Douglas Coupland - Girlfriend in a Coma

The nurse remembers that Karen will most likely die shortly from her pneumonia—no heroics. Really? She seems to have recovered rather well from the illness that brought her in. She pauses and looks more closely at Karen: poor thing—nearly killed off this time. Back to Inglewood and then what? Better dead than alive. No love, no past, no future, no present, no sex. A sad thing. Half a person. Yet even now, almost seventeen years later, prettiness is evident from Karen's bones. What she has missed in life! The nurse looks away from Karen's face and resumes J-tube procedure.

Then the nurse hears a voice, gentle, husky, girlish, and direct, like pumice rubbing on pumice: "Hello."

The nurse looks up. Karen rasps hello once more. The nurse sees Karen's eyes—clean and green as moss, crinkled with crusted sleep in the corners. She sees Karen's turkey-giblet neck keel sideways on the bed. Karen is immobile, but she speaks: "That tickles."

The nurse says, "Oh my! Oh … my!" and then dashes from the room. She runs to fetch the doctor on duty—Wendy, Dr. Chernin.

Nurse, comes the thought.

Karen thinks: That was a nurse. I am in a hospital. I … Wait: Who am—I? I am Karen … Where am I? What time is it? Karen loses her grogginess quickly, though; she feels her brain now starting to rev and then backfire like a rib-ticklish Camaro. The last thing Karen remembers is being with Wendy and Pam outside a party on Eyremont Drive—a house-wrecker, a stupid party. She had gone skiing with Richard just before that. They had made love. She remembered giggling with the girls, having a drink, and thinking of maybe telling them about her and Richard. And then she remembers nothing. Why nothing? Karen understands that if she's in a hospital, she must have passed out, maybe, and badly at that. What did I have two Valiums? Vodka? Surely not just this… God, what a hangover.

Mom to deal with. Oh, God.

Darkness. Darkness headed her way. A dream? She remembers herfear of darkness and her wish that she might sleep forever so as to avoid it—an idle wish gone badly wrong.

She closes her eyes against the early sun now beaming through the window and then opens her eyes and looks down at her body. Oh God—there's my body?—/ can't feel my legs. I can't move—I—

She screams weakly and then coughs and can no longer scream. Another nurse enters the room, eyes agog, and Karen hacks out more words: "Water. Please, water."

Back at the party house of Hillary Markham, most of the guests have gone home. Hillary, still flying on a cocktail of upwardly lifting substances, surveys the comical remains of her party—costume remnants, pumpkin fragments, and dozens of stale, lipsticked wineglasses and bottles of skunked beer. Teddy Liu and Tracy are asleep on the couch; Linus is on the guest room floor along with Hillary's two cats.

Hillary goes into her bedroom and sees a few coats still lying on the bed, at which point she hears two thunk sounds. Walking into her bathroom, she finds Hamilton lying on the floor, bone-white, jaws agape; Pam is in the bathtub, head leaning sideways, hair flowing over the tub's rim. She is as white as Hamilton. There's not even time for panic. What to do? What to do? Teddy! Teddy Liu—paramedic! She runs into the living room and screams and kicks awake Teddy from sleep inside his race-car driver's costume. Within a minute, Hamilton and Pam have been hooked up to drips going into their arms containing Narcan, an anti-opiate drug, and D5W solution. Breathing apparatuses are installed, and they lurch off to Lions Gate Hospital.

Almost immediately, the two emerge from their all-too-deep sleep. "You stupid bastard, Teddy," Hamilton shouts. "That was the best fucking high Pve ever had. Why the hell did you go and fuck it up?"

"Sticks and stones."

"Teddy—where are we?" Pam moans.

"You're both on the way to Lions Gate," Teddy says.

"Oh, shit," says Pam. "It was feeling so good."

"Linus, is that you?" asks Pam."Yup."

"Tell these bastards to sod off."

Karen's nurse knows that Karen is somebody close to Dr. Wendy Chernin—family? She notifies the nursing desk about Karen, then speeds down to Emergency where Dr. Chernin is on call. "Dr. Chernin," she puffs, "your friend!"

Wendy, preoccupied with two gurneys rattling into Emergency, says, "I know, I know."

The nurse is confused: "But…"

Wendy, the paramedics, and the two bodies on gurneys zip by, followed by a stringy-looking young man the nurse recognizes from a Christmas party as Dr. Chernin's husband. As well, there's a teenage girl dressed all in black, perhaps as a witch for Halloween, eyes darkened out like the old glamour days of Alice Cooper.

The first gurney carries a serene blond woman, a bluish shade of white underneath an asphyxiator; the face looks familiar—magazines? TV? The nurse has seen celebrities here before. No big deal. On the other gurney lies a thirtyish man with some dreadful skin disease. AIDS? He is the sickest-looking admitted patient this nurse has ever seen. He is also screaming at the top of his lungs, telling everybody to fuck off and demanding more heroin. The nurse asks the paramedic what has happened, and she receives a reply—one that is, by 1997, all too common: "China White. OD'd at a Halloween party." The nurse now understands that the sick-looking man is wearing makeup. A dreadful costume.

The gurney moves on and the stringy-looking man, Dr. Chernin's husband, speaks to the young witch: "Megan, what are you doing here! How in hell did you know about this!"

Megan says, "I only came down here to help Jenny Tyrell get a morning-after pill. She drove me. And then I just saw you guys come in. So—what is it? What's wrong?"

"They're toasted on heroin," Linus says.

"Oh, wow. Hey! Aunt Wendy, Wendy quick, tell me, are they gonna die! For real? That China White—""Megan, we'll talk later." Wendy turns around and talks to an orderly.

Linus tries to imagine the world without Ham and Pam. He feels sick and his stomach burns. He remembers visiting Jared nearly twenty years ago, and he thinks of Karen in Inglewood all these years, her blank eyes focused on death and nothingness. Poor Richard, having to live with that forever. The hospital is a place where lives come to an end. This is a place that erases hope. He admires Wendy so much for having the guts to work in such a place, for being an emergency specialist.

How long had they been shooting up? Idiots. Fuck 'em. Pam and Ham clank into Intensive Care. They are injected, pumped, and probed; new IV's are inserted, more Narcan administered. Wendy is frustrated because there is no single test to administer to heroin OD's that can tell her where she stands. No CAT scans, white blood cell counts, or T4S—she never really knows: Is this person lost?

The heads are moved back and forth—the "Doll's Eye" procedure—to check the neurological system.

The poorly breathing bodies are briefly put into the ventilator. They're fine and will be sleeping for a few hours. The worst is over and Wendy emerges. They'll make it, Wendy says. And then she, Megan, and Linus sit in the lobby trying to relax after the close call. The thought of losing two more lifelong friends is more frightening than they could have imagined. Cold air puffs in from outside and they shiver. Wendy feels as if she has an icicle embedded in her spine from the small of her back and into her brain. She is now off duty for the night. Meanwhile, the nurse from Karen's floor approaches the trio and says, "Dr. Chernin, I really have to tell you …"

"Yes?" Wendy tries to hide her weariness and relaxes her chest. "I'm out of line. What did you need?"

"I thought you should know that your friend is talking now."

"Talking? She should be out cold for the next four hours—and then some. We gave them seda—"