window while drinking my Ribena. Two patients kicked a football to one another. Wouldn’t be long before I’m be able to do that.

  “Who’s that guy out there, Jen?”

  She swivelled her chair around to face the window. “Which one?”

  “The bloke with the dodgy leg.”

  “Dean Campbell? Oh, he’s one of my patients. I think he’s on the list to go to The Apartments the same time as you.”

  “Really? What’s he here for?”

  “I can’t tell you specifics, Wayne.”

  “Be general, then.” I sipped more Ribena.

  “Uh, similar to you, though not so bad.”

  “Saw him outside in the corridor once. Seems a mean kinda person.”

  Jen swung her chair back round to face me. “Hmm, he was at one time.”

  “I bet he hurt animals when he was a kid.” I sucked on my straw. The dregs of Ribena bubbled into my mouth.

  “Wayne, I can’t reveal—”

  “That means he did then. Thought so.”

  “How do you know? How can you be so sure?” Jen fiddled with the handle of her coffee cup.

  “Dunno. Got some kind of mist that comes off him.”

  “Like an aura?” Jen grabbed a pen and scribbled frantically in her notebook.

  “Yes. It isn’t a nice one, either. Dark blue. Nearly black.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, ignore me. Ribena finished?”

  I nodded and placed the empty carton on Jen’s desk.


  * * * *

  I’d walked round the gym five times without getting out of breath. Herbert’s smile almost cracked his face, and dimples peeked over the top of his beard. He cleared his throat and shuffled over to me, his squeaky soles loud.

  “Well, son. You ought to be mighty proud of yourself. I’m going to miss you, you know that?” He patted my arm.

  “What? I’m done at the gym?”

  “Yup. All finished.”

  Shit. Time had flown.

  I couldn’t help but swagger a little as I left. The corridor to Jen’s office didn’t seem as long as it had in the chair. Funny how in all the time I’d been at Klinter, I’d never seen one of the other doors open, never heard any movement behind any of them. Never saw the silver-named people.

  Jen’s office door swung open. Dean Campbell emerged, scowling. He staggered along the hallway. Black mist sat on top of his head. Closer to me now, he squinted. Recognition—maybe surprise, too?—ruffled his forehead, and his eyes bugged.

  “Hey, the guy in the retard chair,” he said.

  We were standing face to face.

  “Yeah, Dean. Not in the chair now, though.”

  “And there was me thinking you were one of them paraplegic blokes. I thought you might be paralysed, know what I mean? Could have had fun chasing you, watching you try and wheel away quick.”

  Spite layered my tongue. “Seems like it’s the other way round now. The tables have turned. I could have fun chasing your arse. You won’t hobble far once I start running after you.”

  His cheeks went red. His irises darkened, and his lips pursed and reminded me of a cat’s arsehole.

  “Fucking smart-arse,” he said and laughed. “I could get along with you.”

  “Could you?”

  “Yeah, and I just heard the two of us are off to The Apartments at the same time. Jen reckons we’re gonna be next-door neighbours.”