Free Coma Girl: part 3 (Kindle Single) by Stephanie Bond Page A

you and your baby. Do you want us to give you the second dose? No is default. If you don’t move your fingers, we won’t administer the dose. If yes, move the fingers on your right hand.”
    I’m trying so hard.
    “Marigold, your baby’s life depends on it. If you don’t move your fingers, we won’t administer the dose. If yes, move the fingers on your right hand.”
    Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh.
    “I felt that!” Dr. Tyson said. “She moved her fingers.”
    He exhaled. “Thank God.”
    “But I’m giving you a chance to walk out now, Jarvis, if you don’t want any part of this.”
    “I’m staying,” he said evenly.
    “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
     
     
     
     

September 30, Friday
     
     
     
    I CAN ALMOST feel the experimental medicine they gave me filtering through my body. Last night I had the most vivid dreams I can remember since the accident. Everything seems louder, more colorful, more vivid.
    But the dreams are more than dreams—they’re memories… things that actually happened. It’s been the one part of my brain that was chugging along more slowing—making new memories, and remembering things that happened around the time of the accident. They’re close to the surface, as if they’ve been lying dormant and are bursting to break through….
    I pull up to the curb at the airport and see Sidney emerge like a beautiful flower. It’s hot, and the A/C in my car isn’t working. I feel like a wet sponge, but Sid always looks cool and collected.
    On the drive home, we have the windows down. Sid is smoking a cigarette, which I’ve never seen her do before. She says she smokes occasionally to keep her anxiety at bay. I say I didn’t know she had anxiety, and she says I have no idea how hard law school is. She is right—I don’t.
    When we get off the interstate, I ask if she minds if I stop to get a lottery ticket. She teases me about it, but we stop. I run in to get a ticket and a half-gallon of chocolate milk for Dad. As I come back out…
    Sid pulls up in my car. I’m driving… you’re too slow.
    I climb into the passenger seat and hold up my lottery ticket.
    Good luck with that…
    I don’t need luck. Aunt Winnie’s psychic told me I’m going to win.
    My phone rings and it’s Roberta. She wants to talk about a hot new guy at our apartment building. We’re laughing and talking.
    Sid’s phone rings, a loud gonging ringtone. She reaches into her bag, rummaging for the phone. She’s all over the road. I try to help her so she can drive, but her purse spills and…
    Watch out!
     
     
     
    *****
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A note from the author
     
    Thank you so very much for taking the time to read my story COMA GIRL (part 3). I hope you’re still having fun—I’m certainly having fun writing it. This project has been a labor of love for me. I’ve been toying with the idea of a daily serial for some time, and once I decided how to present it, I needed the right story, something that would sustain a daily narrative for an extended period of time.
    When I was ten years old, one of my teachers revealed an accident had left her in a coma when she was young. She said she remembered all the conversations around her during that time and when she awoke, astounded doctors and family members by asking them about things they had said while she was “asleep.” At ten, my imagination was just starting to take flight, so I was fascinated by her tale and it stayed with me. Fast forward to when I began a fiction-writing career in the late 1990s. I pitched a romantic comedy about a woman in a coma to a publisher who liked the idea and, subsequently, bought it. But before I could finish writing it, the line closed and the contract was cancelled. (Please do not get me started about the unending wonkiness of the