A new doctor came in with a clipboard. “Simon Stein?” he asked, and Simon nodded. “Dr. Warren,” he said. “I want to talk to you about coma therapy.”
“Where’s the other doctor? Dr. Marks?”
“Stella has many doctors.” He sat down in another chair.
Simon didn’t know there was such a thing as coma therapy, but at least there was the word therapy, and didn’t that indicate getting better? “The evidence is anecdotal, but sometimes patients do come out spontaneously when they smell something familiar, or they hear something familiar. The sooner they do, the better. But there’s so much we don’t know. Even patients in so-called vegetative states are not vegetables. They’re still alive, still communicating in some way.” He nodded encouragingly at Simon. “Would you be willing to try, or do you want to leave it to us?”
Simon felt flushed with nausea. Vegetable. But Dr. Warren hadn’t said that was Stella. “No, I want to help.”
“Make a lot of noise, talk to her constantly. Time is on our side here.” Dr. Warren bent over and pinched Stella so hard that the skin was red when he removed his fingers. “No need to be gentle here.” He held up fingers in front of Stella’s face. “How many?” he shouted. “How many, Stella!” He grabbed her fingers and ordered her to squeeze them. Stella’s fingers flexed and moved. Dr. Warren looked at Simon, and his whole body seemed like a beam of light. “You see that?” he said.
Dr. Warren stood up. “You do it now,” he said.
“Stella!” Simon shouted. He felt strange yelling at her, like he was Brando calling for his Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire. That hadn’t worked on the movie character Stella at the end of the film. And his Stella didn’t move.
“Much louder.” Dr. Warren nodded encouragingly.
“Stella!” Simon felt as if he were screaming, but Dr. Warren bent close to Stella as if listening to her breathe. He put a hand on her stomach and then he shook his head. “Not this time, but maybe next,” he told Simon.
After he left, Simon began talking to Stella. He told Stella about their first date, how much he had wanted her, but he didn’t want her to think that that was all he was after, so he hadn’t even kissed her but instead had kept his distance. He told her how scared he was about what was going on with the band, how they were moving forward without him, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He played “This Little Piggy” on her toes six times, and then he kissed each toe.
HE STAYED AT the hospital all day, taking breaks to call Bette, to grab something to eat in the cafeteria. By the time he left the hospital, it was around midnight. No one ever mentioned visiting hours to him, though he always tensed when he heard the announcements. The staff were all kind to him about that. Good night, they said to him as he left, their faces soft with compassion. Good night. Good night. Please not goodbye.
Outside, the air felt and smelled different, like it had been drenched with motor oil. He stretched, exhausted, and then he saw that doctor, Libby, standing outside in front of the hospital, leaning into a guy in a black leather jacket, who was perched on a motorcycle. The guy said something to her that Simon couldn’t hear, but it made Libby throw back her head and laugh. The guy handed her an extra helmet and watched her put it on. He helped her onto the bike, and when she threw her arms around his waist, she held on tight, resting her head against him, her mouth curving up, her eyes closing with pleasure.
Simon watched, amazed. It now seemed impossible to Simon that people could have relationships and love, that a thing as simple as laughing and getting on a motorcycle could be anything other than a miracle he had once had and had been too stupid to cherish, too blind to consider it might ever be gone.
3
STELLA FLOATS.
She doesn’t have a body, though she knows it’s there, apart from her, on this bed. She can hear Simon talking to her, although she can’t make out the words. The rise and fall of his voice confuses her. It’s rich and almost gravelly, they way it had been when he was in his twenties, when she had first met him and he was still smoking. Allergic to smoke, she had sneezed at his kisses. But he stopped for her.
Simon now says something to her, more urgent, but she can’t make out a syllable. Grr, it sounds like. A fake kitten growl. Bzzt, he says. Like the wings of a fly smashing up against a pane of glass. Even though she can’t understand him, his voice soothes her. It’s real and known and familiar. Simon. My Simon. She wants to tell him how sorry she is that they argued. She doesn’t think he meant it, about their dreams being different. It was the storm raging outside, the wine making them both woozy. It was her cold plugging up her sinuses, and her headache throbbing. They were both so tired. So exhausted.
But how funny. She doesn’t have her cold anymore. Here in this place, she isn’t aware of her body and its functions. Breathing, sweating, peeing, they all seem part of another life to her, something she used to do but doesn’t do any longer. Wave bye-bye, body. Sayonara. The thought of it makes her laugh, makes her glad she still has her sense of humor.
Mostly what she does is smell things. Something sharp like lemon whisks by her nose. Wait, she wants to say. Please wait. But the scent fades and vanishes before she can really lock onto it. She hears sounds, and she perks with interest. Feet pad on the floor. Voices dip and rise and grow silent. She feels an elbow bumping against something hard, but she knows it isn’t her elbow, so how could she feel it. She dreams, too, but it isn’t so much that she is dreaming as that she feels she is actually there in her dream, dropped down from one place to another. She doesn’t bother to wonder why. She isn’t certain that there are any answers.
I’m here, she wants to say to Simon. I’m right here. She feels so sorry for him when she hears him crying. She can feel where he is by the heat in the room moving closer to her, warming her. She can hear it, too, little skips in his voice, the loss of control. He’s a color, too, a soft gray blue. She knows there is a scientific name for that, that there are people who can hear colors, who can see sounds. Synesthesia. The word appears in her head, a surprise memory.
She wants to stroke his hair and tell him it’s going to be okay. Don’t worry, baby, she thinks, though she’s never once called him baby. Don’t worry.
He’s crying harder. He’s not a crier. She’s the one who weeps when they argue, who even tears up at the phone commercial in which that college kid calls his parents to tell them he loves them. “I live with a wuss,” Simon said, kissing her.
The only other time she had known him to cry was when he invited his parents to Manhattan for a visit to hear him play. Simon had planned a monologue, to introduce his father to the crowd. He was even going to make his dad stand up so his father could be applauded. But his father never showed up, and there, on the stage, Simon’s eyes were wet. Everyone but her thought that he was crying because he was feeling the song, the emotion of it.
It stung. But Simon never stopped trying with his dad, and maybe that was part of what she loved about him, his willingness to believe. Back then, Stella had thought they had lots of time. She was sure that whatever was wrong between Simon and his father might work itself out, the same way whatever was wrong between her and Simon would.