Chapter 4
Wonder is everything. It’s not the opposite of understanding. It is understanding—the recognition of each moment as a brand new creation in our consciousness. It’s the awe that obliterates the false contained me, and lets heavenly me step out. Our God-given power of amazement, I call it. And to see with that ever-burning amazement: that simply, is our practice…and the entry to the heavenly dimensions.
- From His Recorded Words
A week into his coma, Danny’s parents still wouldn’t let me see him. I never actually talked to them, but the nurse had me on a list. Still, I would stop by every day and sit outside the room for a few minutes before his parents came in the evening. Then I got some unexpected help. As it turned out, Michelle’s sick Aunt Polly who had cancer was staying in this same hospital. When Michelle asked if she could visit Danny with me, I told her I wasn’t allowed and why. She took it on herself to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Perkins, and they changed their mind. Michelle had that “young, responsible” girl image that impressed adults. One stipulation: I could see Danny, but never with family around. They gave Michelle the times when they would be there to make sure our schedules didn’t cross.
So almost every day after school Michelle and I would hurry to the hospital and visit her Aunt Polly and Danny together. Michelle missed a lot of her cheerleading practices, but Sally took on her captain duties when she was gone in the afternoon and on other days they held practice early in the morning before school so Michelle wouldn’t miss too much. You had to admire the way these cheerleaders stuck up for each other. Tim never came along. But then he had football in the afternoons, and he was the star quarterback.
Aunt Polly was in the hospital to die. Michelle explained that the cancer had grown into all the organs of her body and there was no way to cut it out anymore. All the doctors could do was pump her with drugs to keep the pain down and make her comfortable. Generally, Michelle would just sit next to Aunt Polly and hold her hand while I stayed invisible in a corner. Aunt Polly looked like what you’d imagine a person dying of cancer would—skin and bones, a face the color of a rain cloud, desperate eyes. I would just stay a minute, then leave to visit Danny. Michelle would always mouth a silent “thank you” to me as I left.
In Danny’s room, books from the school library were piling up in a corner. I had been reading different topics aloud to him to see if anything would spark his interest and help him wake up. The doctor said that people in comas can be aware of what’s going on around them, even if they can’t show it, so you have to talk to them as if they were fully awake. I read books on astronomy, psychology (trying to sound passionate about that stuff, which isn’t easy), newsy magazines from the hospital lobby. Also, Conan. I would even act out some of the action scenes with a sword—actually a reshaped hospital hanger—to see if I could make him laugh, at least on the inside.
Michelle would always stop by after seeing her aunt. Sally came a few times too, sometimes driving me and Michelle to the hospital in a shiny red car that matched her hair. In Danny’s room, they would talk to him; take turns reading some of the books; tease him about how unstylish his bandages looked; chide him for not waking up already because they wanted to go back to the amusement park and visit the Monster House.
Mr. Tan stopped by once. I remember he did something really classy. He put his hand on Danny’s forehead and said, “Come on out when you’re ready, young man. We’re waiting and we miss you.” That was day nine into the coma.
On day twelve, it finally happened. It was a little after 5:30 pm. I was ten minutes into reading an article on bear hunting in Alaska. One minute I was reading to a blank face with eyes closed. The next minute I looked up and his eyes were open and one arm was propped up in front of his face. His pointer finger was moving slowly up and down. He was staring at it.
“You’re awake.” I stammered.
His head turned slightly, he smiled, and then turned back to his finger.
I waited a few moments and then said, “Danny? Buddy?”
He held his hand to show me his moving finger with a big smile on his face that said, “Amazing!”
I laughed. I figured for a person coming out of a coma after two weeks, just bending a finger might be a miracle. “Good,” I said, as if he was a two-year old.
He lifted up his other hand and looked at them together. I slipped out of the room to tell the nurse, who immediately fetched the doctor and called Danny’s parents to give them the news, which made me wish I’d waited. I took one more look at Danny. He just kept gazing at his amazing hands, even when the doctor and nurse came in and tried talking to him. After some tests, the doctor came out in the hall where I was watching and told me not to worry, this was all a good sign and recovery doesn’t happen all at one. But he also told me not to uncross my fingers yet, because you couldn’t predict these things.
The next day I couldn’t see Danny because I had to pick up Dad at Hambone’s bar where he’d collapsed in the bathroom. He wasn’t sick or anything. He was dead drunk. It was only a few blocks from our house, so me and ol’ Jerry Brunner, the grizzled Vietnam vet owner, who’d become sort of a family friend over the years serving Dad, poured some coffee into him and I guided him as he staggered home.
Michelle called my house that evening to give me an update: Danny still wasn’t talking, but he was improving. She thought that he recognized her when she came into the room, because he gave her a nod. Then he pointed at things for her—a plant, the TV, a lamp—smiling at each as if he were showing her a brand new star. According to the doctor, the fact that he was able to stay awake for a full hour at a time was progress.
When I arrived the next day, I stopped at Danny’s observation window for a few minutes. His head was shifting around in the same jerky way that birds’ do. He would stare for a few seconds at a picture on the wall, then at the chair, then at his hand again, lifting up the edge of his blanket and then letting it drop. Then he’d look sort of nowhere, or at the ceiling, and then out the window. You could tell he found all this pretty entertaining.
I said from the front of the bed. “So, someone’s back from the dead.”
His eyes fixed on mine. At first I wasn’t even sure I heard his tiny voice say the words, “How’s the bike?”
I leaned in and said, “Say that again, buddy?”
“How’s the bike, Joe?”
It was loud and clear. And I started laughing. “Little buddy, your first words! I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever speak again?”
“How long have I—?”
“Almost two weeks.” His eyes widened, with amusement. “Most of time you were totally unconscious. You actually died for a while, you know that?”
“Yeah, I think I get that. I died for a while. That’s what happened.”
“Yeah,” I said, excited, but not about to alert the nurse or the doctor yet. I’d learned my lesson last time when they had instantly contacted Danny’s parents and forced me to leave. “The doctors brought you back. I think you were on the operating table for ten hours. You’re going to be okay now, though, now that you’re talking. And when you’re ready, we’ll get you up and moving. You’ll be good as new.”
“I remember. It’s coming back…in pieces.” He smiled as if something really good that he’d forgotten had popped into his mind.
“You mean, the accident?”
“The accident? I mean…being dead.”
“Let’s not talk about that. Anyways it was just for a few minutes, five maybe, or ten.”
“I don’t think the minutes matter.”
I didn’t understand that, but I was smiling up a storm, with the good turn of events.
“How are you?” he asked, pointing to the cast then up to my scarred face.
“Couldn’t be better. Broken wrist—who cares? You’re the big project now. We’re gonna work on getting you out of here. We’ll get you healthy and stro
ng. You can go back to all your books. We’ll go on rides again, maybe with Michelle and her friends. They’ve all been visiting, you know. Of course, there’s going back to school—which sucks—but all in all, everything is gonna get back to normal.”
“Books? School?” he said. “I don’t know right now. Maybe it’s not worth all the tizzy I’ve been putting myself through.”
“What? Holy cow! That’s great. I’ve always thought that. You’re a worrier. You wind yourself up too much about that stuff.”
“Joe, things look a little different now. And I’m just getting used to it. But, you’re right, everything is going to be okay.” He smiled for a moment, then said, “Tell me, how’s your bike? I remember…a crash?”
“Well?” My stomach knotted. This would have to be the moment of truth. I had been trying all this time not to think about what I’d done, but now, this whole terrible mess had to be—“Little buddy, this was all my fault. After we left the girls at the amusement park, I was driving like a lunatic, the way I do, swerving back and forth, showing off. I didn’t see the car backing up, and…Danny, this is just plain all my fault. I got us into the crash. I did this to you. I’ll understand if you don’t want to hang out anymore.” It all came out in a blast, and I wondered if I’d even made sense to someone groggy from a two-week coma.
He patted the side of the bed and I scrunched forward. He touched the scar that ran down my cheek. “That’s a good one. It’ll make a good Conan scar.”
My voice cracked, “Thanks.”
“The motorcycle accident? That’s really okay. Sometimes bad things can turn out to be good things. And you still haven’t told me—how’s the damn bike?”
I choked, because Danny never swore. “The front end is totaled. I’ve got a shop working on it, but it going to take a while before we go riding again. Do you want to go riding again?”
“You know it. I’d like to drive it myself sometime.”
“I’ll teach you to pop wheelies.”
He poked his head up to look at the mirror opposite the bed. He turned to see the side where his skull had been cracked open. The hair was growing back, but it wasn’t filled in yet, and if you looked you could still see the purple scar and stitches starting just behind the temple and riding over the side. “That’s a sight. I guess it could have been worse. But my face looks better somehow, I think. Have I forgotten what I looked like?”
“Hey, you know what it is? Your zits are gone!” I hadn’t seen it before—I’d forgotten—but his pizza face was now clean as a white kitchen floor.
He was touching his smooth skin in the mirror. “Doesn’t feel like me anymore. It should be oily and bumpy. A new me. I like this!”
“Danny, I think you found a cure for zits.”
“Motorcycle accidents?”
“Comas. Knock yourself out for a few weeks. No junk food. A steady intravenous diet. Wake up zit free!”
“Well, no one’s going to buy that,” he said.
We continued talking for a while about school and his parents, his other visitors—Michelle visiting her sick aunt, Sally, Mr. Tan—and more about getting my bike repaired. He cracked up at the stack of books I had been reading. “I didn’t hear a thing,” he said. “But thanks for trying. Hope you got something out of it.” We both chuckled. He knew I only liked Conan.
When it was getting on 6:00 pm, about thirty minutes before his parents were due, I got ready to leave. Before I walked out the door I paused and apologized for the crash again.
“Look,” he said.“You’re my best friend. My only friend, really. The crash doesn’t matter. They call them accidents for a reason. No one intends them. I almost… This will sound weird, but I almost want to thank you.”
“Danny, don’t talk crazy.”
“Don’t ask me to explain. Not yet. My inside is adjusting…to the outside. It’s still new in here. Does that sound strange?”
“Little buddy, you just got out of a big time coma. If you were talking nothing but baby babble, I’d say you sounded just fine.” Though I found myself briefly considering what the doctor had said about not knowing how he would come out of the coma, physically or mentally. But as Danny laughed to himself, it seemed not to matter.
I did notice something different about Danny’s laugh. Before it had always been nervous and uncertain, like he wasn’t quite sure he was supposed to be laughing. Now, out of nowhere, it was calm and easy, a little deeper, and in some odd way, above it all, like a wise old adult, like Mr. Tan might laugh at something juvenile. I was glad I could recognize the difference, and wondered if terrible accidents made people wiser.