I trust that your coma is educationally-induced, and not more serious? :)
I have run over the character limit for a single post again, so I hope this is interesting enough to be worth two posts... :-/
Coma Outside the window the breeze stirred the branches of the sonic sculptures and teased wailing fragments of melody from them. The sounds drifted on the hot summer air making the vagrants in the parking lot lift their heads and turn this way and that, triangulating on the source, and then letting their heads loll against their chests again as the humidity and heat inflicted torpor on them. A couple of birds lifted lazily into the air, finding thermals and spiralling upwards with minimal effort to cooler reaches where the breeze became wind and they could wing their way across Rotesand towards the greener pastures of Yellowclay. Inside the room a nurse checked the insertion point of an IV while machines behind her beeper periodically. Green screens tracked pulse and heartbeat with oscilloscope-like curves and there was a smell of disinfectant everywhere -- not pine, because Loretta Hines hated pine, but rather something more floral and slightly sickening. Another nurse, a tall man with broad spatulate hands and a filmy mask over his face to contain his moustache, came in with a tray containing a bowl of soup, a spoon, and two slices of some grain-filled bread that looked lumpy and undercooked. Both nurses acted as though Gerald wasn't there, which suited him perfectly. Gerald was dressed like an undertaker; a dark, three-piece suit over a linen shirt; his shoes were black and shiny enough to reflect the fluorescent lights on the ceiling dazzlingly back; he was sweating slightly in the heat even though the room was air-conditioned. He stood by the window, staring at the sonic sculptures in the grounds some distance of metres away, and waited until the click of the door indicated that the nurses had left at last. Then, only then, he turned around and looked at Loretta on the bed.
The sheets were drawn up to her neck so all that could be seen were her face and one arm, pale and exposed, into which wrist the IV had been inserted. She looked peaceful asleep -- well, comatose, he thought -- but the beauty that had obtained her first modelling contract aged 14, still lanky and gawky and full of ideals, was clearly there. In twenty years she appeared to have hardly aged at all, but if you knew where to look, and could get close enough -- and Loretta had allegedly not taken a lover in the last five -- there were marks of the surgeon's art. Tiny incisions here and there, injection of Botox and related toxins to freeze her flesh, tighten her skin, and keep her as youthful and naive as she had been when she started out. Gerald sighed. He looked around for the visitor's chair and found, to his annoyance, that it was gone. The nurses didn't like him visiting her and clearly they were making that more obvious now. But he was her last living relative and unless and until the courts issued a restraining order -- and even though Loretta's lawyer was practically rabid in his attempts to get it, with her comatose at Rotesand the case was well and truly stalled -- he could visit her. He leaned against the window-sill, having nowhere to sit, and watched her sleep for a minute. "You've earned it," he murmured to himself. He eye lighted on a newspaper on the bedside table and he picked it up. Sure enough it was three weeks old and the headline was the story that had resulted in Loretta ending up in here in the first place -- the car crash that had killed her abusive girlfriend and catapulted Loretta down thirty metres of rocky scree to land, bleeding and unconscious, on a narrow sandy strip at the ocean's edge. The nurses had probably been reading it to her again, even though he'd given them strict instructions not to try and wake her that way. He dropped the paper out of the window; the breeze could ruffle the pages and the birds could peck it apart for nesting material and maybe that would be a better use for it. Loretta was better off in her dreams, he thought. Better that being fought over by lawyers and ghoulish hangers-on. Better than planning her next surgery and auditioning for parts too young for her, and fretting over money that trickled through her fingers faster than water. Let her sleep. The sonic sculptures outside honked mournfully, and he smiled. The nurses would never figure out the connection between them and the coma, and Loretta could sleep for as long as she needed.
3 comments:
I trust that your coma is educationally-induced, and not more serious? :)
I have run over the character limit for a single post again, so I hope this is interesting enough to be worth two posts... :-/
Coma
Outside the window the breeze stirred the branches of the sonic sculptures and teased wailing fragments of melody from them. The sounds drifted on the hot summer air making the vagrants in the parking lot lift their heads and turn this way and that, triangulating on the source, and then letting their heads loll against their chests again as the humidity and heat inflicted torpor on them. A couple of birds lifted lazily into the air, finding thermals and spiralling upwards with minimal effort to cooler reaches where the breeze became wind and they could wing their way across Rotesand towards the greener pastures of Yellowclay.
Inside the room a nurse checked the insertion point of an IV while machines behind her beeper periodically. Green screens tracked pulse and heartbeat with oscilloscope-like curves and there was a smell of disinfectant everywhere -- not pine, because Loretta Hines hated pine, but rather something more floral and slightly sickening. Another nurse, a tall man with broad spatulate hands and a filmy mask over his face to contain his moustache, came in with a tray containing a bowl of soup, a spoon, and two slices of some grain-filled bread that looked lumpy and undercooked. Both nurses acted as though Gerald wasn't there, which suited him perfectly.
Gerald was dressed like an undertaker; a dark, three-piece suit over a linen shirt; his shoes were black and shiny enough to reflect the fluorescent lights on the ceiling dazzlingly back; he was sweating slightly in the heat even though the room was air-conditioned. He stood by the window, staring at the sonic sculptures in the grounds some distance of metres away, and waited until the click of the door indicated that the nurses had left at last. Then, only then, he turned around and looked at Loretta on the bed.
The sheets were drawn up to her neck so all that could be seen were her face and one arm, pale and exposed, into which wrist the IV had been inserted. She looked peaceful asleep -- well, comatose, he thought -- but the beauty that had obtained her first modelling contract aged 14, still lanky and gawky and full of ideals, was clearly there. In twenty years she appeared to have hardly aged at all, but if you knew where to look, and could get close enough -- and Loretta had allegedly not taken a lover in the last five -- there were marks of the surgeon's art. Tiny incisions here and there, injection of Botox and related toxins to freeze her flesh, tighten her skin, and keep her as youthful and naive as she had been when she started out.
Gerald sighed. He looked around for the visitor's chair and found, to his annoyance, that it was gone. The nurses didn't like him visiting her and clearly they were making that more obvious now. But he was her last living relative and unless and until the courts issued a restraining order -- and even though Loretta's lawyer was practically rabid in his attempts to get it, with her comatose at Rotesand the case was well and truly stalled -- he could visit her.
He leaned against the window-sill, having nowhere to sit, and watched her sleep for a minute.
"You've earned it," he murmured to himself. He eye lighted on a newspaper on the bedside table and he picked it up. Sure enough it was three weeks old and the headline was the story that had resulted in Loretta ending up in here in the first place -- the car crash that had killed her abusive girlfriend and catapulted Loretta down thirty metres of rocky scree to land, bleeding and unconscious, on a narrow sandy strip at the ocean's edge. The nurses had probably been reading it to her again, even though he'd given them strict instructions not to try and wake her that way.
He dropped the paper out of the window; the breeze could ruffle the pages and the birds could peck it apart for nesting material and maybe that would be a better use for it.
Loretta was better off in her dreams, he thought. Better that being fought over by lawyers and ghoulish hangers-on. Better than planning her next surgery and auditioning for parts too young for her, and fretting over money that trickled through her fingers faster than water. Let her sleep.
The sonic sculptures outside honked mournfully, and he smiled. The nurses would never figure out the connection between them and the coma, and Loretta could sleep for as long as she needed.
Greg - definitely learning induced.
Um, indeed. Utterly fascinating and so delightfully well crafted. Bravo!
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