Notes from a Coma Read online

  “You’ve forgotten … you’ve disappointed him.”

  “I’ll get over it, believe me.”

  “He’s not so forgiving. In fact, that is why he’s here. He’s here to punish you.”

  “He’s going to punish me? How’s he going to punish me? Is he going to shoot me, a hit man? He’s going to pull out a handgun in Thornton’s bar and blow me away?”

  “No, it’s worse than that, just telling you is punishment enough.”

  “That makes no sense. You’re saying that his evidence is the punishment. What sort of sentence is that?”

  “It’s the worst sort; you have to live with it.”

  Owen sat back on the couch. He was looking at JJ intently, shaking his head sorrowfully as if seeing something deeply pitiful for the first time. “You’re always like this,” he said softly, “always coming out with this sort of shite.”

  “Don’t heed him, Owen, you know how he is.”

  Owen was near tears now, drink and tiredness suddenly overpowering him. His inspiration had dried up too and he knew it. He was looking at me, hoping I’d side with him.

  “I know what I’d tell that cunt, I’d tell him what I’m telling you right now. Fuck off back to where he came from, just like I’m telling you the same thing JJ. Fuck off, you and your big ideas.”

  “Badgering the prosecution, Your Honour.”

  “I’ll badger the cunt right enough.”

  I could feel JJ stiffening beside me. He’d gone too far this time. He should have seen the signs. Owen was standing over us glowering, his face swollen with frustration and temper. He took a step towards JJ and then took two steps back. He swung up the bottle.

  JJ said, “Take it easy, Owen. I was only thinking out loud.” He held up his hands. “The prosecution rests.”

  Owen lowered his face into JJ’s. “Fuck off, JJ, I’m not listening to any more of this shite. I’m going to bed.” Owen moved towards the bedroom and JJ got up to follow him. I pushed him back.

  “No, JJ, I’ll go.”

  Owen was sitting on the side of the bed sobbing, the glass held between his legs. “Why is he always like that, Sarah?” he asked. “Why does everything have to be about him?”

  “That’s the way he is, Owen, you know him, he can’t let anything go. Can you walk home?”

  He shook his head and lay back on the bed. “I’m too drunk, my knee is too sore.”

  “Then stay here tonight, I’ll set an alarm for you. Eight o’clock, that will give you six hours.” I reached for the bottle but he clasped it closer to his chest. “Give me the bottle, Owen.” He lurched up in the bed and drained off the last of the whiskey then fell back on the pillows.

  “Go away, Sarah,” he slurred. “Go away.”

  When I got into the kitchen JJ was leaning on the sink looking tired and sorry.

  “Is he OK?”

  “He’s fine, he’s asleep.”

  He threw his hand up in a sorrowful gesture. “I didn’t mean anything.”

  “You don’t know how hard it is to listen to you sometimes. You can be so righteous.”

  “I can’t stop it, Sarah, it’s the way I am. I didn’t mean anything.”

  “You did, JJ. But not in the way you think.”

  I tidied up the tins and glasses and JJ looked in on Owen. He was lying on his side, breathing deeply.

  “I’ve set the alarm, he’ll be OK. Come on, it’s time to go.”

  We walked home hand in hand that night. A big summer moon hung over Carramore Hill and the fields were bathed in this deep blue light; it was like walking through a cobalt bottle. JJ kissed me at the gate and told me he’d call me the following morning. Watching him walk away that night I don’t think I ever saw him looking so sad.

  JJ got a call from Owen’s mother the following morning—Owen hadn’t turned up for work. Peter Monk had been on the phone to her, where the hell was he? JJ told her he’d get him. He hopped into the car and called for me. I picked up the keys of the chalet and sat in beside him; JJ was effing and blinding.

  “You’re sure you set the alarm?”

  “I’m sure. Maybe it didn’t go off.”

  “Maybe. Maybe he’s hung-over, the hoor, him and his Wild Turkey.”

  “His knee was bad. It’s not like him to sleep in. Owen is as good as his word, hung-over or not.”

  “He better have an excuse. Peter Monk is in Lachta, up to his oxters in seven acres of grass.”

  There was no sign of life in the chalet. The curtains were still drawn and there was no cup drying on the sink. JJ threw open the bedroom door and shouted in.

  “Owen, you lazy bastard, rise and shine.”

  I could see over JJ’s shoulder. Owen was lying on his side, facing the window, just as I’d left him. I went over to draw the curtains. JJ drew a kick on the bed.

  “Come on, you lazy hoor, get up.”

  When I turned around JJ was down on one knee over Owen. His face was blank and his left hand was poised a foot over Owen’s shoulder. Owen’s face was blue and open-mouthed, a small pool of black drool staining the sheet under his cheek.

  “Owen!” JJ turned him on to his back and shook his shoulders with both hands. “Owen!” He struck him hard across the cheek and Owen’s head spun slowly through ninety degrees. “Owen! Wake up to fuck!”

  I pushed JJ aside and Owen sank back in the bed. Grabbing his wrist in my left hand I felt for a pulse. He was still warm but his eyes were closed and his arm felt dead weight.

  “I can’t find a pulse!”

  JJ hopped on to the bed and straddled Owen. He held his nose and brought his mouth down. I took out my mobile and moved into the kitchen. All the time JJ was yelling.

  “Wake up, Owen … Wake up, you fucker.”

  When I got back to the bedroom JJ was pumping Owen’s chest. Owen was rocking up and down in the bed, his hand flung out over the side. I knew then he was dead and no amount of pounding and breathing was going to bring him back. I pulled JJ off him.

  “No, JJ! Leave it … Stop it! … Stop!”

  JJ fell off him and stood back. “He can’t be … how …?”

  I took Owen’s wrist once more but found nothing. I gathered in his arm and laid it on his chest, then stood back and put my arms around JJ. I didn’t cry or anything and I didn’t feel sad either. This was all happening in some dream time where I couldn’t catch up with myself or my feelings. Sometime in the future I knew I was going to feel bad and go off food and sleep and spend the best part of myself crying. But that was another time, another life. Right at that moment all I felt was a sense of vague distant shame for not feeling more, for not feeling deeper.

  I moved to pull the sheet over Owen. JJ pulled me back.

  “No, Sarah, stay away from him.”

  Dr Ryan arrived a few minutes later and ordered us out of the room. He could have only been a few minutes in there when he came out and called an ambulance.

  “What happened?” he asked. “What do you know?”

  We told him what had happened. He asked us if Owen was taking anything, any substances. No. Owen had no interest in anything like that. There were no pills in the house either.

  “Have you rung his mother?”

  JJ stood up and wiped his eyes. “I’m going to tell her.”

  “Sit down, JJ. You’re in no shape to go anywhere.”

  “I have to.”

  I don’t know where he got the courage for that. He told me afterwards it was the hardest thing he’d ever done and I can well believe it. While we waited I answered a few more questions. I told Dr Ryan how Owen was in bad form the previous night, pining after Mary G and the argument with JJ. Listening to myself it sounded like it was something that had happened in another life instead of ten hours ago. Dr Ryan listened and drew some paperwork from his bag.

  “He was fine when we left him. Young men don’t just die in their sleep.”

  “There’ll be an autopsy, we’ll know more then.”

  JJ pulled up
in the car then and Owen’s mother jumped out. She was in the middle of the room before JJ had his feet on the tarmac. The sleeves of her T-shirt were rolled up to her shoulders and her hands were red. JJ told me later he’d found her in the kitchen up to her elbows at the sink. Now she stood in the middle of the room looking at me and Dr Ryan. She was turning a small circle around her like she expected someone to come up behind her and tap her on the shoulder.

  “Owen?” she said. “Owen …?”

  Dr Ryan led her into the bedroom. He pulled the door behind him. I waited and listened. Behind me I heard this gulping sound. JJ was sitting at the table with his hands clasped before him. The car keys were twined in his fingers and his face was twisted in an effort to hold back the tears.

  Owen was removed from Castlebar morgue the following evening and taken to the funeral home in the town. The whole parish turned out, queued from the gates all the way up on to Cross Street. Cars double-parked all over the square and knots of men stood on Morrison’s Corner smoking and shaking their heads in disbelief.

  It was a beautiful summer’s evening, a small breeze and gold streaks in the sky out over the sea. We stood in line with the rest of the mourners and a few of our friends. After the immediate family had some time alone with him we filed into the funeral home and stood over the coffin with our hands joined and tried to say a prayer. Owen was wearing a dark suit I’d never seen before, his hands clasped on his chest. I stood over him and never said a word, not to myself or to God or anyone else. I had no thoughts. Owen’s parents and aunts and uncles sat by the wall and we went and shook hands with them and told them we were sorry for their loss and then stepped outside and stood around crying and hugging our friends.

  The lads in the football team carried the coffin to the church—it must have been half nine when it crossed the square. Dad was on traffic duty that evening, holding up those tourists passing through who must have thought it odd that a whole town could come to a standstill on such a fine summer’s evening. I walked with JJ and sat beside him in the middle of the church. He hadn’t spoken since he’d seen Owen in the coffin. I think it was only then that he fully believed that Owen was dead, seeing him there all pale and his freckles grey under his skin.

  There was a bigger crowd at the funeral the following day.‡ Owen’s mother stood at the graveside clutching a wreath of flowers and Frank stood with his arm round her; it was hard to know whether he was comforting her or leaning on her for support. All that grief in his face, those bloodshot eyes—he must have aged twenty years in those couple of days. JJ stood back from them with two wreaths in his hands, one from himself and one from his classmates. The coffin was lowered into the ground and a decade of the rosary was said. Then the gravediggers moved in to cover the coffin. They don’t fill in the graves here in this parish until everyone has left. The thinking is that it’s too hard for the family hearing the stones clattering down on top of the timber; the gravediggers just lay timbers across the grave, pull a green tarpaulin over it and decorate it with wreaths and flowers. The mourners pay their respects and move off, leaving the immediate family to themselves.

  JJ and I went to Thornton’s afterwards and sat at a table. There were six or seven of us there, all friends. Everyone was nervous around JJ. He was off in some miserable world of his own. Those who spoke to him said it was like talking to someone standing twenty feet away from you. With no sleep in two days his eyes were sunk in the back of his head. He drank two pints and got up to leave.

  “I’m going home, Sarah, I need to lie down.”

  “I’ll walk out with you.” I was wary of leaving him on his own, I didn’t know why exactly but I was afraid for him.

  “No, I want to walk home alone. It’s been a long day.”

  “Call tomorrow.”

  “I’ll call sometime in the evening. I’m going to the grave tomorrow.”

  He didn’t call the next day or the day after that. It was four days before I saw him again.

  Three months later, at the inquest, the coroner returned a verdict of death by misadventure. Analysis of Owen’s vitreous humour—the fluid in his eyeball—showed a blood alcohol concentrate of .45—ten points over the levels of surgical anaesthesia we were told. Sometime during the night, the alcohol in his system depressed his involuntary reflexes and respiratory failure resulted. Four pints of cider and a bottle of 50 percent proof liquor on an empty stomach will do that.

  And of course we got to thinking had one of us stayed with him that night he might have been saved … Then again he might not.

  * One of those places where we’ve got ahead of ourselves, taken leave of our senses. Our essential selves now move a couple of paces ahead of us, opening doors and switching on lights, tripping intruder alarms, motion sensors and biometric systems … our souls clearing a path through the technosphere for the trailing golem of ourselves. This is how we’ve become attenuated, how the borders of our identities are drawn out, vitiating our core selves; this is how we’ve found ourselves beside ourselves. One day we might come completely unhinged. Somewhere beyond arm’s reach our soul will turn round and wave goodbye to us before moving off and pulling the door behind it, leaving us here, under the fluorescent lights, with nothing to lean on save these vigilant machines with their unerring testimonies. It will have turned its back on us, with all our works and empty promises. Cored out in this fashion, ontologies and IDs reassigned, someone or something else will come to stand in our place …

  † And of course stalking the margins of this whole thing the ultimate Event Horizon himself, that gaunt gent wardrobed out of a child’s nightmare, tooled up with scythe and hourglass, this one-time hero of the medieval woodcut now rehabbed as the pin-up of choice in the worldwide death-metal community. He has fallen into step with the rest of the foot traffic through the broadband, those scholars still up burning the midnight oil: porn queens ranked by the star system; terrorists and arms dealers fencing the latest ordnance and intel; conspiracy theorists handing out cautionary tales like market-square pamphleteers; mules weighed down with credit-card and RSI numbers; paedophiles with gender and sexual orientation turned the full one eighty; bedroom-floor traders drawn from their sleep on some limbic twitch—these are his fellow pilgrims at this late hour. And long in the tooth now as you might well imagine plus jaded from wading through the impedance of the night he is here nonetheless and is anxious to get on with the job at hand. It’s easy to see what has drawn him here; this is where consciousness is drawn down to its own pilot light, a votive flickering in its cranial grotto. Despite his years he still has it in his wrists; however, it’s the tips of his fingers that ache to reach out now and pinch it over the threshold of clinical ontology, into the dépasse realm of civil rights infringement, medical liability, national outrage, past tense …

  ‡ Pinpointing the exact moment when the whole Somnos project became a phenomena of religious fascination, commentators focus on the third weekend of July at the Wittness Rock Festival in the Phoenix Park. Before the headline act JJ O’Malley’s face came up on the giant screen which formed the backdrop to the main stage. Held for a moment while the crowd cheered, the image slowly dissolved into the ongoing spike and wave tracings of his EEG. In front of the stage a section of the crowd raised their hands into the air and bowed down in the act of worship. In less time than it took to register, the gesture spread through the body of the crowd, synced to the chant, “We are not worthy, We are not worthy.” Those with the presence of mind raised their mobile phones into the strobing light, sharing the moment with the absent.

  Commentators aver this was the turning point, the moment when the project decisively renounced its positivist remit and made common cause with a generation anxious to move beyond the cowl and candle, the dry ice and swirling snyths of those faux mysticisms which had replaced a discredited institutional faith. Professing to discern “a numinous moment, denatured and forensic,” one commentator was moved to ask rhetorically, “Who is to say they are faking it.”r />
  GERARD FALLON

  He’d argued his best friend to death, that’s how he saw it then and that’s how he still sees it if I know anything about him. You have to remember that once JJ got hold of an idea or an idea got hold of him he couldn’t let it go. Time and again I saw that in the classroom. And of course the neater and more vivid the idea the harder JJ clung to it. The trouble with this particular idea was that it wasn’t some piece of abstract theorising or speculation; this was an idea which struck to the very core of JJ, not just how he had lost his best friend but to his own life and who he was. Worst of all it was an idea which may have contained a small grain of truth …

  He didn’t come back to school at the end of that summer. Sarah told me how he’d suffered after Owen’s death, how he had trouble sleeping and how he was thinking of getting counselling, about the antidepressants. Around the middle of October I called up to visit him, just to see if there was any chance of talking him round.*

  Anthony opened the door for me and told me to go through to the kitchen. JJ was sitting beside the range when I went in. The look on his face told me I was the last person in the world he wanted to see. My plan was for some small talk before I launched into my speech but his first words put me on the back foot straight away.

  “No,” he said, turning back to the television, “and pull the door after you.’†

  “How are you feeling?”

  He looked long and hard at me. No, I wasn’t going to leave that easily.

  He sighed. “Do you want tea?”

  “If you’re making it.”

  He got up and went to the table. I’d never been in his house before but the kitchen struck me as just the type of place two men with no woman in their lives would put together over the years. Stifling warm it was, the range going full blast and a smell of cooking in the air. Nothing in the way of pictures or ornaments anywhere, just a pile of washing on the armchair and an old dresser full of glasses and plates against the far wall. A tiled floor and a pair of threadbare curtains. But for all that it looked clean even under the brightness of the fluorescent light.