No Way to Say Goodbye - Anna McPartlin [20]
Mary was cut out of the car. They said it was a miracle she had emerged at all. Both her legs were broken and her left arm had shattered against the windscreen but it had been Robert, grazing the side of her head at 200 m.p.h., who had induced the coma. The car should have crumpled and she should have been dead, but its frame had somehow managed to withstand the impact, and when the rescue team made it down the mountain, they found her unconscious but alive. Later in the hospital her father discovered that not only had his daughter survived against all odds but, unbelievably, so had his surprise grandchild. As Robert’s mother roared and screamed in the background and his father pleaded with the doctor to turn back the clock, Mary’s dad had held her hand and prayed she would survive childbirth, unlike her mother.
“I don’t care. Do you hear me, love? It doesn’t matter. You’re not in trouble. Just survive. And when you wake up we’ll take care of this baby together. Don’t you leave me now.” He patted her hand, glad she didn’t have to witness his eyes leaking. “Don’t you leave me now.”
She didn’t wake for three months. Some had given up hope that she would be anything other than an incubator for her baby, but her dad was sure his daughter would return to him, and Penny was sure too, knowing that Mary hadn’t survived merely to sleep. She would come back, and her best friend spent as much time as possible sitting by her side, gossiping and playing her favourite music.
“Music will bring her back,” she had told Mary’s father, having filled the room with CDs. She gave him a schedule of songs for morning, afternoon and evening listening, divided into weekdays and weekends. It was important he adhere to it, she said, as Mary would not stand for a weekday song at the weekend or a morning song in the evening. Paul Simon’s “Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover” was a weekday song, preferably to be played in the morning – afternoon would be pushing it and it was most definitely not to be played in the evening. Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” was another weekday song but this was deemed appropriate for evening, not morning or afternoon. Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” was a weekend evening song, late afternoon would be OK – she’d noted in the margin that it should not be played before four p.m. And so she went on until Mary’s poor dad was fully apprised and entrusted with this weighty task when she was forced to return to school in Dublin to complete her Leaving Cert.
When she was gone Ivan picked up the slack. Every day after school he’d visit and talk or read to Mary so that her father could take a shower or drink a fortifying coffee. Every day her tummy grew under a hospital blanket and Robert’s parents would call to visit the part of their son that wasn’t buried in their family grave. They’d speak in whispers and Robert’s mother would cry and his dad would insist on shaking Mary’s dad’s hand.
She came back one Tuesday on a warm June day. It was around half past five. Ivan was reading aloud from The Lord of the Rings while Van Morrison’s “And It Stoned Me” was playing on CD. Her hand had jerked. He ignored it at first as spasms were not unusual. Then it moved again. Her fingers appeared to be searching rather than twitching randomly. Slowly he lowered the book and watched her. Her eyes flickered and blinked and at the same time her mouth opened and breath escaped. He froze and her eyelids peeled apart – slowly, as though they were coming unstuck.
“Mary?”
“Iv… zan,” she responded hoarsely, her mouth and throat like sandpaper.
“Oh, Jesus on a jet-ski! You’re back!” He jumped up and ran out of