Notes from a Coma by Mike McCormack Page A

pushed JJ aside and Owen sank back in the bed. Grabbing his wrist in my left hand I felt for a pulse. He was still warm but his eyes were closed and his arm felt dead weight.
    “I can’t find a pulse!”
    JJ hopped on to the bed and straddled Owen. He heldhis nose and brought his mouth down. I took out my mobile and moved into the kitchen. All the time JJ was yelling.
    “Wake up, Owen … Wake up, you fucker.”
    When I got back to the bedroom JJ was pumping Owen’s chest. Owen was rocking up and down in the bed, his hand flung out over the side. I knew then he was dead and no amount of pounding and breathing was going to bring him back. I pulled JJ off him.
    “No, JJ! Leave it … Stop it! … Stop!”
    JJ fell off him and stood back. “He can’t be … how …?”
    I took Owen’s wrist once more but found nothing. I gathered in his arm and laid it on his chest, then stood back and put my arms around JJ. I didn’t cry or anything and I didn’t feel sad either. This was all happening in some dream time where I couldn’t catch up with myself or my feelings. Sometime in the future I knew I was going to feel bad and go off food and sleep and spend the best part of myself crying. But that was another time, another life. Right at that moment all I felt was a sense of vague distant shame for not feeling more, for not feeling deeper.
    I moved to pull the sheet over Owen. JJ pulled me back.
    “No, Sarah, stay away from him.”
    Dr Ryan arrived a few minutes later and ordered us out of the room. He could have only been a few minutes in there when he came out and called an ambulance.
    “What happened?” he asked. “What do you know?”
    We told him what had happened. He asked us if Owen was taking anything, any substances. No. Owen had nointerest in anything like that. There were no pills in the house either.
    “Have you rung his mother?”
    JJ stood up and wiped his eyes. “I’m going to tell her.”
    “Sit down, JJ. You’re in no shape to go anywhere.”
    “I have to.”
    I don’t know where he got the courage for that. He told me afterwards it was the hardest thing he’d ever done and I can well believe it. While we waited I answered a few more questions. I told Dr Ryan how Owen was in bad form the previous night, pining after Mary G and the argument with JJ. Listening to myself it sounded like it was something that had happened in another life instead of ten hours ago. Dr Ryan listened and drew some paperwork from his bag.
    “He was fine when we left him. Young men don’t just die in their sleep.”
    “There’ll be an autopsy, we’ll know more then.”
    JJ pulled up in the car then and Owen’s mother jumped out. She was in the middle of the room before JJ had his feet on the tarmac. The sleeves of her T-shirt were rolled up to her shoulders and her hands were red. JJ told me later he’d found her in the kitchen up to her elbows at the sink. Now she stood in the middle of the room looking at me and Dr Ryan. She was turning a small circle around her like she expected someone to come up behind her and tap her on the shoulder.
    “Owen?” she said. “Owen …?”
    Dr Ryan led her into the bedroom. He pulled the door behind him. I waited and listened. Behind me I heard this gulping sound. JJ was sitting at the table with his handsclasped before him. The car keys were twined in his fingers and his face was twisted in an effort to hold back the tears.
    Owen was removed from Castlebar morgue the following evening and taken to the funeral home in the town. The whole parish turned out, queued from the gates all the way up on to Cross Street. Cars double-parked all over the square and knots of men stood on Morrison’s Corner smoking and shaking their heads in disbelief.
    It was a beautiful summer’s evening, a small breeze and gold streaks in the sky out over the sea. We stood in line with the rest of the mourners and a few of our friends. After the immediate family had some time alone with him we