****
The last coherent thought Christy would have before the drunk hit their car was simple enough. He was happy. He loved his Mom and Dad and was secure in the knowledge that they loved one another and they loved him, and he was smiling and drifting off to sleep when the drunk in the pickup sideswiped his father’s Lexus, forcing it off the road to do several barrel rolls until it finally stopped on its roof. Christy’s Mom and Dad had died quickly, the force of the rolls whipping their heads back and forth until their necks had snapped. Curled in a ball on the back seat, his pillow had kept Christy from dying, but his head had been knocked around pretty hard.
The next day, his doctor was talking to his Aunt Paula. She was his mother’s sister, his legal guardian now that his parents were gone. Paula Smithson was a good-looking, tired, grieving woman who had a basket full of trouble and now her sister was dead, her brother-in-law was dead, and her only nephew was in a coma and this doctor was yapping about bleeding in Christy’s brain and brain damage and vegetative state and all she wanted to do was run away.
“So, what exactly is going to happen to Christy?”
“Like I said before, Mrs. Smithson, Your nephew has sustained serious injury to his brain. The bleeding was pretty extensive, but at least we managed to stop that. His brain is swollen, however, and part of it may have been damaged beyond repair. Even if Christian wakes up, we have no idea what he’s going to be like. It’ll take time to assess that.”
Paula closed her eyes. Brain damage. God. Goddamn. Such a sweet kid, Christy, and not only had he lost his Mom and Dad but this skinny guy with a bad comb-over who really needed some fresh deodorant was telling her he might be a turnip for the rest of his life.
“Should I wait here, doctor? I mean, is he going to wake up soon? It’s just, I came all the way from the burbs and Tomah is kind of out of the way.” She hated sounding like she didn’t give a shit her sister and brother-in-law were dead and her darling little nephew was hanging somewhere between death and life as an invalid, but her own life was such a mess at the moment, losing her job because she had forgotten to call in would only make everything worse.
“That’s up to you, Mrs. Smithson. Christian’s coma is the best chance he has right now to minimize whatever damage he might have sustained. If it lasts more than a couple days, however, the chances he will wake up and resume any kind of normal life diminish quickly.”
Paula reached in to her wallet and pulled out a small business card and scribbled on the back of it. “Here’s my cell phone. Call me if he starts showing signs he’s coming out of it. I have to get back and straighten things out with my job, and I’ll probably be back here sometime tomorrow. If things change, though . . .”
The doctor smiled at her. “We’ll call, Mrs. Smithson. Don’t worry.”
They didn’t call. When Paula returned the next day, it was clear the doctors and nurses were beginning to give up on Christy. They went through the motions, they smiled their condescending smiles at her while she sat there running her hands through his thick auburn hair. One nurse, who looked about forty-five and probably was only trying to help Paula understand how bad things were, said, “He has the face of an angel. Not going to change much once he gets to heaven.” Paula wanted to slap her. Christy wasn’t going to die. The nurse was right, however. He was a beautiful boy. So well loved, Karen and Dave were the best parents she ever knew and the whole thing was so awful.
During her vigil, Christy’s beautiful face started to change. The right side had started to slacken. That corner of his mouth drooped, and she and the nurses had to keep up with the trickle of saliva that ran out. On the tenth day, as she sat reading, holding Christy’s left hand – the fingers of his right hand just didn’t want to come apart – she felt, ever so slightly, the grip on her hand tighten. She dropped Rosamunde Pilcher on the floor and looked at his face. His left eye was fluttering, his right a bit less so.
“Christy?” She said, putting her hands on his face. She could feel the slackness on the right side, and it made her heart heavy. His eyelids stuttered. They opened. It was at that moment that a fear flooded Paula Smithson that was so deep and rancid it made her nauseous. The eyes that gazed out at the world weren’t the deep eyes of her sensitive, intelligent, sometimes even wise nephew. These were the dull eyes of some animal. As quickly as they opened, they closed, and Christy’s mouth, only one side working, contorted in to some sort of horrid mockery of a smile, and not a voice just a sound, came out his mouth. A horrible realization ate through Paula. Whatever this creature may look like, lying here in this hospital bed, it wasn’t Christy.
Christy was dead.