You Don't Own Me 2 (The Russian Don 2)

‘I’ve been on the net researching comas and there is no doubt that miracles happen. There are all kinds of miraculous accounts of patients coming out of comas even after long periods of time. Some of the stories were about people who woke up after days, weeks and months, but some were truly miraculous. A guy called Terry Wallis spontaneously began speaking after nineteen years in a minimally conscious state.’

She is speaking fast and with suppressed excitement.

‘And then this Polish guy had to be introduced to his eleven grandchildren who were all born while he was in a coma! After all those years he woke up. Then there is this other guy who was in a vegetative state for seven years. One day his family was arguing in his room about what to do about an illness he’d contracted. They were trying to decide if they should go ahead with surgery to remove some fluid from his lungs or simply let him die, when he started talking. There were so many cases of people coming out of comas when music was played to them. One girl that the doctors said would never wake up again smiled to Adele’s music, and two days later she woke up from her long sleep.’

Her eyes shine brightly.

‘In another case a man woke up and said, “Pepsi.” A lot of the survivors said the compassion and caring of the people around them helped the most. They said that even though they couldn’t move they could hear.’

She sniffs and tears suddenly swim in her eyes.

‘The reason I’m telling you all this is because I recognized a great strength in you back when we spoke in the staircase landing. A weaker man would have lied, but you told me the truth about who you are and what you do, even though it was brutal and ugly.’

Tears start running down her cheeks, but she ignores them.

‘I know I have no right, and it’s a very big ask, but I’m asking you here and now, before I leave, to use that strength to help my sister. Please, Zane, don’t give up on her, no matter how difficult it seems. She is in there somewhere, and maybe she can even hear us. She just needs some time to find her way out again. She will come out of it. I know it. I feel it.’

I hang on to her words ferociously. In my black cage her words shine like gold, or fools gold. Whatever she’s selling I’m buying.

Time passes by slowly, tearing us to pieces. The event is unredeemable,

almost like an ancient and cursed action.

-Giancarlo Signorini

Thirty-three

Zane

After Daisy and her mother leave I spiral into something akin to madness. I become highly-strung, restless, prone to fits of violent rages, and lose all interest in business. When I undertake it, it is without pleasure and reluctantly. I don’t even know why I do it any more. Money is wasted on me. I have no real use for it as I have no desire to do anything. I stay away from society, hiding from everyone, and hating everything.

I haven’t even played the piano.

I jump when the phone rings and answer it with my heart banging in my chest until I find out the reason for the call has nothing to do with her. When I go to visit her I pause, every nerve in my body trembling, before I enter her hospital room. I’m terrified I might find that she has stopped breathing.

I am shit scared I will lose my little fish.

My home has become a prison, and some nights while I am wandering alone in this vast house I feel like Michelangelo’s envelope of skin. Tortured, empty and suffering endlessly.

Once I went to confession.

The priest had an easy answer.

Repent.

‘Will that bring her back?’ I asked.

‘Well, no, but it will save your soul.’

I don’t care about my fucking soul. That’s irretrievably damned. Everything that is still sane in my body tells me it can’t be that easy. Say I’m sorry and wipe out all the pain and suffering I’ve caused? No, no, no. That’s a fool’s game. Her sister is right. This is my punishment. A living hell. I walked out of God’s house even more desperate than when I entered it.

In the end it is Noah who holds out a rope for me to climb out of my deep darkness. He arranges for me to go to Nimes in France to meet with a very brave Frenchwoman called Bernadette. She lives in a house she custom built, and named Mas du bel athléte dormant— the House of the Beautiful Sleeping Athlete.

Her story started when her husband, Jean-Pierre Adams, a famous footballer, went for routine knee surgery to repair a sports-related injury. He never woke up from the anesthesia. He was thirty-four years old and that happened thirty-three years ago.