Afterwards

‘Sarah Covey. Mike’s sister,’ Sarah announces. ‘This is Grace’s mother, Georgina Jestopheson. There have been patients who have woken up from comas after years, haven’t there? With “cognitive function”?’

The sock-it-to-them doctor is unabashed. ‘Yes, there are occasionally stories in the press about such cases, but on closer scrutiny you’ll see they are different medically.’

‘And what about stem-cell therapy?’ you ask. ‘Growing new neurons or what-have-you?’

You’re still grabbing at information half heard on the news driving home or skimmed over in the Sunday papers.

But I’m holding onto it too – imagining heavy lifting equipment heaving that wrecked ship of a body off the ocean floor; the rust being scraped from my eyes.

‘There’s no proof that any of these therapies will work. They’ve mainly been used on patients suffering from degenerative disease, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, rather than on massive trauma.’

He turns from Sarah to you. ‘You must want to know how long her state will continue this way. The answer is that it can last a very long time. There’s no reason why your wife should die. She’s breathing for herself and we are feeding her through a tube, which we will continue to do. So this state can go on indefinitely. But I’m not sure that it qualifies as living in the way we think of it. And although now it seems a relief that she’s not going to die, it can have its own particular problems for the family.’

Now that I am a long-term burden I’m ‘your wife’, underscoring your onerous responsibility.

‘Are you talking about a court order for withdrawing food and fluid?’ Sarah asks, and I think if a tiger was reincarnated as a police officer she would look like Sarah.

‘Of course not,’ Dr Bailstrom says. ‘It’s early days and would be premature to-’

‘But that’s where you’re headed?’ Sarah interrupts; prowling around her, growling.

‘A lawyer?’ she asks.

‘A police officer.’

‘A tigress protecting her brother who she’s been a mother to,’ I add, to try and clarify the situation for him, and loving Sarah for this.

‘We simply want to be straightforward with you,’ the sock-it-to-them doctor continues. ‘In time, yes, there may be a conversation about whether it’s in Grace’s best interests-’

Sarah interrupts again. ‘Enough of this. I agree with my brother that Grace can think and hear. But that’s not the point.’ She pauses then drops a word at a time into the silent pool that this room has become.

‘She. Is. ALIVE.’

Realising he’s met more than his match in Sarah, the doctor turns back to you. I see that Jenny has slipped in.

‘Mr Covey, I think-’

‘She’s more intelligent than the lot of you,’ you say, interrupting while I cringe – they are consultant neurologists, darling, brain surgeons. You take no notice. ‘Knows about books, paintings, all sorts of stuff; interested in everything. She doesn’t see how clever she is but she’s the brightest person I’ve ever met.’

‘What goes on in that head of yours?’ you’d asked me, a year into our romance, with admiration and affection. While you had wide open prairies in your head, I had libraries and galleries, stuffed full.

‘It doesn’t all just disappear,’ you continue. ‘All those thoughts she has and feelings and knowledge; all that kindness and warmth and funniness. It can’t just go.’

‘Mr Covey, as neurologists, we-’

‘You’re scientists. Yes. Did you know that four billion years ago it rained for thousands of years, making the oceans?’

They are listening politely; they’ll allow you this time to go mentally AWOL after devastating news. But I know where you’re going with this. You’d told Addie about it a few months ago; livening up his water-cycle homework.

‘The water that rained down four billion years ago is exactly the same water we have today,’ you continue. ‘It might be frozen into glaciers, or in the clouds, or in rivers or raining. But it’s the same water. And exactly the same amount. No more, but no less. It didn’t go anywhere. It couldn’t.’

Dr Bailstrom taps an impatient red heel, either not getting it or not wanting to try. But I like the idea that I’m a melted bit of glacier joining the ocean; the same but outwardly changed. Or, optimistically, part of a cloud, which will be rained down again, back to where I came from.

‘We will continue to do tests,’ Dr Bailstrom says to you. ‘But there really is no chance that your wife will ever regain consciousness.’

‘You said that she could live for years,’ you say to her. ‘So one day there’ll be a cure. And we’ll just have to wait, for as long as it takes.’

Had we but worlds enough and time.

In time, a cloud rejoins the ocean.

Wait long enough and a dull piece of grit becomes a luminous pearl. I feel it in my hand, round and smooth until it became warm; Adam’s hand in mine as he falls asleep.

17

A little while later Mum arrives at my bedside. Unlike you and Sarah, she didn’t argue with the doctors, and I’d seen each medical fact – supposed medical fact – hitting her face like flying glass, cutting new lines.

‘A nurse is with Addie,’ she says. ‘Just for a little while. I can’t leave him long. But I had to talk to you on my own.’ She pauses a moment. ‘Someone’s going to have to tell him that you’re not going to wake up.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Mum, you can’t do that!’

I have never, ever, said fuck to my mother before.

‘I just want what’s best for him,’ Mum says quietly.

‘How can this be best for Ads? Jesus!’

It’s been years since we argued, and even then it was more of a disagreement. Of all times and places we shouldn’t start now, here.

‘I know that you can hear me, Gracie, angel. Wherever you are.’

‘I’m right here, Mum. Right here. And soon their tests will pick it up. I’m going to be Roger fucking Federer, smashing the ball at a hundred miles an hour over the net for a “YES I CAN UNDERSTAND YOU!” And once they know that I can still think, then they’ll try and find a way of getting me well again.’

‘I’d better get back to Addie.’

She pulls the curtain back. Jenny is outside and has clearly overheard; the curtains obey the laws of science after all.

She looks so anxious.

‘Granny G is wrong,’ I say to her. ‘And so are the doctors. I can think and feel, can’t I? Talk to you now? Their scans aren’t sophisticated enough, that’s all. So one day, hopefully soon, I’ll give them a great big surprise.’

‘Roger fucking Federer?’ she says.

‘Absolutely. Venus Williams, if I don’t fancy a sex change. Honestly, sweetheart, once they give me the right scans, they’ll know I’m OK.’

But she’s still anxious; her head bent down and her narrow shoulders hunched together.

‘You were so brave. Going into the school for me.’

‘Dad said that too, and it’s really nice of you both, but it’s not in the least accurate and makes me feel a fraud.’

She half smiles. ‘Oh right. So what does qualify as brave? If you’re not allowed running into a burning building to rescue someone?’

‘It was just instinct, that’s all. Really. Something any mother would do for their child.’

But I’m not being totally honest. Most mothers – maybe all apart from me – would