Coma Girl: part 1 Read Online Free

because various articles of clothing had been left on during our encounters.
    And then there was Duncan, the love of my life. We met at some random party and it was love at first sight… at least for me. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t attracted to me physically, but we had so much fun together and liked the same things that he eventually started hanging around. We had a few great months together before he left for the Peace Corps for two years, a commitment he’d already made before we met.
    I was despondent because I had a bad feeling Duncan would meet someone else while he was abroad, and he did. Early in his tour we texted or Skyped constantly. But when he got more involved in his duties, the contact became more sporadic. And when we did talk, the name of a particular girl in the Corps kept popping over and over: Trina. She was also from Atlanta and they had bonded over being so far away from home.
    Here’s where I should say Duncan and I had only engaged in heavy petting and only when we were drunk, so in his mind, we weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend and he was free to fall in love with Trina, which he proceeded to do, oblivious to the pain it caused me. Occasionally when he Skyped me, she would nudge her prettier face into the screen and wave as if we were old pals. Then one day she held up her hand and announced, “Surprise, we’re engaged!” I tried to be happy for Duncan like the good friend he considered me to be, but between you and me, I was positively heartbroken.
    Suddenly I wondered if Duncan knew about my accident and just as quickly realized there was no reason he would. He’d never met my parents or my sister and they had no reason to believe he was any more important to me than anyone else in my address book. If Duncan had tried to Skype me recently, he would just assume I was busy. One upside of being in this bed is I wouldn’t have to go to his wedding. When I didn’t RSVP, would he think I was angry with him?
    If so, good. How’s that for passive-aggressive behavior?
    “She has great skin,” Nurse Teddy said. “It’s a shame about the scars.”
    The scars again—was I a monster?
    “I have some cocoa butter that will help them fade,” Nurse Gina said. “She’ll be pretty again when she wakes up.”
    “Have you ever seen anyone in this ward wake up?”
    “No,” Gina admitted. “But it’s the least I can do.”
    “Poor thing,” Teddy said.
    “Yes, poor thing,” Gina said.
    “What did you bring for lunch today?”
    “Tuna salad—you?”
    “Leftover lasagna.”
    They moved away, and I was already forgotten. But at least they had left me smelling like cocoa butter. It was a gift.
     

July 8, Friday
     
    TODAY IS TEST DAY. Early this morning my bed and I were wheeled to another part of the hospital. Sidney’s rosary clicked against the bed in a rhythm that seemed to say, I’m with you… I’m with you… I’m with you...
    I was psyched—at first. But ugh, the delays. Over what seemed like hours, I was put in an MRI machine and given a CT scan—both passive tests that simply look at the state of my brain. I heard Dr. Tyson say she wanted to assess the swelling. Then I was hooked up to an EEG—an electroencephalogram, a fancy name for a machine to measure what, if anything, was happening in my head. I heard Dr. Tyson talk to others about electrodes, so I assume they were attached to my head in some way, although I couldn’t feel them. I tried to concentrate on what was going on around me, but I confess all the voices and noises and scents made for sensory overload… I could almost feel my brain misfiring. When the doctor addressed me directly, presenting me with words and phrases that were meant, I assume, to trigger a sensory response, I was fading in and out.
    In school, I was known as someone who studied diligently, but who didn’t test well. And here I went again.
    From the snatches of conversation around me, I realized someone was touching different areas of my body