Somebody Opened Their Eyes

A Story by kealan

About a man who deals with grief in eccentric and dangerous ways.

He began to walk with his eyes closed.

He'd get a look at the scene before him, plan the route, and then shut his eyes and stroll along, without care or concern, until he felt the distance reach him. He liked the slight anarchy this brought. The powerless buzz he got from it was a form of freedom. And back when it started there was very little danger involved.

But like most things it evolved.

When it was first discovered he wasn't even aware that he was using it as a distraction. But each time he did it he was released a little from the grief. If this had not been the case then he would probably have come up with a better, safer way to suffer. Instead he enlisted uncertainties and possibilities of carnage.

His mind was, at that time, in tumour�"like hibernation. Sharon's eyes had not been open for some time. The pain had made an induced coma necessary, and Nick just hoped the sleep and sedatives and whatever other chemicals being used to sustain the last of her life were of some comfort to her unconscious state.

He wished it was cancer.

At least with cancer there's nobody to blame - excluding the theories involving WHO - biology has no prejudice. The faith of priests and the fate of the spiritual masses all agree that when Mother Nature decides to s**t on you, she s***s hard.

This unbiased quality of an indifferent disease would have been a generous consolation. It might even have instigated a fortunate religious or moral breakthrough in him, giving the whole ordeal a sense of purpose, a reason not to hate, not to blame.......a disease would have just been easier.

But she was lying there unconscious in the bed with countless bones broken, skin skimmed and shredded, tubes gangling around her, feeding assorted fluids.

When he closed his eyes that first time, he had not mapped out the area though he knew it well. It was Brady Street just off Collin's Hill, and he had walked that street at least a thousand times in his life so there was really no harm in it. But when he felt the lip dipping in the concrete that signalled the last driveway before the intersection, he refused to open his eyes. He knew from experience the main road was less than five metres away, and yet he proceeded, pacing vacantly toward the crossing, hearing full well the short shudder and guzzle of engines quicken by on either side.

On that occasion a coincidence may very well have saved his life, or at least suspended the injury for awhile, because a few feet from the curb he registered the lulling of vehicles as they slowed for red lights. And The Little Green Man blinked him across the street.

Sharon's accident was of such calibre it was amazing she survived at all. The doctors never said those words but he could tell by the way they marvelled at her breathing body. How their eyes whispered in her presence.

And none of her family ever once left Fenor.

He had to arrange everything. But he didn't mind that; it was the least he could do after the staggering effect her presence had had on him over the past nine years. All the clichés came clouding into his mind, but the most intense of all was the feeling that once she had left forever he'd never be the same again. And the realistic nature of this observation insisted misery. Wooden thoughts had now become concrete perceptions, and painful parts of the past went flittering through his mind.

They had been together since they were teenagers. They had lost their virginity together, told each other every dark secret and disturbing belief they ever had; they had even made barely unsuccessful suicide pacts.

Sharon was, to him, the perfect person. Not just because she had eyes so blue they hammered at him, or the kind of strobing blonde hair he adored. But because she was genius to the point of terrifying, the smartest person he ever knew.

The idea of her dying was still a startling subject regardless of her unfixable condition. He had been spending so much time at the hospital that it felt like a second life, something to witness rather than experience. When he watched her lying there with the duvet pulled up above her chin to hide the grizzly pumps, tubes, gorges and lacerations, an unimaginable helplessness devoured him.

So he began to walk with his eyes closed.

The assumption of being physically hurt or even killed was a great source of relief for him; suicide without the dramatics. Just a nice, pleasant, fatal accident, and he'd be there waiting wherever, for his girlfriend......his One......when she puffed her last chemical breath into the dim, still hospital room.

But no.

An illogical hope remained: she might survive, she might wake up. However hard this hope seemed to be, deep down Nick knew full well she wouldn't make it. And in the impossible case that she did survive, it was certainly be in a vegetative state. Down through the years they had casually chatted about this very situation, and now that Nick was slumped inside this big black hole, the memory of one such discussion came slipping through his brain.

It was shortly after their second year anniversary, in the morning, lying in bed. Arms curling into one another in that secure bond that had become their mascot posture. Initially, the conversation was based on a song purring from the radio, but then the topic had somehow switched to the previous night's documentary about Locked-In Syndrome.

She had her morning voice on, a soft, sweet sound. With her head pressed loosely on his chest, eyes shut, frowning, she said

“Could you imagine that? Chained inside your own body, not able to talk, or eat....or open your eyes.”

The thoughts this image made her squint her down harder. The pressure of her enclosed arms around his chest pinned him in with spontaneous strength.

“I'd rather be dead than live like that.”

There was no humour in her words. He felt her lashes flutter open on his bare chest, and the tickling wrinkling of her chin as she said “Like a blind fish in a hot water bottle..........to be trapped inside yourself with nothing but regrets and memories, hurt...helpless......” Her grip relaxed but her words remained cutting. “If I ever end up like that, you better f*****g smother me or something.”

She laughed.

“Fair enough,” he said, smiling, “if we ever end up in an episode of ER I'll....end the suffering.”

She didn't return his laugh but he felt on his chest the scrunch of her cheeks as she smiled. It wouldn't be the last time they would speak on the subject. Since the documentary she had brought it up more and more, and it was obvious that something deep had stirred inside her. Despite pretending only slight interest, Nick could tell the concept affected her deeply, and that's why the current situation was so devastating, so cruel, so unreal....so...

A double decker bus honked its driver's fury across the road.

Nick had just walked over fifty metres �" two streets and a set off traffic lights �" without even realizing his eyes were closed.

It was 11 days after the accident, and he was on his way back to the flat for only the second time since it happened. As soon as he stepped inside the front door he almost fell on his head in despair. All her things were as she had left them: her books for college stacked on top of the bookcase, make-up stuff on the ledge of the bathroom window, clothes strewn around the bedroom �" the crippling emotions this infused were untenable. He could even smell her. On the couch and towels and sheets. Basically everything she had ever touched was perfumed with her glorious, nostalgic scents.

While he was waiting for the kettle to boil he burst into quiet tears and had to sit down on the kitchen floor because there was a very real possibility of collapse. He stayed there on the floor for a long time trying to catch his breath, attempting to keep the alluring surrender away. The whole situation felt external, like he was witness to a parallel self, a self with no advantages, no prospects. And all he could do to protest was sit there on the cold kitchen floor, his hands grabbing at the loose strands of shaggy hair spurting from his head.

When he finally had the energy.....the heart to stand up again he had no interest in tea. The hospital was the only place he wanted to be. He didn't even know why he had come back to the flat in the first place. It was at the insistence of both his family and the nurses that he take a break, but the time he spent crying on the cold kitchen floor constituted, in his mind, an acceptable break from the situation. So he went to collect his jacket to leave.

In the hallway he passed the phone and saw that the little nodule was flashing a message. He didn't care to see what it was about until he recalled a certain person's promise.

So with total vacant vigour he plucked the phone from the dock and went about hearing the message, first having to navigate through endless family and friends' offers of condolence, until he came upon the one he was looking for.

“Hi Mr. Tobin. I've been trying to contact you to inform you on how the investigation is progressing. I just want to let you know that the accused, Mr. O’Connell, has made a statement admitting responsibility, and sentencing will be taking place on the 15^th of next month.”

Nick stood there in the hallway wide-eyed. Out of all the emotions he had been feeling revenge had been the least present. He was aware of the anger he felt toward the truck driver who had put his girlfriend in the position she was in, but it had been diluted by the sheer torment he felt in response to the oncoming passing of her life.

“As you know Mr. Tobin �" and I'm sorry again to say it �" the circumstances leading up to the accident are, from early examination, not in favour of the victim.

Not In Favour Of The Victim.

Nick knew this already. He knew it but had refused to believe it, another characteristic of the whole thing that did nothing but add pain on top of pain; the accident was not the driver's fault. It was Shar......

He couldn't do it.

He couldn't put her name anywhere near the word 'fault'. No matter what the evidence or facts proved. Even though she had went jogging across a green light, he had decided way back at the start that the fault lay in fate or some deep disturbing destiny. Not Sharon.....

“As I stated previously, there probably won't be any prison time involved, but if you'd like to discuss anything further you can call me here at the office or on my mobile..............my mobile, again, is 08725.......” The voice trailed off as Nick returned the phone to the table.

He was nowhere near ready to deal with it now. However, from the time it took to walk from the front door to the car, an unimaginable development in Sharon's situation had come cackling into his ear from the receiver of his mobile phone.

He was beside himself as he half-walked, half-jogged to the hospital at a speed that was alarming to everyone else along the way, but not to him, because his entire body was encased in a skin of excitement. Something he hadn't felt in an age was thrashing about inside him like a loose screw: hope.

And not placebo hope but real heart-bursting optimism.

This can't be happening, he thought sprint-stepping, they said the chances were basically nil. For a second he felt some resentment toward the doctors who had made such a calamitous assessment. But in the face of a possible reunion, all other emotions were relegated to make room for that new, clean hope.

He stepped inside the hospital just as the first blisters of afternoon light came skirting through the dim blue sky. It was the first time he had been aware the sun was even a thing since it all began. He raced, breathless through the shafts and corridors, rushing past the reproachful stares of staff and visitors; he looked like he was fleeing the scene of a crime. The usually broad walkways and stairwells seemed to elongate and trail out into endless forks of distance. The sweat dripped from his brow, ran down his temples, tickled the tip of his nose.

Freedom. The freedom of a conscious loved one: Christmas of the soul, birthday of the brain. On he ran, dipped, sprinted, ducked and said sorrys, to the grazing obstacles in his way. The throbbing in his skull tripled his vision and he had to slow down.

When he finally reached the ward in which Sharon's private room was located there was a hustle of staff both in and outside the opened door to the room. He arrived at the entrance and peered in.

Sharon was lying in the same position she had been for the past two and a half weeks, but now......... her eyes were open!

Those perfect crystals of blue, 'The Hammers' he called them way, way back when they first met as teenagers a million and one lifetimes ago, were open but they didn't slam at him like usual; they were broad but vacant. Her whole demeanour was totally neutral. Not even neutral......plain empty. As soon as he got a look at the droll features on her face his heart sank, and a dismal twinge eclipsed him.

A square-faced doctor uttered “Mr. Tobin?” He knew by the concern of the tone that the news he was about to hear was not going to be the new hope he had allowed himself so foolishly to expect. He didn't respond. He swayed past two male nurses, and the doctor, not shrugging, but limping pitifully past, till he was right beside Sharon beaming down.

A dream had manifested, and then that dream had shed its skin leaving the skeletal remains of a nightmare.

Against all of his initial judgements, she turned, and looked up at him. His eyes bounced in their sockets, wide as bulbs. His throat pulsed and clicked saliva, and he couldn't negotiate a single breath from his chest. The startled expression was one they both shared. He waited for her to speak, to say anything, anything at all. If she managed to mumble a single word, he would win the lottery.

“Mr. Tobin?” He turned to face the doctor as she said his name again and the first he was aware of his crying was when a tear splashed from lid to cheek as he craned his neck to see. The doctor, a kind freckly woman with marble eyes pursed her lips into a caring zip, and asked Nick to step outside for a minute. After some inside debating, and a long confused glare at his girlfriend who was gawking at her own gowned breasts as if seeing them for the first time, he took his gaze away and went skulking toward the entrance.

Once outside, the door was closed leaving just Nick and the doctor. The others had since disbanded, and now there were just the fickle beeps of machines, and scuttle of voices echoing off the heavily disinfected walls.

The doctor informed Nick of the new situation.

“I'll be completely honest with you, Mr. Tobin we're still in the early stages of assessment, there's a long way to go before any solid diagnoses can be made.”

He gaped, lost. When he spoke he sounded like a tiny child. “will she.............be alright?”

“We really don't know at the moment, but she's conscious,” a small smile curled her lips, and that smile was like an ocean at the bottom of a black well. “And that's good,” she asserted, naively for a trained physician. But then her eyes seemed to glaze over, and a harshness settled on the gaze.

“But I have to tell you that the TBI has resulted in some emotional deficits and.......” a clear apprehension stole over her, but her professionalism prevailed as she dried her voice to a drone, “it's way too early for anything definite but for the time being it's really positive that she's conscious.”

Regardless of the perplexity of the awakening, Nick was overjoyed. Less than a month ago he was told she would probably never wake up. And in the slight chance that she did wake up her condition would almost certainly be uncommunicative. Once the doctor had finished relaying the medical position, Nick thanked her and returned to the room to be with Sharon.

He shambled to the bed, zombified by the monumental development, and couldn't find a way to sit down; all he could do was stand there at the bottom of the bed, gawking wet-eyed as the best thing that had ever happened to him glared back absently. But she could tilt her head, and scratch her nose, frown lightly....all glorious evidence that she would not exist in a trance-like state forever. And for now, that was more than enough.

By the time he did sit down she had curled into an S and closed her eyes. A few minutes later, as he watched over her with longing and relief he surprised even himself when he said, “I don't know if you can understand me babe, but I love you so f*****g much,” The air was heavy on his eyes, emotions ripped and roared his motionless form. He tried to diffuse the tension with a laugh but only a choked half-sob gurgled through.

He was serious. Even if he had to spend the rest of his life in service of her condition, he was utterly determined to remain in her presence. If there was even the tiniest chance her former self could be revived he was going to be there to find, help and continue to adore the only woman he ever loved.

And then he sat there for a timeless period, neither blinking nor breathing; lost in knots of hops and grief.

He thought about climbing into the bed with her, but decided, as it wasn't a romantic comedy, to just sleep in the chair as he'd been doing. He was content just to sit there, as he had done for what seemed like a lifetime, listening to her deep, pleasant exhalations until he himself was sound asleep and dreaming.

He dreamed he was a huge bird, an eagle of some kind, trapped in a cage at least ten times too small. He was watching himself from outside the cage, but he still somehow knew that it was him inside. He could feel the cold restraints of the metal spikes enclosing him in a grill while his squashed wings attempted to flap in refusal. The cage was so tight the flesh of his bird-self was bulging between the slats as bubbling gurgles of pain cackled from his beak, choking. And every time he tried to move something broke. The feeling was grim and horrifically realistic. The inscrutable sensation of brutal containment, the loss of voice, of motion. The overwhelming helplessness of a being capable of flight reduced to a grounded form clicking and jolting excruciatingly in the compound cage around him. And all the while his screaming efforts were muffled by the strangling of the bars. It wasn't the physical pain that effected him the worst; it was the observation of his existence in the cage. Observing your own muted struggle was a dark and desolate image.

And then a scream succeeded. But not his own. The scream was coming from beside him, and he startled awake like tracked prey. The sound was so loud it overpowered any initial feeling. His lips moved as if trying to speak but nothing came out; he was whispering out thoughts in real time without realizing, as Sharon's wails suffused the room with heady, relentless vocal shatters.

“Get the f**k away from me!” Her throat was crackling like fried peppers, tears were springing in hot gushes from her lids. But most devastating of all was that all her angst was unmistakably directed at him.

“Babe, what's-”

“Don't touch me!” Her face was a gloomy shade of peril. The bitter snarl of her expression did more to dishearten him that the last few month's sum of experiences.

“Why?” she wailed at him with a look of confused torment, “Why me?”

He couldn't move or speak. It wasn't until a nurse came rushing in that he even managed to blink, and when he did there were no tears. The shock took hold and broke him. The nurse asked him to step outside. He complied, and took a seat in the corridor. He noticed that since he had left the room, Sharon had quieted considerably, and presently there was only the dampened murmurs of discussion trailing from behind the door.

A few minutes later two doctors arrived. One was a physician; the other he didn't recognize, but would later find out was a psychiatrist. He knew they had no news for him until they had observed and assessed Sharon again so he remained in his seat after they'd entered.

And he waited and waited and waited.

When the door finally wedged open again only one of the doctor's came out; the female doctor that had been briefing him throughout the ordeal. All she said was that they would know more soon. The psychiatrist was still in there, and Nick couldn't decide if this was a good or bad sign.

She was conscious, though. Everything else was secondary. (So he thought).

A painful, fidgeting hour later, the psychiatrist emerged from the room with a ghoulish look on his creased face. When he recognized Nick (AKA: The Grief-Struck Partner), he didn't even try to mask the negativity. He reached Nick and instructed him back down to the small cluster of chairs in a row along the wall. The corridor itself was empty, with just the flutter of far away voices bouncing in clicks off the wall.

“Look Mr. Tobin I'm sorry to tell you this but the emotional deficits the impact made on your wife's brain have caused some of her responses to be......” he looked for the words, kind words for a brutal statement. Nick didn't even bother correcting him about not being married; he was too caught up in blazing at the doctor's lapsing comment, “.......not as you'd expect them to be....”

Even the psychiatrist knew this was insufficient. He blinked, hard. Nick said, “What do you mean?” His lips were loose with sorrow. Before the doctor could reply, Nick asked, “Can I talk to her?”

The doctor sighed. A very unprofessional sigh which he regretted immediately. “The memories of the accident have become fragmented in your wife's mind in such a way that............she blames you for the accident.”

For a second Nick just stared without emotion. Then, “You mean like....like, because I wasn't there to protect her...” Hopeful. But that hope destroyed in a sentence when the doctor said “No......she actually believes it was you driving the truck, she says she can see you vividly behind the wheel.”

“Yeah, but there's ways we can prove that's not what happened.”

“It wouldn't matter. Right now she's convinced it was you. The TBI is also affecting her mood. She's made some concerning comments, and I don't think it's a good idea for you to go there for awhile.”

The absence of expression on Nick's face was replaced by burning angst, like a terrible prank was underway and any moment now the walls would slide apart revealing a hysterical studio audience.

Nick rose. “We'll figure it out. I'll just go and talk to her.” He turned. The psychiatrist said, “I really don't think you should.”

“And why not?”

“Just for the time being, I need to bring someone in so we can get a better idea of the situation. Right now, I don't think you being around her will help,” he repeated “...just for awhile.”

The dumbstruck demeanour on Nick's sallow face was gleaming beads of readying sweat. “So what, I just wait around?”

“This is going to take some time, I really don't know how long, in the meantime you should take a break, you look like you need a good night's sleep.”

Nick tried to sigh angrily but he was so weak it came out like a century old smoker's wheezing huff. Prominent pouches of purple lay like alien lakes beneath his eyes. He glanced at the surface of the closed door of Sharon's room, and the memory of her tormented reception sent deep dins of misery through his bones.

“Fine,” he muttered, resigned. Underneath all that anguish there was very faint relief. Now that she had come to, the pressure to live by the bedside had been reduced; she was no longer going to ebb away from him, float out of existence, while he was at home sleeping. So he allowed himself a few hours to recuperate, and left the hospital that day with hope, not whole, glorious hope; uneasy, bitter-sweet hope.

But it was hope, nonetheless.

And he kept up this hope up for as long as he could. He kept it up for the first week without seeing Sharon �" several doctor's orders �" and he kept it when the first few supervised encounters failed in a flurry of screams and tears. He kept up the quickly shredding hope when she threatened to commit suicide if he ever made contact again.

He even kept up the hope when it was just a handless puppet, a neglected shell, the hope of their reunion only truly faltered when the restraining order was served on him. It hit yet again, this time with far superior consequences, when she attempted suicide and wrote in the note that her whole ordeal was down to him and him alone.

The last drop of hope fell from him when Sharon's estranged cousin and her husband came to collect her stuff, and flat out threatened him.

As soon as all her belongings had gone from the house, the real shadow emerged, the shadow that winked. In that quiescent flat, the silence whispered endings in his ear, gave him the fuel of fearlessness.

He wrote the one and only poem he would ever write in his life, and left the house with the door jangling wide open.

He walked, eyes open, for over an hour till he came to the motorway and stopped on the curb. It was, as usual; cascading cars and truck �" mainly lorries as the motorway existed here mostly for commercial purposes �" and closed his eyes.

The quick whoosh and whine of vehicles skimming inches away blew gushes of fresh air around his face. The constant charge of huge, hulking monsters parading passed him at high speed hardly affected him. He was weighing up the size of each one, making sure the mathematics were correct, (he didn't want to wake up in a hospital blaming his innocent girlfriend), and it wasn't long before a big beast came thundering down, a suitable candidate; alarmingly fast, alarmingly huge, closer and closer.

With a last wave of his mind, Nick Tobin began to walk with his eyes open.

END

Kealan Coady 2016