Robofootball: Doublespin

“God Jess, I wish you would wake up. I’ve got so much to tell you. College is a lot tougher than I thought it would be. It goes a lot faster, you cover a whole chapter every week if not more, the papers, the lab work, well, it keeps me busy.” The windowless room in Ann Arbor was a little bigger, but that’s because it had a pull curtain between another bed. Some old man who had had a stroke lay in a coma too waiting to die, and they weren’t the only two on this floor in similar straits. It was appropriately or inappropriately labeled C-Wing in intensive care, and the “C” could very well double for coma patients given that they had some.

“You were supposed to take a class or two with me, well, maybe not the chemistry or biology, but we could have hooked up for English maybe, everybody has to do 101 and 102. There’s so much more we can do here if you’d just wake up.” She didn’t say it aloud, but Carly had been thinking far ahead, marriage, babies, a home together, and a career too. She planned far ahead, maybe med school if the pre-med undergrad track worked out.

She would refuse all date offers for some time, using the excuse that she already had a boyfriend, or even went as far to say that she was engaged. Jess had given her his high school class ring, but nothing official from an engagement standpoint; still, she wore a pink sapphire on her left ring finger, a Christmas present from her parents. She would visit every week for months until one day, Jess was just gone. When she questioned the hospital staff concerning to his whereabouts, she was told to inquire with his immediate family. When Mike Robinson failed to answer her texts, emails, and phone messages, she deferred to Jess’s Uncle Larry. Uncle Larry was just as much in the dark as she was as his brother would not answer his attempts at communication either.

“Let sleeping dogs lie – who wants to rouse them?”

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter 39