The Girl in a Coma

by John Moss

  It’s not pleasant having too much time to think.

  I can feel my silver medallion pressing against me. Maybe I just imagine the weight but I know it’s still on a chain around my neck. It connects me with who I am. I’m sure it will connect me with Mary Cameron. She was a rebel just like Paul Revere. Just like me.

  The medallion is one of my greatest treasures. Why on earth does the ordinary man want it so much? If he does. Does the ordinary man even exist? Maybe Russell Miller made him up and called him the Devil. Maybe I made him up out of the dark shadows at Shady Nook. Maybe he still wants my medallion; maybe he wants me dead so he can get it. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s only a piece of silver, and amber is not really rare. It’s precious to me for personal reasons.

  Maybe he has personal reasons, too.

  When the Harvard researchers tried to remove the medallion for safekeeping, Maddie O’Rourke told them, “No way! If this university is rich enough to bring us here, they can sure as the devil protect our valuables.”

  Maddie is someone you want to have on your side in a quarrel.

  She looks after my other prize possession. It’s a golden Spanish doubloon, a very old coin my grandmother Friesen gave to me last summer.

  Even though she has to use a walker, Nana visited me at Shady Nook just after we caught the killer nurse. She even managed to lean over the bed so I could see her.

  Sunflowers! Sunflowers!

  She said, “If I can go to Philadelphia and survive a plane crash, then good glory, I can get myself to Peterborough to see my Allison.”

  Maddie made sure she knew I knew she was there. But the way she talked to me, she had no doubts.

  Sometimes the researchers forget I’m in here. Most of them only talk to me if Maddie is present, even though they know I can hear. Since she’s the person who can read my eyes very well, they talk to her as if she’s me. Like, as if I’m a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  For glory’s sake!

  Damn it, at times, swearing isn’t the sign of a limited mind, it’s just because you’re really disturbed, disconcerted, discombobulated. D, D, and D. I’m nobody’s dummy. When I get back to planet Earth, I’ll prove it.

  I’ll finish school. Like, all the way. Probably I’ll go to Trent; that’s the university in Peterborough. It’s not Oxford and it’s not Harvard, but I hear it’s pretty good. Then I’ll do the chef’s diploma at Fleming College, because after you get educated you need to learn a trade. I’ll open Allison’s Restaurant. I just need to figure out where to get the money. It’s not like I can sue Russell Miller.

  I won’t be hiring Jaimie Retzinger to cook for me. He dropped out of the course. Like, before he got there. He’d be lousy, anyway. He couldn’t boil water in hell.

  From what Maddie has told me about the food around here, Harvard could do with a few pointers in the cooking department.

  Myself, I’m on tubes, so it makes no difference. I don’t eat and I don’t drink. Not yet. But I will. I can remember what things taste like. When I think about Dutch apple pie, I can feel my mouth watering.

  So, I’m here, I’m Allison Briscoe, I’m real, not a dummy, I need to take charge.

  How do I do that? Well, what do I do best? I think. Thinking is about all I can do right now. So, Allison Briscoe, if you’re ever going to escape this narrow prison of your own body, there is only one way. You think your way out.

  Twenty-seven

  Allison

  This morning, Maddie comes prancing in and asks me: “Guess what happened?”

  I signal to her: “Someone got murdered.”

  She usually writes down whatever I tell her on a blackboard, so she writes: “Someone got murdered.”

  “Maddie!” I can hear a guy called Gordon exclaim. “She’s reading your mind!”

  Gordon is a graduate student. Maddie says he’s tall and skinny. He works as a research assistant. I can’t see him clearly; he doesn’t come that close. He watches the machines recording my brain waves when no one else is around. “You were going to tell her about the murder last night, the Harvard strangler, weren’t you? But she already knows. How does she do it, Maddie?”

  “Magic!” Maddie exclaims. “She’s a Canadian wizard and I’m a sorceress and that’s why we’re down here in the U.S. of A. Now go get us a couple of coffees. Please.”

  Maddie is very good at working out who is in charge.

  Once Gordon has left, Maddie scoots up onto my high bed. This one isn’t hospital white. It’s a pale shade of green. Chartreuse, Maddie calls it. Color-words make my world more exciting. So, she leans over into my field of vision. She knows I can’t follow movement with my eyes, but if she stays still for a minute I can see her almost as clearly as normal.

  I wasn’t mind reading. I can read Maddie’s tone of voice. Nothing gets either of us quite as excited as a new murder.

  Before Gordon returns, Maddie explains that an elderly woman, a retired professor, had been walking across Harvard Yard last night. She was strangled. Maddie explains that Harvard looks like a university is supposed to look, with red brick buildings and huge trees, spreading lawns, stone benches, winding paths. A sanctuary, she calls it. A sanctuary in the middle of a city. Although, really, it’s next door to Boston, not downtown.

  Sanctuary means a safe place. Not a place to be killed, not a place to be strangled.

  I don’t even know Gordon has returned with the coffee until he chimes in. “They say she was smiling,” he says.

  I can smell the coffee.

  A woman was murdered. Gordon thinks she was happy.

  Sometimes, I just want to close down my mind.

  Mary

  Mary was building a dress for herself, one scrap at a time. Building was the right word. It was like putting together a piece of furniture from old boards and stuff other people had thrown out. Actually, she was stealing. She was cutting out panels of cotton from petticoats and crinolines that came into the prison with the fine dresses she and her cellmates were supposed to repair.

  Mary, Agnes, Apple, and Lily wore the clothes they had come into prison with, which were now mostly rags. But Mary was making a white muslin dress.

  She figured it would take her about a week.

  The ladies who owned the fine dresses would never notice the missing panels. She was careful to unstitch a panel of muslin along its seams and then sew the petticoat back together so the missing bit wouldn’t be noticed. Mary could sew very well when she wanted to. The ladies would just think they were getting fat. They wouldn’t complain.

  Mary tried to collect the material and do her criminal sewing without the guards noticing. Of course, she didn’t really care if she got caught. What could they do to her? Throw her in jail!

  But she figured they would take her new dress away and she would have to start all over again.

  Her cellmates knew what she was doing. It didn’t make any sense. Where can you go with a new summer dress in prison?

  Still, Agnes and Apple wanted to get involved. Mary’s dressmaking was a plot, a conspiracy. It brought some excitement into their lives, which were otherwise very dull. There wasn’t much to do when you were locked in a room with stone walls—apart from waiting for time to pass.

  Doing time, the convicts call it.

  No, swallowing time was more like it. Eating time.

  Lily wasn’t interested in the dress or anything else. Lily was wilting like a plucked flower. She was sick and lay propped up in her bed. She watched the other three work but her eyes seemed empty. Mary wasn’t sure if she saw anything at all.

  In spite of Lily being sick, Mary and Agnes and Apple were almost happy. The secret dress had become the center of their small and dismal world.

  Without being asked, Agnes had set to work as soon as she realized what Mary was doing. She made Mary some drawers. These were two tubes of cotton,
one for each leg, which tied with a drawstring at the waist. She sewed the tubes together and called them bloomers. She explained that she sometimes received gifts from her boyfriends. Bloomers were underpants worn next to the skin. They were becoming the fashion among women in her line of work in the States.

  When she offered the finished bloomers to Mary with a big toothless grin, Mary hugged her and Agnes cried. So Mary stopped hugging her. Agnes had never been hugged in friendship before in her life. She cried quietly for almost an hour.

  Not to be outdone, Apple ripped pieces from a fine silk dress and made Mary a camisole. Apple was simple and sweet and excited by her project. But the lady’s silk dress was ruined. There was no way to repair it.

  That night, Mary held what was left of the ruined dress close to the lantern and set it on fire. By the time a guard arrived with a bucket of water, the dress was ashes. They all took the blame, knowing they would get only oatmeal and potatoes for a week as punishment.

  When Mary tried on the camisole, she was surprised. It was loose fitting but had cups for her breasts. The cups were lopsided. And Mary wasn’t. Without letting Apple see her, Mary cut and stitched the silk to make a better fit. She modeled the silk camisole, along with her cotton bloomers. Agnes and Apple cheered. Then she put on the dress, which was almost finished, and they cried.

  Mary looked over at Lily. She thought Lily smiled.

  The night guard came to the bars but couldn’t see what they were giggling and weeping about. By the time he went back for his lantern and returned, the three conspirators were sitting at the table, wearing their threadbare prison dresses, with their backs to the bars.

  “Lights out!” he shouted and walked away.

  Mary called after him, demanding that a doctor be called for Lily. Lily was changing from ghastly white to a shiny pale green. The guard stopped for a minute. He was caught in the moonlight that streamed through the bars of a window. It made him look like a ghost. Then he turned again and left, clanging the big steel door behind him.

  No doctor came.

  On the evening of the eighth day after Mary began making her dress, Lily died.

  Twenty-eight

  Allison

  Sometimes, making a dress is an act of defiance. I feel terrible about poor Lily but I’m proud of Mary. She’s a fighter. It’s going to be a long day today, until tonight, to find out what she’s up to.

  I mean, there are no shortcuts: naps don’t count. Little snatches of this and that; they leave nothing to remember. But when I fall into a deep sleep at night, I know Mary as well as I know myself. Better, perhaps, because I’m inside her life, but I’m observing from the outside as well. That’s sometimes how being Allison Briscoe seems—on the outside, watching, but in here, being. Being me.

  I feel bad about the retired professor who was murdered. The funny thing today was that when my Harvard colleagues came in, no one mentioned the strangled woman who died with a smile. It was like she had never existed. That’s sad, isn’t it?

  I call the researchers my colleagues because that’s what they call each other. They’re very polite and quite formal. I figure I’m one of them. After all, they wouldn’t be here without me. Well, they would, but they’d be gathered around a rat running in a wheel or a monkey with wires sticking out of its brains or a human cadaver on a dissecting table.

  Gordon isn’t a colleague yet, he’s an assistant. No one is polite or formal with Gordon. He’s only a graduate student.

  I listened to him yesterday when he was trying to explain his status to Maddie. He already has two college degrees, so he’s a graduate. Most people would think that’s enough. But he’s working on a PhD, which stands for Philosophy Doctor. A doctor for philosophers. Ha, that’s a joke!

  From what I’ve heard, I wouldn’t call Gordon much of a thinker. When he has a PhD, then he’ll be able to talk down to graduate students, which apparently is the point of higher education, in Gordon’s mind. When he talks about status, Maddie laughs at him.

  This infuriates Gordon. She is already more important than he is around here. She’s a researcher. He’s a research assistant. She’s with me and I’m important.

  Even if I don’t feel like it, I am.

  I’m not a rat or a monkey or a corpse.

  I’m Allison Briscoe.

  Mary

  A doctor arrived at the prison around midnight. Mary was in a rage because he didn’t come sooner. She said nothing but she knew he might have saved Lily’s life. The doctor and the warden talked. They decided Lily had died from pneumonia. It didn’t matter, she was dead.

  Apple and Agnes were even more afraid of Lily than they were of the doctor. The dead body wasn’t Lily anymore, it was Death.

  When the guards threw a brown canvas sheet on the floor and ordered the women to wrap Lily in it and sew the bag up, they were terrified. Mary did most of the work.

  She had met Death before, face-to-face on Navy Island in the Republic of Canada. If you weren’t dead yourself, it was just something to deal with. If you actually were dead, it didn’t matter. You were dead.

  When Lily was sewn into the canvas bag, they were ordered to lift it onto the work table. Early in the morning, a burial crew would take her away. Two guards offered to help, but the warden made them stand back.

  “No sir,” said Mary, staring the warden straight in the eye. The doctor looked away. “We will not leave Lily on the table. She will spend her last night in her own bed.”

  The warden turned red, like he might explode, but the doctor was there as a witness. And the doctor frightened the warden almost as much as he frightened Agnes and Apple. It was because he knew so much about things no one else understood.

  Mary motioned to the other two women. They hoisted the brown canvas bag up and laid it on Lily’s bed. Mary pulled the gray blanket around Lily’s body, as if she were tucking her in.

  Agnes and Apple retreated to their own beds. The warden, the doctor, and the guards took their lantern and left the women in darkness. Mary was still sitting on the side of Lily’s narrow bed, as if she were praying.

  She wasn’t praying.

  Mary was waiting.

  After a while, she scurried around in the moonlight that shone through the bars in their window. Agnes and Apple sat up to watch.

  They were horrified when Mary took her sewing scissors and began cutting open the brown canvas bag. The scissors were blunt so they couldn’t be used as a weapon. Still, Mary had to be careful not to cut into Lily’s body.

  It was all her cellmates could do not to scream. Apple jumped into Agnes’ bed and they clutched each other in holy terror.

  “Here then,” Mary commanded, once she had opened the side of the bag. “I need your help.”

  Neither of them moved from the bed. They huddled closer to each other.

  “Damn it, Agnes, Apple, for glory’s sake, it’s only Lily. She’s just dead, she won’t bite.”

  They stayed where they were.

  Mary struggled by herself to pull the canvas bag down and away from the corpse. Lily’s body glistened in the moonlight. The warden had made them strip Lily naked so her clothes, ragged though they were, could be washed and re-used.

  When Mary finally got Lily free from the canvas, she went over to her own bed and opened up the end of her pillowcase. She had been hiding the white muslin dress, bloomers, and silk camisole inside. She laid her clothes out on the foot of Lily’s’ bed.

  Then Mary lifted Lily in her arms. Lily had been sick for so long, she was not much more than a sack of bones. Mary carried Lily over to her own bed. She tucked Lily under the blanket, lying her on her side.

  It could have been Mary, asleep. Except for the hair. Mary’s hair was light brown, and seemed like spun gold in the moonlight. Lily did not have much hair left but what little there was, was gray and black. Mary arranged the blanket to hide it
. You couldn’t see that it was Lily’s corpse in Mary’s bed. It might have been Mary.

  Allison

  I wonder if Mary knew Lily was going to die? Did she start making the dress as part of a plan? I’d say she has seen enough in her life to know there must always be a plan. But I’m sure she’s not so rigid that she can’t change her plans when a new opportunity arises.

  How can I explain Mary? To whom?

  When Maddie comes in after work, I want to talk to her about my dreams. But I don’t want her to think I’m a nut.

  Maddie would like Mary. Actually, Mary would like Maddie. But the only way they could meet is inside my head. And they won’t be saying much to each other in there.

  Mary and Lizzie and Becky are the only private world I have. I lie here exposed to doctors and scientists, nurses and graduate students and research assistants. I don’t even know whether I’m as naked as Lily’s corpse or if I’m covered up.

  I’d like to share with Maddie but I wouldn’t if I could.

  There have got to be secrets, even from your best friend.

  Sometimes I think what makes me a person are the things I don’t share. Not the things I do and say, but the things I dream and keep to myself.

  I’ve been homesick today.

  At Shady Nook Hospice in Peterborough, I could tell by the light that my bed was parallel to the window and I guessed that the window opened onto a view of the Otonabee River at the bottom of the hill. I grew up in Peterborough. It was easy to fill in the whole town in my mind. Not like a map but from memories. I knew where I was.

  In Boston, it’s different. I’ve never been here before.

  Neither has Maddie but she’s been exploring. Gordon took her on a tour of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It was sort of a date. When she told me about it, she was very excited. She described a silver bowl made by Paul Revere, the guy who made my medallion. It has the same mark stamped on the bottom: the word REVERE inside a rectangle. It’s called the Sons of Liberty Bowl and it is inscribed with the names of fifteen local patriots who refused certain orders from King George III. There’s a sketch of the Magna Carta on one side of the bowl, only Revere spelled it “Charta.” He makes an ancient bill of rights sound like a map. And there’s also a sketch of a paper torn into pieces. Maddie rattled on. She was excited. I suspected the excitement was really about Gordon, not Paul Revere’s silver bowl.