OK, so I’m really sorry because I misled you. I think I’m alive. A bit of a mess, but alive. If we were on the news, a red ticker would say, Breaking news: he’s alive. Mind you, it wasn’t easy for me to realize it. It took a while. What do you mean, you knew I was alive? That’s crap, if you knew before I did.
So, you’re wondering why I told you I was dead? Firstly, because you didn’t read it properly. I never said I was certain I was dead. I took ‘oratory precautions’, as they say when you bust a gut trying to speak like in a book on Greek mythology. I did say, I think. And that was true. Honestly, I don’t know where I was all that time. I told you, there were the lorry’s headlights, then a sort of black hole, and I could definitely tell that, afterwards, I wasn’t in real life any more. Even though I continued to think, to reflect. Like in a long dream, but without all the weird stuff. No images of me flying through the air doing backstroke, no three-headed ghost pursuing me down the corridors of Sleeping Beauty’s castle, no sex with Jennifer Preston-Conwell – nothing, zilch, niente, nada – simply normal, everyday thoughts.
You’re quite rightly asking how I know I’m not dead. I’d like to tell you that I saw the tunnel, a white light, that God called me to Him, that He was beautiful, that He was big, that He had the fragrance of warm clouds, and that He said to me, ‘Your time hasn’t come, young Louis; go back down to Earth and don’t come back for around a hundred years.’ Except that, in reality, it wasn’t at all like that. In reality, I was in my dreamworld-that-wasn’t, I could no longer feel my body, I was no more than a spirit, a thought. No, I’m not mad, I promise you – I mean, I don’t think I am – but you’ll have sussed by now that you have to be wary of my I thinks.
So, I was in this other world, when, all of a sudden, I began to feel my body again. First of all, my fingers. My fingers became real again – I felt a horrible tingling. You know, like at night when you’ve slept too long on your arm, you feel as if you’ve got a piece of dead wood at the end of your body, your hand doesn’t respond any more and you just have to wait for the pins and needles to pass, for the blood to start flowing back. Sometimes it tickles a bit; sometimes it hurts so much that you feel as if your arm’s going to die. Well, I began to have this permanent sensation of fingers dying in a fire, being pricked by millions of pins and needles. Then I started feeling the same pain in different parts of my body, and I realized I was going to have to grin and bear it. Gradually, I got used to it. Or is it that it just became less intense? I’m not sure. What I was certain of, though, was that my body had woken up but couldn’t move. Even though I concentrated as hard as I could, even though I instructed my eyelids to open, my hand to move, my tongue to wag, nothing happened. It was driving me nuts. I started to cry. To yell. In my head, of course. I was in a prison and I was alone. After battling for hours and hours (days?), I went back to sleep, I think. Then I woke up, I think. Then fell asleep again, I think. I’ll spare you the details, but I think this little game went on for quite some time.
Then something weird happened. I heard someone talking. At first it was a vague, distant sound. I seriously started wondering whether I’d arrived in a beyond that neither Mum nor I had ever believed in. Then I said to myself that it was strange to welcome newcomers with, ‘Have you done room 405 this morning, Brigitte?’
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. That’s how people react when something crazy happens in an American TV series. In text-speak, people say, OMG. So I think I can hear OMG OMG OMG OMG all around me.
What conclusion should I draw from that?
Conclusion number one: I’m in room 405, or not far from room 405.
Conclusion number two: there are two people nearby, one of whom is a certain Brigitte. I don’t know any Brigittes, apart from the band that sings ‘Battez-vous’ – ‘Fight’. Was it a message, telling me to hang in there? Pretty complicated, if it is. Am I going to be entitled to a little private concert? I doubt it.
Conclusion number three: seeing as Brigitte replied from a distance that no, she hadn’t done 405 yet, but there was no rush and it wasn’t dirty, I guess it’s about doing the cleaning in room 405.
I decided to wait a bit – so to speak, since I had no option. In the meantime, I listened out for the slightest sound. I was like Ali Baba entering the cave of wonders, like Harry Potter discovering his magic powers, like Cinderella dazzled by her coach, like . . . OK, you get the idea. Every sound was a jewel; I was all excited, even though I knew that nothing showed. From the outside, I must look super-poker-faced – the famous expressionless, unfathomable look of the professional bluffer. Apparently, I wasn’t very expressive, that was the least that could be said. A quick analysis of the surrounding noises: regular beeps; breathing (mine, maybe); a vague din of voices and cutlery, like a far-off canteen; Brigitte’s friend, who was humming a tune I didn’t recognize, broke off and said, ‘Good morning, doctor.’ I’m in hospital. You knew that, too? Shit. So, if you know other things, tell me, because this is beginning to be a pain. Anyhow, I’m sure you didn’t know I’d begun to hear again, seeing as I’ve only just discovered it myself.
Several people came into the room I’m in, and the sound level increased. A man’s voice, two women’s voices. New ones. I admit I didn’t catch everything, but I understood a lot, all the same, and not only good things. They were talking about me; I heard my name several times. I gathered that my condition was stable. Not better, not worse. Nothing particular to say. Stable, how? That’s when I heard the word. Coma. It was a shock. Coma means you’re in a bad way. When, in a film, people are told, He’s in a coma, they burst into tears, faint, scream or hit the doctor, who ends up seducing the grief-stricken mother. I immediately thought about Mum. Did she know I was in a coma? Of course she knew. Had she already punched the doctor in the face? That would be just like her, and the thought made me smile – inwardly, of course; externally, I was poker-faced.
What stage of the coma drama were we at? I felt bad for Mum. Me, I hadn’t known I was in a coma, so it wasn’t so bad for me, after all. I wanted to know how long I’d been there, but, seeing as no one could hear me, there was no way of getting them to tell me. I concentrated very hard and, at one point, one of the ladies said, ‘What day is it?’ Tick-tock, tick-tock, I was going to find out. The other one replied, ‘It’s Thursday.’ That didn’t tell me much. Then she went on: ‘The nineteenth of January.’
OMG. The last I knew, it was Saturday, 7 January. What had happened in the meantime? Now, I was beginning to seriously imagine what state Mum and Granny Odette must be in and I only wanted one thing: to tell them that I could hear again, that everything was going to be fine, that I would no doubt be able to speak to them soon.
I waited all day. I slept a little, thought a lot, listened a lot. I waited for Mum, I waited for Granny Odette.
When I heard someone say goodnight, in the corridor, I understood the day was over. No one had come to see me. I was on my own.
I began to cry.
Inwardly, of course; externally, I was poker-faced.