Coma

by Emmy Ellis

  “Ah, I had a meeting afterwards, and they explained their tactics.”

  “Shit. Will I have a meeting?”

  “Yup.”

  “You reckon it’ll fuck up my chances of going to The Apartments?”

  “Yep. If you don’t admit what you did as soon as you enter the meeting, if you act dumb and deny what you did, they’ll keep you here and mess with your meds until you go crazy again?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I walked towards Jen’s door for hopefully the last time, though doubt badgered me with its relentless prod the closer I got.

  Isn’t lying bad? Isn’t it a sin? And if they are so clever, won’t they know I’m lying?

  Heart hammering, I knocked on her door.

  “Enter!”

  Mr Grace sat beside her behind the desk. The meeting.

  I sat, too, placed both feet firmly on the floor—shuffled them, and my lies became transparent like those damn eyelids—and folded my hands in my lap.

  “I did a bad thing last night, Jen.”

  “Did you, Wayne? Go on.”

  “Dean Campbell. Well, he said some nasty stuff about you, about me, and it did something inside me. I, uh, stole some SuperGlue from your desk, and last night I…” I swallowed, but the ball of lies lodged in my throat, unmovable.

  “It’s okay, Wayne. Please continue.” Jen smiled.

  Mr Grace didn’t.

  “I went to Dean’s room and glued his eyes and mouth shut. I came down here to your office and wiped the tube and put it back in there. See, there it is.” I pointed to Jen’s odds-and-ends tray and looked back at her.

  She nodded encouragingly.

  “I saw Mr Grace down here. Didn’t I, Mr Grace? You were here. I’m sorry for what I did. Is Dean all right? I mean, did I damage him? He’s a bad man, and I…”

  Jen stood and walked to her fridge, pulled out a carton of Ribena, and brought it to me. She smiled and turned to Mr Grace. “Coffee, Mr Grace?”

  He nodded and stared ahead. I busied myself with taking the straw out of its case and stabbed it into the silver moon. The juice slid down my throat, so cold it chilled my whole body. Or maybe that was guilt? Perhaps I did feel remorse now that the prize of moving to The Apartments might be out of my reach.

  Jen carried two cups of coffee to her desk, placed them down, and sat back in her seat. “Wayne, there are some things I must explain to you. While here, you are never sure what is real and what is not. If you’d read your welcome booklet, you would have known this. However, you did not, yet you were quite happy to accept your therapy. Your need to get well far exceeded any other thoughts. Prior to going to The Apartments, medication doses are cut slightly, day by day.

  “Now, despite the lower dosage, you didn’t display any untoward acts until yesterday when one tablet was completely exchanged for a placebo. Despite your acts against Dean Campbell, callous as they were, your intention was basically for the good. We recognise that, and although your actual act was heinous, the reasons behind it were genuine—you thought Dean was a bad man and you didn’t want him to do bad things anymore.

  “The fact that you have confessed to this act as soon as you came in shows us that you are a true soul and are on the correct road to recovery. You will be leaving for The Apartments later on today.”

  “What about Dean?”

  “Dean was a distracter, Wayne,” Jen said.

  “Distracter?”

  “Yes. He works upstairs, loaned to us to cause you to commit a bad act. Or not. As I said just now, you can never be sure what is real and what is not. The same goes for when you’re at The Apartments. You’d do well to remember that. Dean is absolutely fine.”

  Jen shuffled some papers on her desk. She picked up her pen and put ticks alongside some text. “Right. Because you so obviously didn’t read the welcome booklet, and there’s no point in you reading it now as your stay here has come to an end, all you need to know is that your medication will be given to you in four separate bottles each week. You will have to collect them yourself from—”

  “The pharmacist,” I said.

  “Ah, so you’ve at least read The Apartments booklet. Good.”

  I flicked my gaze to Mr Grace. He continued to stare at the opposite wall while drinking coffee.

  Jen said, “There is enough medication in those four bottles combined for you to commit suicide if you so choose.”

  “What?” What the fuck is she telling me that for?

  “Let me finish, Wayne. Some people find The Apartments a tough place to live. It isn’t unheard of that people choose to put an end to any misery they encounter there. I don’t envisage you doing any such thing, but it is my duty to let you know you have a get-out clause. Now, as well as full dosage medication, the bottles contain placebos. It’s a lottery as to which tablets you take each day. You must still take one of each tablet, but you’ll never be sure whether you get your full dosage, half dosage, or even four placebos at any given time. You should be able to gauge when you have a bad day. On these days you must ring in sick at the university—you got in, by the way, congratulations—and stay in your apartment. We don’t want any more occurrences like last night, do we?”

  “Uh, no.”

  Jen sipped her coffee. Mr Grace didn’t.

  “What has changed the past few weeks for you?” Jen asked. “Is there anything you can pinpoint as a little off, apart from your therapy here, your speech sessions, and the gym? What’s been different?”

  What the fuck is she going on about? “I can’t think what—”

  “Are you sure you can’t think?”

  “I can’t—”

  “Are you ssssure, Wayne?”

  The correct answer buzzer sounds in my head. “I still lisp under pressure.”

  “Right. You’ll also lisp when your meds have been very low that day. And that, my dear, is all you need to know. Are all your bags packed?”

  I inhaled deeply. “Yes.”

  “Well, then, that’s about everything covered, isn’t it, Mr Grace?”

  Jen turned to the silent man, more of a mannequin than a human being. He slid his gaze in my direction, eyes over closed lids. Moon mist cleared, and he nodded, said, “He’ll do.”

  “Fabulous.” Jen turned back to face me. “And don’t forget, Wayne. Once you’re settled in at The Apartments, I’ll stop by for a visit, all right?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s fine,” I said.

  * * * *

  I stood on the steps of The Klinter Institute. Other patients, who I guessed were leaving on the big white bus that was parked opposite the steps, milled around beside their bags. Nineteen of them, all looking either scared shitless, relieved, or just plain excited. I was a mixture of all three.

  The Apartments housed five hundred people, not to mention the countless others, such as wardens, psych staff, nurses… A big step from what I’d been used to. Having kept to myself at Klinter, I was wary as to how I’d cope among so many new people.

  Two short horn honks burst my bubble of introspection. I glanced up from staring at the gravel towards the bus. The driver, an old guy in a white uniform, complete with peaked cap, waved his arm out of the window.

  “All aboard!”

  It was kind of like being a kid again and going on a school trip. I turned and looked behind me. The smoked glass doors to Klinter were closed. Taking a deep breath, I picked up my rucksack, secured the straps over my shoulders, and grabbed the handle of my case. The other patients all converged towards the bus and dumped their cases beside an open hatchway in the belly of the vehicle. I followed, my eyes itching.

  I blinked. No use wishing for what wasn’t going to happen. No use expecting such busy people to come along and say goodbye to a dumb nut like me. They’d all said they’d got attached to me, but it could have just been words.

  The bus driver must have got out of the bus when I hadn’t been paying attention; he hefted the cases into the luggage compartment and said, “Everyone wh
o’s left their case here, get on the bus. Time’s a wastin’.”

  I placed my suitcase down beside him and watched where he put it. Satisfied I knew which case was mine, I walked round to the other side of the bus. A queue, with what seemed more than twenty people in it, snaked beside it, and I tagged myself onto the end of it.

  I gazed up at Klinter, seeing it for the first time that I can remember. A huge monster of a white building, the only way in through the smoked-glass doors. What appeared to be at least five hundred windows winked in the sunlight, and two magnificent structures, like the onion-topped domes of a temple, grew from the roof high up into the sky. A line of regimented windows from the base of each tower to the top reminded me of giant runway lights. Movement behind one of the lower tower windows caught my attention. I squinted and moved my head forward. Was that Mr Grace? That must be what Jen had meant by ‘Them Upstairs’. Those who governed Klinter must reside in the towers.

  “Were you thinking of leaving us without saying goodbye, son?”

  I swivelled round. There stood Herbert, Kathy, and Jen. Swirls of emotion trundled in my guts.

  “No, I…I did check to see if you were on the steps but…”

  “Don’t worry yourself, son. I’m only messing.” Herbert placed his hand on my upper arm and gave it a little squeeze. “You take care of yourself, you hear? Try to visit the gym once a week, keep up your exercises.”

  I looked into those old eyes. A brief dance of moon mist flitted across his pupils then faded. Cataracts?

  “I will,” I managed.

  Herbert stepped back, gave a little wave.

  Kathy moved forward, Kathy of the dancing eyes, the enchanting presence. “Well, I’m so excited for you. A new adventure, new journey. Aren’t you excited by everything coming your way?”

  “Excited, yeah, but apprehensive, too.”

  “I just bet you are. You need to keep control of that tongue of yours, in more ways than one. Watch what you’re saying at all times, and you’ll be just fine, all right?”

  I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt. “All right, Kathy.”

  Kathy flung herself at me, hugged me so tightly I wondered if I’d ever breathe again. Her embrace felt good. I couldn’t recall being cuddled like that since before Dad had died. She stepped to the side, rubbed at her eyes with her fingertips, and a hiccough tripped into the air.

  She’s crying? Because I’m leaving?

  And then it was me and Jen. We stood face to face, gazing into one another’s eyes. I wanted to speak but didn’t trust myself, and, judging by the water balancing on Jen’s lower lids, she felt the same way.

  She swallowed, blinked, and a tear plopped from each eye.

  “Well, uh… What can I say, but thank you for trusting me with your demons, letting me help you fight them.” She sniffed, and her bottom lip wobbled.

  I cleared my throat and rubbed the end of my nose with the side of my hand. “Um, that’s all right. Thanks for, uh, helping me sort myself out. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Oh, but you could have. You’d have managed it eventually, we all do. Just this time round you needed a little help.”

  We stared at each other. I told myself I was going to see her again soon; she was coming to visit me, she’d said she would. I had a feeling, though, that she wouldn’t.

  The bus driver must have boarded after the other patients, as another two honks blasted out.

  “Come on, mate! We wanna get moving,” he said.

  I flicked my gaze away from Jen and looked to where Herbert and Kathy stood, but they’d gone.

  Jen reached out to clasp my hands in hers and rubbed the pad of her thumb across the back of my wrist. “Be good, despite Mags and the medication dosage, Wayne. Just…just make sure you’re good. Please.”

  “I’ll try, Jen.”

  Our eyes said a million things, yet I still got the urge to say, “I love you, Jen.”

  * * * *

  “All disembark!” the bus driver shouted.

  I lifted my head from the headrest of my seat. Shit, I didn’t even recall falling asleep. After a shoulder shrug and a couple of head rotations, I turned and glanced out of the window.

  The bus had parked outside an apartment block in one of the streets on the housing estate side of the complex. I stood and ducked my head to avoid banging it on the luggage rack above. I looked around. Everyone else had left the bus—when did they do that? I grabbed my rucksack and moved down the aisle.

  Sun still high, its heat attacked the top of my head, exacerbating the dull ache at the base of my skull. The white apartment buildings appeared much like The Klinter Institute, except they didn’t have onion-domed towers. I stood next to the other awed patients, staring up at the building to our left, and wondered which one of those windows would be mine.

  “Right, everyone!”

  I turned towards the sound of the voice. A middle-aged man in a tight-fitting red shirt and patchwork clown trousers complete with braces and waist hoop stood in front of our little crowd.

  “And hell to you all. Ha! Joke! I meant hello. Welcome to The Apartments. I’m Wilf and I’m your warden. Wilf the Warden, easy to remember. Any problems, come on over to me. Anything you need to ask, ask Wilf. Or, if you just need a chat, then Wilf is your man.

  “Your apartment block is this one here, to your left. Won-der-ful. Your apartment door has your name on it in beautiful silver letters. Everything you need is inside your apartments. Your luggage from The Klinter Institute has been disposed of. And you may well look shocked, but trust Wilf, you won’t need anything from those bags. And if you do, well, that’s big tough titty, folks, because by now,” he glanced down at his watch, “the fires have devoured them.”

  Our luggage has been burned? Why even ask us to pack them then?

  I stood at the back of the crowd. Everyone’s heads moved from Wilf to the apartments to their fellow passengers. Jen’s voice floated through my mind, reminding me things weren’t as they seemed here.

  “Jeez. What have we stumbled into?” Female voice.

  I turned to my right. Fuck me, it’s Nicola, Nicola with the dogs! Shit, I haven’t seen her since I was a damn kid. What’s she doing here?

  “Nicola?”

  “Hey, Wayne. Long time no see.”

  She was just the same as I remembered, but older.

  “How come you’re here? How come I didn’t see you at Klinter?”

  Wilf the Warden’s voice yammered on in the background.

  “Klinter? Oh, I didn’t come from there. The driver picked me up on its way here. I stuck out my thumb, and the bus stopped, so I hopped on. Thought I’d come along for the ride, see where it took me. I wasn’t happy where I was, saw no way out, hence me hitchhiking. Just hope I can convince them I’m meant to be here and get one of those apartments. This place feels right.”

  I shook my head slightly and whispered, “See, I don’t feel right here. I don’t…”

  “You at the back there. Wayne Richards. You think you’re above listening to Wilf? You think you know it all just from reading the booklet? Well, shame on you, because there are things I’ve just been telling the people who wanted to listen, that I’m not repeating for you. So, when you come to me with your questions, which you will, because you haven’t been listening, I might very well not answer them.”

  Shit. All heads swivelled to look at me.

  “Uh, sorry, Wilf. I was just—”

  “I was just! I was just! You was just damn rude, kid.”

  “No, I was just speaking to my friend Nicola here.” I turned to my right and faced an empty space.

  “Nicola? There isn’t any Nicola on Wilf’s list. No Nicola on the whole damn complex.”

  Red spots filled both of Wilf’s cheeks, and he shimmied from side to side. Hands on his braces, he reminded me of one of those comedians, Laurel or Hardy, always did get them mixed up.

  “But she was just here!” I glanced round. “She caught
a lift on the bus.”

  “Caught a lift on the bus? Let me tell you, the bus from Klinter stops for no one. And you making up this story has got me kinda irked. I’m marking your card, Wayne Richards.”

  What. The. Fuck?

  Now wasn’t the time to cry, but I damned well felt like it. My throat lump grew from an apple pip to a peach stone, and I swallowed to give me something to concentrate on other than tears and feelings of insecurity.

  “So, Mr Wayne Richards. Where do you pick up your apartment key?” Wilf’s nose was now a clown’s red ball.

  “Uh, I don’t know.”

  “Why, he doesn’t know! What a surprise. And why don’t you know?”

  “Um, I wasn’t listening.” Embarrassment heated my cheeks like the sun in Mags’ garden.

  “Ah, he wasn’t listening. Although nutty as a fruitcake, folks, because he’s admitted to seeing someone who isn’t even there, at least he admits when he’s done wrong. And that’s what this place is all about. Admitting when you did wrong and making sure you don’t repeat that mistake again. But, folks, d’you know what?” Wilf’s eyes seemed to darken, and a scowl popped onto his forehead along with furry, bright-blue eyebrows. “You may look at Wayne here and feel smug that it isn’t you who did wrong, but I gua-ran-tee you’ll be messing up pretty damn soon. You’re all a bunch of fuck-ups that never learn from past mistakes. Isn’t that right?”

  Everyone lowered their heads.

  “Well, you people ignoring me now? Like, hello? You’re meant to answer my questions.”

  Mumbles of agreement grew from the crowd.

  “That’s the ticket! Once you admit you keep repeating your errors, you’re halfway there, and you’re not leaving this place until you do. You got that?”

  More murmurs, louder.

  “Well then, glad we got that sorted. So, off you go to your apartments. If you need to get hold of me, like Wayne Richards will, I don’t live where the other wardens do. I’m lucky to live at Gogglins Theme Park, the house right next to the big old roller coaster.” Wilf turned and walked away, muttering, “Shoot! Every new batch is just the same as the last. Know it all, don’t need any help. Well, schnizzle my nizzle, they’ve got a lot of learning to do. And you can bet my clowning arse they’ll leave here and be back again before I know it.”