Coma

Federico Betti

Coma

About Luigi Mazza

Translated by Eva Melisa Mastroianni

Copyright © 2019 - Federico Betti

To All the Luigi Mazza and Giovanni Armerini out there

I

Silence and solitude ruled in that hospital room of Bologna’s Ospedale Maggiore. The only noises that could be heard were the ones made by the bystander machines, that the doctors went to check at regular intervals during the day.

For five days the body of Luigi Mazza was lying motionless in a condition of medically induced coma, inducted by the team of expert anaesthetists after the serious car accident that caused him a concussion treatable, according to the doctors, only in that way.

When he arrived at the emergency room in an ambulance, rushed there with blazing sirens from the orbital road of the Emilian county seat, the man resulted in serious conditions and a red code was conferred to him; after a long wait all the possible examinations were made and he was hospitalized prognosis being reserved.

He lived alone: he never even had the intention of getting married, so the only relative that could be helpful to him was his brother, Mario, who, as soon as he received the news from the workers in the first aid, arrived promptly to make sure of Luigi’s conditions, managing, though, to only glimpse him for a moment, while he was moved on a gurney to the room where he was now.

Without realizing anything, Luigi got a daily visit from his brother, who could be limited to only see him through a window pane. He stayed about one hour every day, staring at him in the vain hope of instilling in him the strength of healing, and often he would go away without saying a word even to the doctors.

When he consulted them, the head physician always told him that the man’s conditions were stable and that he needed almost two weeks before getting out of the coma.

“We’ll think about it, when he will be healed”, he guaranteed.

On a regular basis, the doctors made Luigi undergo the exams to keep the situation monitored, trying to report the improvements to the brother.

“A servant told me that the coma was… inducted? Does it mean that you made him go in a comatose state?” asked Mario to a nurse, two days after the accident.

“Yes. It was decided to provoke a medically inducted coma to the patient.”, answered the young man.

“Medically inducted?” echoed Mario.

“Exactly, medically inducted. Don’t you know what that is?”

“No, explain it to me, please!” commanded Mario.

“When a patient is subject to such serious injuries, as it could be your bother’s concussion, the doctors can decide to provoke a medically inducted coma, using therefore drugs. This way all the vital energies are addressed to the damage to be repaired” explained the nurse.

“Thank you for your explanation. May I speak directly to whom oversaw this, so that I could have a prediction of the improvement?” asked Mario.

“You should talk to the anaesthetists. Only they can provoke a medically inducted coma.” rebut the man.

“And where can I find them?”

“You could speak to doctor Parri. But now I think that he’s busy in an operation. He’s usually more available during the morning.”

“I see. So, I’ll look for him tomorrow. Will I find him at noon?”

“Yes. Except for unforeseen circumstances, he goes on his lunch break at 1:30. Then at 3 the surgery starts, so I suggest you speak to him before lunch, so he will almost certainly have some time to dedicate to you.” finished the nurse.

“Thank you” said Mario Mazza right before dismissing and going out of the hospital.

When he was on the road it was almost five in the afternoon and the winter-like darkness was only interrupted by the light of the lampposts.

He went home to get some rest, knowing that, after a few hours, he had to be there again.

II

I’m driving, but I don’t know towards which destination. I don’t even know where I am. In a car. I cling to the steering wheel and in front of me there’s nothing. I don’t understand if it’s dark or light. Me, in front of a steering wheel, that I hold with a firm grasp. And that’s it. Where am I going? I don’t know… or can’t I remember? I can’t hear any noise around or coming from the outside. Provided that there’s something outside. Provided that “outside” actually exists.

I feel like being in an environment in which the void was artificially created. After all, sound doesn’t propagate in void, and that would also explain the reason why I can’t hear any noise around me. Am I in a box hermetically closed? Maybe I’m not in a car but in a I’m inside a driving simulator, as in fun fairs. Yes, maybe I’m at a fun fair, but I don’t know what I came here for. Me inside a simulator. I’m not driving a car. Why am I here? How did I get here? By car. Yes, I probably got here by car.

No, now that I think about it I can’t be in a simulator: I would hear at least some small noise, the gears moving, the piston going up and down.

So that means that I’m in the car. With void around me? Impossible! I must have been brought here somehow. I don’t even know where I am. I can’t figure it out, or I can’t remember. Where am I? And why? What brought me here? And where am I going? Provided that I’m going somewhere. Outside there’s nothing, or is it me that can’t see? I can’t see what’s beyond the steering wheel that I’m holding with my hands. Maybe it’s not a simulator, but there’s a black cloth in front of me, that’s hiding the outside view from me. I’m at a fun fair, not inside a simulator, but on a ride on which you apparently drive a car, o some other vehicle, and you feel like moving, but you’re actually in front of this black cloth and wait for something to happen. But what? And above all, do rides like this exist? I don’t know, or at least I don’t remember ever seeing them…

We-re back to the start. I don’t know where I am. I have no clues that could help me figure it out. At least, I understand that I’m alone and there’s nobody else with me. Wait a moment… I am alone, but it also true that there are no passenger’s seats. It’s just me. In front of me I have the steering wheel and the black cloth, if it’s a cloth. I can’t even understand if there’s glass between the steering wheel and the cloth.

Am I moving, or am I still? Maybe I’m just apparently moving. Maybe I’m going nowhere, I’m still, sitting somewhere, with a steering wheel, a black cloth and nothing around me.

I’m not understanding anything, or anyway I have a lot of confusion in my mind.

If I’m in a car, are there windows? I look at my left: a second black cloth. I look at my right: a third black cloth. And behind me? Another black cloth.

I try to touch with one hand the cloth on my left, but I realize I-m not touching anything: my hand doesn’t find any opposition; it’s like it goes through the cloth, or it is the cloth, not to exist. Cloth or not, my hand is like swallowed by the darkness, and now I can only see my arm. So, I take it back “inside”, next to me, and I find my hand, still there, and not lost how it looked like.

Now I’m holding the steering wheel with both hands. I can’t really figure anything out. Actually, every minute that passes by, I am more confused.

Now I know that I’m driving something, I have a steering wheel in front of me, all around is dark, but there are no cloths. I realize that in this vehicle, if it is a vehicle, the gear shift was missing.

Chaos in my head was increasing.

I don’t know where I’m going, but probably nowhere: I stay here, still, waiting for something to happen.

III

Luigi Mazza’s conditions were stable, with some slow improvement every day, and the doctors were confident. “The body will heal spontaneously”, it was the answer that his brother was given every time he asked for information.

The day after the conversation with the nurse, Mario Mazza managed to speak to the anaesthetist that provoked the medically induced coma to his brother.

“Could you better explain to me what that is about?”, he asked.

“I know that you already were told, in broad terms, what we did” started doctor Parri, “His brother arrived here with a concussion of a non-negligible extent. The medical team of the emergency room, after taking all the possible examinations, believed that the only way to treat this trauma was a medically inducted coma. We administered some sedatives to your brother to induce him in a comatose state, considering that this way his body could ‘focus’ only on the injured part, the one that really needs treatment. We are monitoring all the improvements that your brother is doing, day by day, and I guarantee that they are evident. When we’ll see the complete healing of the concussion, then we’ll wake your brother up: he will stop the consumption of the sedatives and probably we will administer to him some stimulating drugs that will help the awakening”

“I see”, said Mario Mazza after listening the doctor’s explanation. “And how many are the odds that he will completely heal?”, he asked.

“I’d say one hundred percent”, answered optimistically the doctor.

“And that he will wake up from the coma?”, replied Mario.

“Absolute. Personally, I never came upon problems with the awakening after a medically inducted coma. We know which the doses are to give to the patients. Don’t worry about this.” Finished the doctor.

“Alright” whispered Mario in a sigh.

“Now I should go to lunch, I’m looking forward to a quite busy afternoon”

“Thank you, doctor”

“You’re welcome” said the doctor, before taking leave and go towards his office.

Mario Mazza was relieved after hearing those words from doctor Parri: they were positive, optimistic and hopeful.

The time for visits to patients wasn’t over yet, so he decided to stay a little bit more to check on his brother.

Going out of the hospital he felt his heart lighter: he was optimistic because he knew that Luigi would heal. In about two weeks, according to what the doctors said. Almost six day passed by, so it shouldn’t take long.

He went home, in the cold that weighted down on him and a freezing cold wind that blew on him, then he prepared something to eat and fell asleep in front of the television while a western movie of the ‘70s was on air.

IV

I’m driving, I don’t know toward what destination. And I don’t know where I am. I realize just now that no one is with me. I’m in the car, or at least it seems like that, but there are no passenger’s seats. Around me it’s all dark, homogeneous black. The darkness makes me feel insecure, because I don’t know what to expect. Meanwhile I’m here, sitting in front of the steering wheel. I feel like being still, like in one of those American drive-ins where you watch a movie sitting in the car, but in this case, it seems like the film isn’t projected anywhere. All around I only see the same pitch black.

Where am I? I’ve never been to America, so I’m not at a drive-in. So, where?

I don’t understand. With my left hand I touch the black, but it’s something tenuous, like the night’s darkness. But this is something different, because at night there are some lights on, but not here where I am now. So, where am I? What am I doing? I put my left hand back on the steering wheel, the only certain thing. I know there’s a steering wheel in front of me, but I don’t know anything else. If I had the chance to ask someone, it would be all easier; but there’s no one with me, not even in the proximity. I’m alone. Sooner or later something will happen, something will change, or at least I hope, but now it all seems motionless. I feel like being in a dark room, locked for some reason waiting for a verdict: as if I had to wait that a judge promulgates his sentence for something I did, but I’m sure I didn’t do anything illegal; I never committed a crime, I never made a robbery, I didn’t kill anyone. At least that’s what I know, provided that I didn’t have an amnesia, something that made me completely lose my memory, so in real life I really am in a dark room doing nothing until someone will come, maybe a policeman, to bring me to my destiny.

No, it can’t be. If it really was like that, how could I explain the steering wheel?

I don’t know where I am. If someone could help me understand…

Now I have a migraine too, a pain that starts on the left side of the head and slowly extends up to the right side. It’s not an intense pain, but it’s incessant, constant. I feel it pulsating in my head, moving from one side to another, from left to right, from right to left and, sometimes, I’m aching everywhere. My head is not splitting, but it hurts. Maybe I could use a painkiller to deal with the pain, or maybe I just have to wait that it goes away on its own, just like it came. I think that the only option to choose is the second, since no one’s here, no one I could ask where I am or why, no one that could somehow help me, giving me a painkiller for the headache, or letting me understand something of what’s going on with me. I stay here, alone in front of a steering wheel, in the darkness, at the mercy of events.

V

The examinations made on the seventh day showed a remarkable improvement: Luigi Mazza was responding well to the treatments and the healing in progress was making great strides.

He was thirty-five years old and his still young body was able to somehow able to get rid of the concussion that was caused by the car crash on the emilian county seat’s orbital road.

Although the man was motionless in the same position, without realizing when, periodically, the sedatives were administered to him to keep the state of medically inducted coma, nor realizing of possible visits, something was changing for the best inside him.

The doctors were satisfied and didn’t hesitate to tell the patient’s brother.

“Thank you so much for what you’ve been doing for him, really. If I knew who the guilty party in all of this was, I swear I’d tell him off. You can’t reduce someone like this, on thee edge between life and death!” said repeatedly Mario Mazza, talking to the healthcare team.

“He won’t die, you can be sure”, confirmed the head physician of Ospedale Maggiore, “He’s healing, even if he will need some time”

There wasn’t a day in which Mario Mazza wouldn’t go visit his brother. He was sixty years old, twenty-five more, he was widower since when, ten years before, his wife died prematurely because of a sudden leukaemia. So, they both found themselves alone, one by choice and the other one by constraint, and their bond was always stronger and well-founded.

Although they never thought of living together, they met each other habitually every day anyways. Only in some cases of impossibility due to the events, could happen that in one week they wouldn’t meet for seven days in a row.

They often had dinner together and, when they were both in agreement, they would also treat themselves with a dinner at a restaurant, choosing between several options that the city of Bologna and the near-by area offered to them.

They were both passionate about ethnical cuisine, to alternate with the traditional one or to pizza, often to try different flavours and traditions: from the more popular Chinese restaurant to the Indian or the Greek, up to the restaurants less popular by the masses, like the African restaurant or the Persian one, every occasion was good to vary and taste unusual dishes.

They agreed on many things, from the most important ones to the most trivial; they also had similar taste in music. Both Luigi and his brother liked almost every genre: one didn’t listen to house music because, according to what he said, it made him sleepy; the other one almost hated popular music, considering it inconsequential. He said that there’s music for every occasion and every kind of music generates different emotions depending on the genre; “The popular one doesn’t leave anything inside of you”, claimed the older brother.

Thinking about all these things, looking at Luigi lying there motionless, he got a lump in his throat and could barely hold back his tears.

“The time allowed for visits is over!” shouted a servant, waking him up from his thoughts.

“I’ll go away immediately” answered Mario, walking towards the exit.

When he arrived on the road, the darkness of the night wrapped him like a dark mantle.

VI

I’m driving, I don’t know where I am meant to go. Around me there’s only darkness. And there’s no one that could help me, no one that could make me understand something of what’s going on with me, no one that could give me clues. How long have I been here? I lost track of time.

Sometimes I feel like being the main character of a freeze frame, then I realize I can somehow move. “Is there anybody?”, I try to ask, without getting any answer. I have confirmation that I’m alone. Inside a car, or some other vehicle? I didn’t understand that yet. Without other passengers, without other seats, without a gear shift. But with the steering wheel, that’s always in front of me.

What’s happening to me? I don’t know, but I think that I don’t know a lot of things. Maybe I’m here by chance. I recall experiments with the time machine, even if I always thought that it was the result of the imagination of someone that wanted to create stories for some book or movie, where they’re catapulted in a far away world and time. What was that movie’s name? I can’t remember, maybe it will come to mind in a bit. Now, even if I make an effort, I can’t get anything from my memory. I can’t even understand how I feel, but it’s a weird feeling.

There it is, my headache is back, my temples are pulsating, first on the right, then on the left, it’s a stronger pain than the other time. “Do you have a painkiller, please?”, but it was pointless because I know no one is going to answer. Anyway, I tried.

Now I’m thinking that I may be the victim of some candid-camera: they call you with an excuse, they place you here in the dark, in this kind of car, and they leave alone waiting. “It’s a bad joke, you know?”, I say speaking to the void in front of me. I almost screamed it, because this situation is starting to wear me out. How long have I been here? “Come on, come clean! I know you’re hiding somewhere!”

I don’t receive any answer, so I’m only left to wait.

The wait is exhausting, I never waited so long. Still I can’t see anyone. It seems like they don’t want to show up. They are scared, or they are just bastards and they are making me a prank that I’m not enjoying at all.

In traditional candid-cameras, if we can call them that way, everything is solved over the course of a few hours, or at least a day, but honestly, I feel like being in this place for a lot more time, but maybe I’m wrong. Deep down, I think that something happened to me, that made me become estranged; anyway, this is still a bad prank. You don’t do these kinds of pranks, not even to your worst enemy.

I’m afraid of the dark, because to me it means uncertainty. Or, rather loss of certainty.

I’m afraid of the dark and someone is playing on this, taking advantage of my weakness.

I realize that he’s a coward, since he has no intention to make me recognize him. Whoever he is, he understood that I would tell him off, so he is careful not to show his face.

“Is anybody there?”, I try to ask, tearing up the absolute silence that reigns in here. Still no answers. “Do you have a painkiller? My head’s hurting”, but clearly there is no one willing to hear me out. “Where are you? Show yourselves.”

No one comes out, no one is coming here to me.

What an ugly situation, I don’t like it at all.

If at least I could notice any activity, I could try to understand who’s the guilty party of all of this; but I can’t see anyone.

Thinking about it, I realize that everything is been the same since I found myself in here.

Me, on a car seat, with a steering wheel in front of me and darkness all around. A darkness capable to swallow me.

It could be a nice scene for a horror movie.

I can already picture it. And maybe it would also be adequately promoted. “Ladies and gentlemen, please come along to the preview of the new horror movie. It will make your skin crawl! You aren’t some scaredy cats, are you? It arrived to all the theaters. Come along, come along, come along…”

And I would be the main character. Lucky me! I would become famous, for heaven’s sake, but I’d rather do it in some other way.

I’m wandering off a little bit, maybe to avoid thinking to what’s happening to me, maybe to let come to mind some idea to understand how to get away from this situation. And, just for a change, I can’t think of anything.

“Is anyone there?”, I ask one more time, “I would need something to make this headache go away!”

Nothing and no one.

It’s discouraging, as a result.

I have nothing left to do but to wait, wait for someone, wait for something to change.

VII

The days went by alike the ones to the others, with the doctors spreading confidence to Luigi’s brother: “You can see the improvements”, they said to him. “The patient is acting good. His body is reacting in a good way to the suffered trauma”.

Mario was happy listening to these words, but after all he couldn’t wait to be witness of his brother’s awakening, to hug him again.

He wanted to see him like he remembered him before the accident: he was always happy, lively and, most of all, he walked with his own legs.

“He will need a little bit of rehabilitation: staying still for days in the same position, surely his muscles will lose strength. For a period of time he will have to do some exercise, to fully recover”, one of the nurses explained to him.

“He will do whatever it takes to be back to normal”, Mario Mazza confirmed, “He’s a willing guy, so he surely won’t have any problems to engage himself that way.”

“He will follow an accurate program, that will bring him to gradual, but also total rehabilitation.”

“Good, thank you for all that are you doing. We trust your experience.”

“Now, if you don’t mind, I would like a coffee”, said the nurse.

“Don’t worry. I’ll come with you, I need one too” answered Mario.

They went in the corner where the vending machines were, at the end of the corridor.

There was one for hot drinks, one for iced drinks, one for salty and sweet snacks and one for stuffed sandwiches.

Mario put the money and selected a classic espresso, while the nurse, using a magnetic key given to the staff of the hospital, chose a chocolate cappuccino.

“Sometimes I feel a little spoiled”, said the man.

“It’s good to allow yourself to make an exception to the rule. We all should do it now and then”

They drank their beverage and then each of them went his own way. “Now I have to leave you”, said the nurse, “I have a few things to do”

“Don’t worry, I’ll let you go. Thank you for your company.”

Mario Mazza went towards his brother’s room and stopped in the hallway, knowing that he couldn’t go inside.

He was glad that his brother’s conditions were getting better day by day, and that was enough to him now; once completely healed, he would have the chance to stay with him and make up for lost time.

One week to go and everything was going to be back to normal. Almost, at least.

He stayed until the end of visiting hours, then he got out and went home: another day passed by.

VIII

I’m driving, I don’t know where to. I found myself here alone, in the middle of a homogenous black of this room, with a steering wheel in front of me, my only certainty. That’s all I could see, the steering wheel.