my big, purple, cretaceous, singing savior
Time marches on, and believe it or not I was just plain bored. More than anything, a coma is just plain boring. Like jail. Most people believe that being in prison is this constant life and death struggle, fending off knife attacks and booty calls. The truth is, most people die of boredom in jail. Same thing with a coma.
I always wondered what went on inside the head of coma victims. Can they hear what’s going on around them? If so, it could make for some pretty revealing drama.
They oughta put that in a movie or a TV show sometime, a soap like Dallas or Dynasty, where the wealthy patriarch is in a coma and all his family is plotting and scheming around him. The twist here is he can hear everything they’re saying. Then, he comes out of the coma and exacts his revenge. That would make for great television.
Unfortunately for me, I was not a wealthy patriarch. For me, this sad soul all alone in a hospital most likely under siege by rampant, mutant-ninja germs, all I could do was just lie there. Sure, Fanny did what she could and the jokes kept coming, but the whole hospital experience was starting to get old. It was time for something to come along and shake me out of my, how did Fanny put it? Oh yeah: my unresponsive, deep sleep.
Even if falling into a coma was the best thing to ever happen to me—romantically, that is—still I couldn’t stay here forever. What would be the point of that?
But how do you bring yourself out of a coma? Believe it or not, there’s no owner’s manual for bringing one’s self out of a coma. Little did I know, a big, purple, singing dinosaur would be my savior, and the inspiration for bringing me out of mine.
It all started one day when someone turned the TV on. Finally. It wasn’t good news.
Remember, I was in the children’s wing. Whoever it was, they tuned it onto one of those TV kids’ shows and they turned it up really loud. It went something like this:
“I Love You, You Love Me…” I won’t torture you with the rest. Wish I had been so lucky.
Did you know that the CIA actually uses that exact same song for what it calls “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques?” Imagine the horror. Makes waterboarding seem like a birthday party.
So what if someone put Barney on the TV? So what if they turned it up really loud? Kids love Barney, and I was, after all, in the children’s wing. What I haven’t told you is that whoever turned it on, it must have been a DVD, and they must have left it on repeat. That show, that song, it kept playing over and over and over and over. It played all day, all night, all day and all night, again and again and again and again. Talk about a strong argument for euthanasia.
I have no idea how long this went on. It’s like asking someone how long they’ve been in solitary confinement. What I do know is that song kept bouncing around my head like the video game Pong, so much so that it began to build until I was like a pressure cooker ready to blow.
Fanny would later tell me that I began turning beet red and my temperature spiked to 108 degrees. My pulse ran up and my blood pressure went through the roof, enough so that they even brought in the crash cart. They honestly thought I was going into cardiac arrest. Now I know how the Incredible Hulk must have felt.
It was right then and there I decided: I wasn’t going to die at the Saint John’s Regional Medical Center in Santa Monica, California.
Hospital-room havoc and crash cart aside, the whole episode did bring me out of my coma, even if it almost killed me. Later, when I told Fanny what was actually going on, she couldn’t believe it.
“All that from just Barney?” she said.
Just Barney? JUST BARNEY? Of course, she couldn’t understand.
“Hey,” said Fanny. “How many nurses does it take to screw a light bulb in?”
I don’t know.
“None. They just have a nursing student do it.”
Clever. Either her jokes were getting better, or I was hopelessly in love.
Oh, and one more thing. For the first few hours after I woke up, I demanded everyone call me Calamity Jane. At least, that’s what Fanny said.
