Comatic? Is that a word?
I don’t know how long I’ve been in a coma. I think only a few days, but when I “came to” I was a bit disoriented. I only knew that my body was there, on a hospital bed while the rest of me was wandering down the halls. It took me part of the day to get my bearings in the new world. I’ll check in on my body every now and then but there’s nothing much to tell. That Sebastian Stanwood is in a coma. This Sebastian Stanwood has become a wandering ghost.
At first, I didn’t understand what happened. I wasn’t awake but I was conscious, aware of what was going on around me. My parents were by my side. The doctor was explaining to them “my condition.” He kept saying those exact words in air quotes as if to make my parents feel better about the coma thing. My parents left eventually and then I did too.
I didn’t plan it. I just thought well why the hell not? I got nothing going on here. I first walked over the Longfellow Bridge – the one that connects Boston to Cambridge and just stood there staring across the mostly frozen waters of the Charles River. No boats this time of year. The river isn’t frozen, not really, but it’s got an icy layer on top and the air is a crisp 20 degrees. I can tell from the movement of the water that it’s pretty windy but I can’t feel it. My hair isn’t blowing in the breeze. I wasn’t hungry, I wasn’t thirsty, I wasn’t cold. I was bored and I was alone.
It was early that same night when I sat down on a bench in the Charles MGH subway station and closed my eyes. Here’s what I thought would happen: I thought I would end up back in my body. Maybe just staring into the black or into total nothingness. But instead I dreamed, or maybe I saw things that were happening other places. Whenever I close my eyes and “sleep” I have these visions. It’s as real as watching a movie. I see friends and people in the news and a lot of fantastical things that I don’t really understand.
How did I end up in a coma? I don’t know. How long can people really survive in comas anyway? I mean, you always hear about the person waking up in 15 years, but does that really happen? I guess I’ll find out if I live that long…I don’t know if I’m a ghost or some wandering spirit or maybe just an observer, someone hired by cosmic powers to watch the world turn…All I really know is that my name is Sebastian Stanwood.
I seem to be caught between two worlds. My body is there in the hospital bed and my spirit is roaming. I feel a little untethered. I don’t know how to get back inside my body, but I’ll work on it. After all, what else have I got going on?
