Narrow Black Tunnel
When Simon entered his coma it spoiled his mood for a while. Sitting besides him in the hospital, speaking together via the Side Screen, he seemed utterly destroyed. It took all of the Saturday after his ski accident to persuade him that yes, I was his wife Lara, and yes, this was not some weird afterlife, some digital purgatory.
His brain had a lot of recovery work after the ski spill, and although Dr. Schmitz knew they could wake him up, if Simon stayed down for a week, he’d have a much higher recovery rate in the long-term.
That Saturday I brought flowers (yellow daffodils) but it was the last day I did so. The flowers would have been for me, as his eyes were closed, his mind focused inward within a suspended comatose state. All the Get Well Soon cards from his students at school, those were for me as well, in that only I and his medical providers could see them. The only thing in his hospital room that was truly for him was the Side Screen. Connected via surface electrodes to his scalp, the Side Screen interpreted his neural signals and communicated back directly. During his recovery, our common interface became a computer screen into which I could type. I was committed to making him feel comfortable.
Our daughter Sarah loved the Daddy Game. On a surface level, that was how I explained it to her, and I swear Simon almost smiled when I sat her down to type him Good Morning daddy this is Sarah on Sunday. We spent the rest of the day as a family playing games. I’d brought lunch and dinner for Sarah and I, and Side Screen came preloaded with a few games. According to Dr. Schmitz, the games were actually instantiated and processed in Simon’s head. The first thing he said after I loaded up Monopoly was It’s good to see colors again.
That, I don’t know. Obviously it made me sad and happy. I’m not a complicated person, so to me, all of this was new and everything hadn’t really settled in yet.
With the game loaded in Simon’s brain, we started playing. I chose the Thimble as my playing piece, Sarah picked the Battleship, and Simon chose the tophat. Sarah, being 5, didn’t quite know what she was doing, but Simon rigged the game to let her win, typing in :-D when he landed on her Boardwalk and traded in the rest of his digital Monopoly Money to her.
Then, Sarah wanted to play again, and Simon wasn’t one to deny her.
For the rest of the week until Dr. Schmitz said the trauma and swelling had subsided, and it was safe to wake Simon up again, we played Monopoly almost constantly, Sarah always winning as the Battleship, myself as the Thimble. Simon would switch pieces when he wanted, sometimes in the middle of the game. I decorated the Side Screen with some of my favorite photos of Simon so I’d have something about him to look at, so that this inanimate screen could have some life, something human about it.
Finally, they woke him up, and Simon’s eyes widened, and it was the most beautiful thing both he and I had ever seen. He stared around him for minute after minute repeating It’s soo real… It’s soooo reallll…. And I smiled. Finally, he felt comfortable moving his body, and Sarah hugged him first.
The only side effect, and truly, it still doesn’t bother me, is that to Simon, I am now My little Thimble. When someone calls me Lara around him, it takes a few moments for him to figure out to whom they are referring. And Sarah, she is Battleship. Other than that, everything worked out fine.
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