Douglas Coupland - Girlfriend in a Coma

And what sort of world did Karen wake up to? A dramatically different world—one without the Berlin Wall and one with AIDS, computers, and radicchio. She also woke up into a world where she now has a daughter, Megan, born nine months after Karen entered her coma.

I met with Karen recently at her home on a mountain suburb of Vancouver. I found her sparkling with words and, I have to admit, I was a bit shocked at her appearance. Karen left her coma weighing eighty-two pounds. By interview time, she was up to ninety-three, but seventeen years have left her body ravaged by diminished muscle capacity. Fortunately, her mind and face are as animated as they were that fateful December night seventeen years ago… .

"What about your body—how do you feel now that it's"— pause—"so different than the way it was in 1979?" Gloria has been drilling for tears and is annoyed at the lack of a geyser. She mistakes Karen's disbelieving pauses at Gloria's rude intrusions for emotion. "Do you miss your body?"

"I'm fine with my body, Gloria. It returns more to normal every day. There are people out there in far worse straits than me. I can stick it."

The interview isn't going well at all. Karen reali/es that Gloria wants to present a plucky, back-from-the-brink-of-death woman, eager to sing the praises of the new and changed world. Instead, Karen seems not all that happy and not too thrilled with modern life. And she won't cry.

"What's the biggest change in the world you've noticed so far, Karen? What strikes you as the deepest change?"

Behind Karen stands the Christmas tree, cheerful and twinkling.

She is alone in the room with just the TV people, Pam as makeup, and Richard as emotional support. The others she asked to leave, so asnot to pressure her with her answers. Karen speaks: "You know what it is, Gloria? It's how confident everybody comes across these days. Everybody looks like they're raring to go all the time. People look confident even when they're buying chewing gum or walking the dog."

"You like that then?"

"There's more. You take these same confident-looking people and ask them a few key questions and suddenly you realize that they're despairing about the world—that the confidence is a mask."

"What kind of questions?"

"What do you think life will be like in ten years? Are you straining to find some kind of meaning? Does growing old frighten you?"

"Hmmm. We're a culture searching for meaning. Yes." Gloria doesn't like this avenue. Her face morphs into a new position. Suddenly, Gloria's smiling. "You have a daughter now, Karen: Megan." Conspiratorial leer. "We need to know—how does it feel to wake up and discover you have a seventeen-year-old?"

"Feel? It's a pleasure. And a surprise. Imagine waking up one morning and suddenly there's a teenager there saying, 'Hi, Mom.' In a way, I feel like a sister. I ask myself, If I were back in high school, is Megan somebody I'd be friends with."

"And?"

"I don't think I would. She'd be too confident to follow the crowd. She'd be offbeat, and I'd wish I could just talk to her and see what's in her head."

"And Megan's father—do you still see him?"

"Absolutely. We're engaged." Karen smiles at Richard over Gloria's shoulder. Gloria gives an appropriate smile reaction, then says, "Cut!"

Gloria unclips her mike and bolts toward a door where the minions cower. "Why the hell didn't we know about this? Who researched this—Anthea? Get her on the phone now. No—she's in 213, not 310. We're going to have to retake the intro. Is the weather going to hold?"

There's panic for the next ten minutes, and then Gloria returns."Speed and—" Clack! "Rolling—" Gloria turns into "Gloria" instantly, like a plugged-in appliance. "Karen, so you're engaged now?"

"Indeed I am."

"Will we be able to meet… him?"

"I think not. He's far more private than I am."

"What's his name?"

"Richard."

"So Richard waited all these years for you? All these decades, your one love waited?"

Karen pauses. Her eyes begin to mist up—damnit! She fell into Gloria's trap of tears. "Yes"—sniffle—"he did." Now her eyes flood. Gloria heaves a relieved breath and knows this will be a dynamite kicker.

"Gloria," calls a technician, "we lost the sound on that one. We have to redo the take."

Gloria mutters a curse and the process begins again in a startlingly machinelike process: "Karen, so you're engaged now?" Gloria bats the eyes: blink blink blink.

"Yes."

"Will we be able to meet… him?"

"No."

"What's his name?"

"That's private."

"Very well. So your boyfriend waited all these years for you? All these decades your one love waited?"

Karen pauses. "Yeah. He did." No tears. Gloria is furious.

How many of us have a love so true it spans eternity? A purity of need so clear it can remain strong in the face of all that the world throws at us? This is Karen Ann McNeil, the woman who fell to Earth, the woman for whom the people in her life never gave up waiting.

"What about your friends, Karen? How do you feel to see them all aged seventeen years overnight? Do you still hang out with them?""They're my life, really. Them and my family. If they weren't here, I don't think I could handle the world." Karen is disgusted with the platitudes she's dishing out. She sounds to herself like a Miss America contestant allowed out of the soundproof booth and given thirty seconds to answer questions that will, to a large degree, define future directions of her life.

Gloria looks peeved. We need more drama. A woman named Randy comes over; she and Gloria have a hushed discussion over notes on Gloria's crisp red lap. Pam powders Karen's face. "How's it going, Kare?"

"I think I'm a dud. And they're furious about losing the crying scene."

Karen thinks over what Pam blurted out in the car the other day— about how people expect her to be a thousand years old now, not just thirty-four. She knows this is what Gloria wants to get at.

"Karen—" Gloria returns. "Let's just do a few more questions. This must be tiring for you."

"It's my pleasure. When are you interviewing Megan?"

"After you," says Gloria. "And then we'll do the two of you together. Everything is out of sequence, but we patch it all together in post-production." Gloria's face looks harsh, unwilling to spare any niceness energy until production noises are made. The board claps and once again she becomes "Gloria."

"Karen." Gloria puts on her serious look, cradles her chin atop her hands, and looks deeply at Karen. "The world is curious—and I know this is a simple question, but I need to ask it—how does it feel to be a modern Rip Van Winkle? Almost twenty years asleep. My my. What's it like inside your head? What's it like to be you right now?"

"You know what I feel? I feel useless in this modern world. I'm unable to do anything but lie around. I feel like I'm the only person on Earth who relaxes anymore. And then I think about all the bad stuff that's about to happen and I feel sorry for the world because it's nearly over."

Cut!

Assistants run over. "Karen, what on Earth was that?"Karen blinks and looks out the window at the sky, competing for attention with the camera lights. "I'm not sure. It just came out." Richard slips around a corner and motions for Wendy to come over. He tells her what happened.

"Karen," Gloria says, "let's try that one again. Maybe we can ask about the, er, bad stuff with another question. Agreed?"

"Sure. It's your show."

Rolling…

"Karen." Gloria again looks deeply at Karen and repeats word-perfectly, "The world is curious—and I know this is a simple question but I need to ask it—how does it feel to be a modern Rip Van Winkle? Twenty years asleep. My my. What's it like inside your head? What's it like to be you right now?"