by Clelie Avit
“Am I one of the friends?”
I’ve just made a little departure from page 80, veering toward: “Wind Her Up a Bit.” But she doesn’t seem bothered by my question.
“Of course!” she exclaims.
“Hmm…”
“Why? Am I not your friend?”
That sounds like the million-dollar question. Page 77: “Be Sincere.”
“I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say that we’re friends, no, given our history and the way it ended.”
“Are you still upset with me?”
Honestly, I don’t know how I feel, but I’m not in the mood to start diving into explanations.
“No, it’s fine.”
“So why can’t you consider me a friend?”
She fixes me with her big eyes. Her makeup makes them stand out, wider than ever. I can smell her perfume. It’s still the same one, if I remember right, and I ought to recognize the fragrance I lived with for years. I shuffle to get farther away from her. When did she move so close?
“So, Thibault, tell me, why?”
Her voice is a whisper. I can feel her breathing and behind the perfume I can smell her skin. Memories confuse themselves in my head and I want to drive them away. But at the same time…
“I… I don’t know. It’s tricky?”
Ridiculous response, but it’s all I can come up with.
Cindy stares at me intently and I remember in a flash all the other times she has looked at me that way. I see the same memories in her head, too. Her Book gives her a quicker solution than mine does me. The next moment she is kissing me, and I am responding almost without thought.
Almost. Part of me is desperate for the contact. Another part of me is sickened by it.
I feel Cindy take my hand and put it around her waist while she lets her own hand wander up and down my back. She draws me toward her and I stretch myself out along the sofa.
“Interesting,” she murmurs. “I didn’t know you liked being on the bottom.”
“There are lots of things you didn’t know about me,” I reply coldly.
I see in her eyes that she is surprised by my tone but I force myself to continue, before desire carries me away again.
“What are you doing here, Cindy?”
She freezes. Her Book clearly doesn’t have a response for that.
“No,” I continue, “I don’t actually need a reply. I’ve got enough of an idea and, honestly, I’m not that interested anyway.”
I get up, leaving her lying on the sofa. The look on her face has changed completely. She is looking at me like I’m something the cat dragged in. I don’t blame her; I would probably look the same.
“Get out,” I say.
She doesn’t utter a word, but begins to gather her stuff. I watch her putting on her shoes, re-buttoning her shirt right to the top (when had she undone it?). I hand over her coat and open the door before she has even put it on.
“You’ve changed,” she says to me as she steps over the threshold.
“If you had ever bothered to get to know me in the first place, you could have saved yourself the trouble of coming.”
“I would still at least have tried—”
I close the door without saying anything else.
I forgot about “Just Be Polite” a few minutes ago.
On the table is her half-finished glass of wine and my juice, untouched. I pick up the glass, go into the kitchen and pour it down the sink, along with the rest of the bottle. I put the whole lot into my recycling bin; I don’t want to see that glass again.
When I go back into the living room, I don’t even dare look at the sofa. I go and get a blanket from my bedroom and throw it over the top. Better already. I pick up the remote control and switch on the TV, sipping my drink without really paying attention to what the newscaster is saying.
That was mortifying.
No wonder I’m not looking for anyone else.
Chapter 7
ELSA
It’s Monday. I won’t have any visitors today. The days without visits have come to seem interminable, especially since Thibault entered my semblance of a life. With any luck though, he might come and visit his brother, or rather take his mother to visit his brother. But, on a weekday, perhaps he won’t have the time.
I listen to the care assistant going through her routine. This time she doesn’t forget a thing. It seems to go on for too long, in fact! You’d think she was preparing me for a ceremony or something. She’s really paying attention to my lips, as though she’s trying to make up for forgetting them before.
She finishes without speaking to me, as always, and then leaves the room. A few minutes later, the door opens noisily and a chorus of voices and clattering footsteps enters my room. I am taken aback by the volume. Why so many people?
I catch a few medical terms in the midst of all the kerfuffle, but when there is so much going on at once, it’s difficult to follow. I’ve developed quite a talent (in a manner of speaking) for identifying the head doctor among his group of juniors. It must be this doctor, the consultant, who has just clapped his hands, because the noise subsides and gradually everyone falls silent.
As far as I can tell from their breathing, I am surrounded by about five junior doctors, or “house officers” as they like to call each other. I have become a teaching aid! The consultant, standing at the foot of my bed, picks up the clipboard, which has my “system updates,” as I like to call them, written on it. It’s been a while since anyone wrote anything on there.
“Right everyone, the case of room fifty-two,” the doctor begins. “Multiple traumas, including to the head. Deep coma for almost five months. I’ll leave you to read the details.”
Great, I’m a number now, as well as a “case”…
The clipboard is passed from hand to hand, not staying with any one person for longer than a couple of seconds. There must be a rule among doctors about never keeping a single page in front of their eyes for too long. Maybe they get bored of reading these clipboards again and again, or maybe they just prefer to judge for themselves. Or perhaps it is part of their training to assess all the essentials of any medical situation within five seconds. Yes, that must be it, they are just practicing what they’ve been trained to do. All the same, I’d love it if there were one doctor who invested more than five seconds in the case of room 52. They might discover that I can hear everything they are saying.
“Here’s a copy of the brain imaging. All the common features, of course. I’ve included details of her state on arrival in July, and also the one from two months ago. I await your comments.”
This time, it takes a little longer than five seconds. I hear them whispering but I don’t catch any of the details. It’s far too technical for me anyway, but I can sense that they are most concerned with impressing the consultant. They seem to be conducting quite an in-depth evaluation.
“So,” begins the consultant. “What do we think?”
One of the juniors on my right speaks first.
“Her imaging has improved from July to November?”
“More or less, but I would have liked some more details. You need to justify why it is you think that. In fact, you can all leave your thoughts written up on my desk tomorrow morning. Get to work on it tonight.”
I hear some murmurs of protestation, but they die down quickly.
“What else?” the doctor goes on.
“Sir?” says another trainee.
“Yes, Fabrice.”
“Can we speak sincerely?”
“We can only speak with sincerity here. Even if it’s not always the truth.”
“Can we also avoid dressing up the situation?” asks this junior named Fabrice.
“Between ourselves, yes,” replies the doctor. “In the presence of relatives, it’s not always advisable. Adapt your speech to the people in front of you. But please go on, we’re listening.”
“Uh… well she’s completely fucked, isn’t she?”
I hear
some sniggers, but the laughter is quickly curtailed.
“You really aren’t dressing it up, are you, Fabrice?” says the doctor. “But you’re quite right. According to all the information that’s in front of you, the reports of the different doctors who have examined her, and the absence of any marked improvement over the past three months, this patient just scrapes a two percent probability of recovery.”
“Only two percent?” asks the first junior.
“Assuming, hypothetically, that she does wake up, we can’t be sure how far the trauma to the head will have affected her mental and physical functions. Looking at the affected areas of the brain, we can predict that there may be complications with language and with fine motor skills on the right side. There is also likely to be pronounced sensory and neurological deficit, and we know that her respiratory function, which has already been tested, is…”
I try desperately to move my attention away from what the doctor is saying and think about something else. I don’t want to hear another word. Hearing seems to be the only thing left that I can still do, and for the first time, I wish I couldn’t.
I scroll through any other thoughts I might be able to bring to mind. The only one that calms me down is Thibault. I hardly know anything about him, so I don’t have a very detailed picture. But I let my mind wander and invent for a moment until the doctor’s voice brings me back to what they are saying.
“… so, two percent.”
“That’s almost zero, really, isn’t it?” says a trainee I haven’t heard speak before.
“Almost, yes. But we are scientists and we don’t deal in almost.”
“So, it means that…” the trainee starts.
“… it’s zero,” finishes the doctor.
A medical cart falls over in the corridor with an almighty crash, as if to reflect my state of mind. The house officers are scribbling notes. The doctor must be pleased with himself. He can move on to something else now the case study of room 52 is finished. But apparently it’s not quite finished…
“What’s the next stage?” he asks.
“Let the family know?” suggests the first junior.
“Exactly. I broached the matter with them a few days ago, so that they could start thinking about it.”
“What did they say? If it’s OK to ask…”
“They said that they would think about it. The mother was resigned, the father was against, which is often the case. It’s very unusual for relatives to agree. It’s almost a natural state of contradiction. We don’t talk lightly of ending the life support of a person who is in a coma.”
I don’t like the way the doctor is speaking about my parents, but I have to admit that he’s right.
“Isn’t that what we’ve just been doing?” asks the first junior doctor suddenly.
My ears prick up. This comment must have surprised even the consultant, because he doesn’t reply straight away.
“Can you explain yourself, Loris?” he says, in a voice which is trying to be neutral, but which comes out as abrupt.
“The terms that we have just been using, the ‘scientific’ approximations that we’ve been making about the probability of her recovery. You say that we never speak lightly of ending the life support of a patient in a coma, but I think I just heard Fabrice say she was completely fucked and I’m pretty sure I also heard the conversion of a two percent chance to zero. If that’s not speaking lightly then I don’t think we’re talking the same language.”
If I could move, I would kiss this lovely house officer. But I think I might have to step in and physically defend him first, because, given the tone of the consultant, Loris is going to be working night shifts for some time.
“Are you questioning the diagnostic abilities of your classmates and future colleagues?”
“I’m not questioning anything, sir,” returns Loris. “I just find it strange to be so crude about someone who, as far as we can see, is still breathing here in front of us.”
“Loris,” begins the consultant, as though trying to collect himself, “if you can’t bear the idea that we might have to disconnect someone, you have no place in this department.”
“It has nothing to do with being able to bear it or not, sir. It has to do with facts. You say two percent. For me, that means two percent. It’s not zero. As long as we haven’t reached zero, I believe that there is still hope.”
“You’re not here to hope, Loris.”
“What am I here for then?” replies the junior doctor, now purposefully insolent.
“To conclude that this case is closed. Resolved. Finished. It is going to be impossible to reestablish the vital chain of this patient. As your colleague said, she is fucked. And it matters very little to me if that term doesn’t suit your delicate sensibilities.”
I think poor Loris might be on night shifts for the rest of his time in this training post.
My room falls silent. I imagine Loris holding the gaze of his teacher for a moment, and then lowering his eyes. I imagine all the other house officers feigning an urgent need to write something down. At least the session is over, and at least I wasn’t able to see the expressions on their faces during the discussion—it could be devastating to witness this sort of situation when it concerns you. In any case, my only hope is to go on believing that they’ve got it wrong.
“Right then, Loris, since you seem to be so attached to this patient, you can write down the conclusions of our visit yourself.”
I hear my “system updates” being passed over to my right. A few pencil scratchings later, and the clipboard is handed back to the doctor.
“Hmm… Well summarized, Loris. If you weren’t so obstinate, I would almost certainly have you on my team when you qualify. You have, nevertheless, left out one detail.”
“What?”
The junior doctor doesn’t seem as talkative now, and I can understand why. This consultant is really beginning to make my ears hurt.
“On the first page, you can add it underneath.”
“What has he left out?” asks another junior, as Loris begins to write.
“Can you answer your colleague?”
I can visualize perfectly the clenched fists and set jaw of poor Loris who has done nothing but stick up for me since he came into the room. But I have no idea what is being added to the first page of my file.
“I left out the official declaration of our intention to disconnect the life support of this patient. I’m just writing that we are now awaiting family agreement before we set the date.”
Chapter 8
THIBAULT
I feel good today. Even if I did have to get up early. I helped my colleague sort out a wind power situation and I earned a pineapple juice in recompense. It was a rewarding start to the day, but I think I’ve had a good feeling about today ever since I woke up.
When, halfway through the morning, I realize why this is, I almost want to laugh out loud.
It’s Monday and I’m meant to take my mother to the hospital this evening. It’s the first time that I have ever considered this ordeal with a smile.
“Thibault? What is that dazed, idiotic expression on your face?”
My reflections are brought to an abrupt close when I see the colleague I helped out this morning standing, quizzical, in front of me. He is looking at me with his head tilted to one side, as though he is trying to read something on my chin. I, too, am quite curious to see what response I’ll come up with.
“What are you talking about?” I say.
Disappointing.
“That smile, there,” he answers, pointing to the corner of my mouth. “You’ve got a sort of smiley twitch.”
“You’re smiling, too!” I defend myself.
“That’s because I’m amazed,” he laughs. “Why this weird happy face? It’s not like you at all, Thibault…”
“Mind your own business.”
“Oh, I see. Translation: it’s a girl.”
“I said, mind your own business!”
“Translation: yes, it’s definitely a girl! Hey, everyone, Thibault’s got a new—”
He doesn’t continue because I grab him by the shoulder and put my other hand over his mouth. My attempt is pathetic and he laughs noisily through my fingers. He understands, though, that I don’t want him to spread it any further and quietens down.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that,” I say, taking my useless hand away.
“OK,” he replies, still smiling. “You let us know when you understand it better!” He walks away with a wink and I plunge back into my thoughts.
It really is a lot more complicated than that. I’m sitting here rejoicing at the thought of going to intensive care to visit a girl I don’t know who’s in a profound coma.
Throughout the day my mind wanders from work to various other things, which always bring me back to Elsa. Sometimes they also bring me back to my brother. When five o’clock comes, I’m ready to race out the door.
I go via my mother’s to pick her up. She seems better. I park in the hospital parking lot and we get out of the car together. Presumably I still have my idiotic smile.
“What’s happened to you, Thibault? You seem happy today.”
“Nothing special.”
Unlike my colleague, she is immediately satisfied with this response. I agree to take the elevator with her, rather than the stairs, and we come out into the fifth-floor corridor together.
“Do you want to come in?” my mother attempts.
“No.”
“What are you going to do while you’re waiting?”
“Just sleep. Maybe talk.”
“Who do you talk to?” she asks, surprised.
“To the wall,” I reply in a whisper.
We stop just in front of room 55. I watch my mother slip into the room. I glance briefly at my brother’s bed. The covers are strewn with all sorts of things—paper, magazines, remote controls. Judging by the noise coming from the room, I assume that the television is on. I hesitate for half a second, and then let the door swing shut.
I’m not ready yet. I turn and go back toward room 52, half opening the door and poking my head around it. Perfect, there’s no one there. I close it carefully behind me, as though worried I’ll wake the person in the bed. It’s funny, I still can’t quite work out how I’m meant to behave around her.