2 January 2000
You don’t really want to hear too much about waking up from a coma because it’ll stop you believing in happy endings.
Spoiler alert: I lived. According to the tabloids, I am the ‘Millennium Miracle’.
But coming back from the dead is nothing like the movies. No stepping towards a heavenly light, before a soppy voice tells you, It’s not your time. No opening your eyes to find your loved ones weeping with happiness by your bed and Robbie fucking Williams singing ‘Angels’ in the background. Definitely no pretty nurse mopping your brow.
Instead it’s this nightmare of buzzers and beeps and gloom interrupted now and then by harsh lights. It’s a cycle of waking and falling and waking. Like being in a dodgy old computer game, but instead of Lara Croft holding you down, it’s a gang of killer medics.
They tell me I woke up twice before I actually spoke. I don’t remember that. There is so much that’s been wiped from my memory.
But the first time I really remember waking up, she was there.
‘Joel?’
At first, her features were blurred, like I had snow in my eyes.
‘Joel!’ She was shouting now. ‘Stay awake. OK? I’m Kerry. Kerry Smith. From school.’
She said it like she didn’t expect me to recognize her or even know her name. But I knew plenty about Kerry Smith. When we were in year 7, I followed her and Tim bloody Palmer home from school every day.
Sometimes, instead of heading up towards the avenue and my own huge house with its electronic gates and triple garage, I’d hang back and watch Kerry instead. I thought her house, with its plastic hanging baskets and that yellow Fiesta parked badly on the narrow drive, was the definition of ‘normal’. And normal was what I wanted.
On Tuesdays and Wednesdays her mum didn’t work, so she’d greet Kerry with a hug and a glass of orange juice. The other days, Kerry would watch Casualty or ER. One time, there was this massive row between Kerry and her big sister, Marilyn: cushions, magazines and a bright red shoe sped past the window. I couldn’t hear what they said through the double-glazing but they made up within minutes. I envied them. I had no one at home to argue with, though the fridge was always full and we had Sky Sports years before anyone else I knew.
‘Joel?’ Kerry repeated. Behind her, zombies in white moved so quietly I thought they must have been floating. Was this heaven or hell, or something else completely?
‘What’s happened?’ My throat felt like someone had sandpapered it. I couldn’t feel the rest of my body except for my hand, which throbbed as if I’d been stung by a bee.
‘I should get your dad; he’s only in the waiting room.’
Dad’s here? This was serious.
‘And your mum will be here in the early hours. She’s been desperate to get home but the flights from Australia were booked solid.’
Mum was going to leave a live broadcast, her first presenting gig in ages, to be with me? It didn’t get more serious than that.
‘What time is it?’
Kerry glanced up above me. I tried to move my head but it didn’t budge.
‘It’s ten thirty. At night.’
Why was she lying to me? There hadn’t been more than a few minutes until midnight when I was playing football near the West Pier.
And Dad? Dad was at home, drinking champagne, probably shagging some girl who wasn’t Mum. Because Mum was on air on the other side of the world . . .
My brain felt as slow as dial-up internet, trying to make sense of where I was, pixel-by-pixel, waiting for the full picture to load.
I reached towards Kerry but something stopped my hand going any further. I was in hospital, but why? ‘Did someone jump me?’
Yobs sometimes pick fights with me because I’m in the squad, or because I drive a nice car, or just to look macho in front of their girlfriends.
She leaned forward; her cheeks were pink but under her eyes the skin was blue-black, as if she hadn’t slept for days. ‘No. You had a problem with your heart. You were playing football, do you remember?’
‘Course I do. Are they going to let me leave in time for the fireworks?’
Kerry blinked. ‘Joel, you . . . missed them. I know this is going to sound mad, but it’s January the second, now. Night time. You’ve been asleep.’
‘For two days? Don’t wind me up.’
‘OK. Not sleep, exactly; in a coma. The doctors kept you that way, to protect your brain.’ She looked around for someone to rescue her. ‘I can get the consultant. He’ll explain it better than I can—’
But I’d heard enough. I tried to swing my legs off the bed. But instead of my feet hitting the floor, my upper body lurched forward while everything else stayed where it was.
A sharp pain at the crook of my elbow made me gasp. I was falling towards the floor, a metre below me, and I braced myself for it to hurt like hell when my face smashed onto the shiny grey lino—
‘Nurse! He’s trying to get out of bed!’
The white-uniformed zombies were on me. The enemy! Loads of them. I punched and kicked and tried to bite myself free, but nothing was working properly; my arms and legs were flailing and—
Dad.
I smelled my father before I saw him, espresso and Aramis, and his body broke my fall, my head wedged against his chest, his strong arms trapping me in a hug, mumbling soft words into the top of my skull.
Joel, Joel, Joel, like a football chant, my son, my boy, my Joel.
I’d been stronger than my dad since the age of thirteen. Probably hadn’t hugged him since then, either. The shock of that hug made all the remaining fight drain away.
My body had never let me down before. My whole life, it had done what I asked, made me faster and stronger than anyone else.
And now, suddenly, it was a traitor.