I'm Still Here (Je Suis Là) by Clélie Avit, Lucy Foster Page A

girl would certainly see me running as soon as she opened the door. This is ridiculous. I throw myself onto a chair a few meters away and it seems to work. I try to look bored, hardly catching her eye. She looks like a student, about twenty; she peers down the corridor, one way and then the other, before going back in.
    My shoulders sink and I sit back in the chair. I said that I find myself pathetic or ridiculous, but really I should say wretched. I come to a hospital to see my brother and support my mother but all I want to do is hang out in a lifeless stranger’s room, sneaking around so that nobody knows—and this is all, supposedly, in the name of tranquility.
    I’m just making one terrible mistake after another. With my brother, with my mother, with the preservation of my tranquility. I shouldn’t be subjecting Elsa to all this, just because I refuse to visit a member of my own family. She doesn’t need me, and here’s the proof: She had her three friends in there the other day, and now she’s got another visitor.
    I surprise myself by hoping the other person leaves quickly. And then I add “selfish,” after “wretched,” to the list of reproaches, and sink a little deeper in my chair.
    This is the first time that I’ve lingered in the corridor on the fifth floor, so I look around the place. First, my eyes rest on the door to the staircase. I could still seek refuge there, but, even sitting here on the hard plastic, I don’t have the heart to get up again. There’s a window at one end, two swing doors at the other, which must lead on to the next antiseptic corridor, and a few dull-looking tables. The faded pink of the paint on the walls is vomit-inducing. I can’t understand why they insist on so many pastel colors. Maybe they’re afraid of shocking the patients with anything too vibrant. Although perhaps it could work the other way around if they livened the place up… Oh, I don’t know. I’ve never been in a coma, or in post-coma rehabilitation. I have no idea what effect colors have on people. In any case, I’m going off on a tangent here. If what I’m doing is sitting here, imagining how I’d feel about paint colors if I were plunged into a coma, I really do have a problem.
    I realize that my eyes have been resting on something for a little while. I’m looking at another number, 55 . I almost leap out of my skin when I realize that my chair is placed very close to it. I’ve been ten centimeters away from my brother’s door for the last few minutes. I think it’s quite an achievement to have stayed here all this time, even without knowing it. Here is my actual problem: room 55 and its occupant.
    If it weren’t for him, why on earth would I be wondering what it’s like to be in a coma? Excuses, police, explanations, signed confessions, and two young lives wasted. That’s all I’ve thought about since he woke up. But what would it actually be like to be in my brother’s place? To have drunk too much one night, knowing it was dangerous. To have run over two girls without even really noticing I’d done it. Apparently he almost fainted when they told him what had happened after he woke up. Good. I hope he got the fright of his life.
    And the time when he was inactive in the bed, lost somewhere in his thoughts while his body recovered, what must that have done to him? How did that feel? Did he feel anything? Did he relive anything? What do you do when you’re in a coma? Do you think? Do you hear other people? The doctors told me to speak to him, but I couldn’t say a word.
    With Elsa it took me less than two minutes to start talking.
    But Elsa’s done nothing wrong. Whereas my brother…
    A noise disturbs my thoughts. I roll my head slowly to one side while still leaning against the wall. My heart beats faster as I realize that it’s my mother’s voice I can hear through the