I'm Still Here (Je Suis Là) (15 page)

M
ove!”

I am flattened against the wall of the corridor as soon as I leave Elsa's room, the panic in the nurse's voice enough to assure me that there is no time for politeness. I don't know what's going on, but the fifth floor is hopping. Nurses and doctors are running around in what I'm sure is an organized manner, but it looks like chaos to me. Something must have happened, and I really don't care.

My mind is elsewhere, floating somewhere between my heart and my body. I've never made a declaration of love in these circumstances before. In fact, I defy anyone to have made a declaration of love in these circumstances.

I take the stairs, because the elevators are caught up with whatever emergency has set the ward into a panic. When I arrive on the ground floor, the agitation seems to have spread down there as well. I leave the building, staying close to the walls so as not to get in the way of the members of staff hurrying outside. I notice a group of medics about thirty meters away. They must have something to do with the chaos inside.

I get into my car, my thoughts still hovering on the fifth floor around the frail body in room
52
. The body I would like to have held in my arms. But when I saw those legs, so thin and fragile after their months of immobility, I recognized the selfishness of my desire and contented myself with sitting on the edge of the bed. I was worried I might break her.

I arrive back at mine twenty minutes later, without really having noticed the journey home. I sit on the sofa in a daze, my only movements automatic and habitual ones. As I sip my pineapple juice, the reality creeps over me slowly: I am in love with someone, and that someone heard me tell them so.

I sigh deeply and bite my lip to suppress an enormous smile. If I told anyone about this they would think I was crazy. I file away that thought, telling myself that I would feel like this whether I had met her before the coma or not.

The phone rings, removing me from the sofa and from my daydream.

“Hello?” I say, yawning.

“You're tired already?”

“Julien… am I not even allowed to yawn anymore?”

“Not when I'm talking to you!”

“Fine, what do you want?”

He launches into a tirade of questions, almost certainly prepared for him by his wife, on the subject of Clara's christening. Have I thought properly about something-or-other, I mustn't forget about such-and-such, I must do this-that-and-the-other during the ceremony, and so on.

“I remember everything, don't worry! What is Gaëlle trying to do here, another godfather test? Was my entire Clara-weekend not enough?”

“Yes, yes, you looked after her perfectly. Gaëlle is very pleased with you.”

“So…?”

“I'm just trying to calm things down a bit.”

Now I am surprised. Julien, the steadiest, most level-headed person I know is anxious?

“What's going on?” I ask.

“Oh, you know, getting the christening organized, things are a bit on edge, with Gaëlle.” His tone makes me hesitate.

“Julien… what are you actually saying?”

“Do you have any time this evening?”

“Of course I do! But what's going on?”

He is starting to make me anxious now.

“Oh, nothing serious, don't worry!”

“So what then?”

“I've just got something to tell you. Could we meet at the pub? Or at yours?”

“Yes, perfect! But are you sure you're OK?”

“Certain. See you in a minute.”

He hangs up. I'm perplexed, but I abandon the idea of calling him again to find out what's going on. He'll be here in a minute; I should just be patient.

I look around my apartment. I didn't notice when I got back earlier, when I was only half paying attention to what I was doing, but my living room is a pigsty.

I spend the next half hour before he arrives tidying up, and then I look at what I've got to offer him when he gets here. The answer is clear: pineapple juice, or pineapple juice. But it's too late to do anything about it now. I'm sure he'll forgive me.

The intercom sounds. I open the door and wait for him to come up. When he gets up here a minute later, I scan his face for the reason for this sudden visit.

He comes in quickly, takes off his shoes, and collapses onto my sofa.

I show him the juice bottle without saying a word and he nods. Neither of us has spoken since the exchange on the intercom. I sit down opposite and scrutinize him. It makes me laugh because it's usually the other way around.

“Why are you laughing?” he asks me.

“It's usually you waiting for me to speak these days. This time I'm waiting for you to open your mouth.”

Julien nods his head and I see him smile. Then he stops himself, taps his right hand with his left, to show that he is ticking himself off, and takes a deep breath.

“Gaëlle is pregnant.”

In a fraction of a second I experience a whole range of emotions. Happy for him, jealous of him, pleased that Clara will have a baby brother or sister, concerned about how they will fit another child into their tiny apartment, and I understand Julien's urge to “calm things down,” as he said on the phone. I try to sum all this up in one word.

“Amazing!”

Julien looks me in the eye and at last I see his face light up.

“I know!”

I get up to give him a hug of congratulations. I can sense his emotion at the prospect of becoming a father for the second time. I think he may even shed a tear—a tear of joy, naturally.

“Are you OK?” he asks me, sitting back down on the sofa.

“With news like that? Of course!”

“Yes, but…”

I understand his twinges of unease. He knows that I love children. Everyone knows it now. And he also knows that the fact that I'm still nowhere near having any is starting to bother me.

“It's fine, Julien. Don't be ridiculous. I'll find someone when the time's right.”

“It's quite something,” he says, sincerely.

“Yup, I know. But why were you so worried?”

I prefer to turn the conversation back toward him; I don't want to talk about the situation with Elsa.

“Well, that's what was worrying me,” he admits.

“What?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“Telling you about it.”

I would have burst into tears if I didn't feel that manly behavior was called for in a situation like this. I let go that night in the street outside the pub, but this time I hold myself back.

“Julien, really, I love you but you can stop torturing yourself about this. Yes, I'm a bit jealous of your miraculous and perfect family, but I'll have one of my own one day, so you don't need to worry, OK?”

Julien seems to be checking my smile, in case I'm concealing something in it.

Apparently he doesn't find anything. He nods his head and I smile at him, amused. We both start laughing just as my phone starts ringing again.

“I'll be right back,” I say, still laughing.

I answer without checking to see who the call is from, smiling down the phone, still delighted by Julien's news. I turn serious as soon as I hear the tone of the person at the other end of the line. I can't quite make out where I recognize the voice from, but something tells me that it's not a courtesy call.

“Monsieur Gramont?”

“Speaking.”

“Good evening. I'm calling from the Rosalines Hospital.”

My heart stops. The nurse's voice disappears into the fog that clouds my brain as it runs through all the possible reasons there could be for a call like this. The first person who comes to mind is Elsa. But I don't know why the hospital would be contacting me about her.

“Hello, Monsieur Gramont? Are you there?”

“Yes… sorry. I didn't hear you. Could you say that again, please?”

“I said that I'm calling because I couldn't get hold of the other contact, Madame Gramont. I think that's your mother, isn't it?”

“Yes. What's going on?”

“I… I'm very sorry to have to tell you over the phone, but… your brother is dead. He jumped out of his bedroom window about an hour ago. We tried to resuscitate him, but without success. I'm sorry. Everyone is sure that it was suicide. I really am sorry. You… you need to come to the hospital to… for some papers and to… well, you know.”

If she says sorry again I swear I'll hang up.

“Monsieur Gramont?”

I am liquefying. I feel terribly cold. Even though my mind has emptied itself, I somehow manage to answer her.

“I'll be there in thirty minutes with Madame Gramont.”

I hang up without giving her the chance to say anything else. I had moved out of the way from habit when I answered the phone, but now Julien comes over to me.

“Thibault? What's happened?”

At first I stay facing the window and then slowly I turn around, my manly exterior about to shatter into a thousand pieces.

“It's Sylvain…”

Julien knows immediately, I don't know how. Or perhaps he just knows that something important has happened.

“Do we need to go to the hospital?”

“I need to get my mother.”

“From hers?”

I nod, unable to say anything else. Julien moves around me while I stay rooted to the spot. He passes me my shoes and my cosmonaut jacket. I don't know how I get downstairs and into the passenger seat. I don't know how my mother gets into the back. I don't know anything at all.

H
e said, “See you tomorrow.”

That was almost a week ago.

I've been through his last visit in my head a thousand times to see if I misunderstood something, but no. I'm certain he said tomorrow. At first I was quite calm. Perhaps he had something else to do. He
clearly
had something else to do. That didn't stop me feeling a little jealous. There was a glimmer of hope during the week, when I heard the door handle squeak, but it was only a doctor. I'm not quite sure which one, but I think it was my junior. I think he looked through my notes and scribbled something. He also lingered beside all my screens, studying them apparently, and then he went out again without a word. But why should he speak?

So I've experienced some new emotions. Disappointment, fleeting bursts of anxiety. Fear.

That last one was bound to arrive at some stage. But I would have liked to have left it until the end. It wasn't the kind of fear that I wanted to feel.

On the glacier, when I had crampons on my feet and I saw a snow bank or a crevasse, I was always a little bit afraid. But it was a controlled, adrenaline-fueled fear, as I said to Steve. We knew that it all depended on us and on our handling of the situation; the way we crossed, our finesse as climbers, our efficiency, our agility, and our intelligence. There was always an element of chance, but really no one participates in that sort of climb without acknowledging the risk they're taking with every step.

What I feel today is a fear that devours me from the inside. I have absolutely no control over it, no way of smothering it beneath any other emotion. I'm under attack, and it is interminable.

First I was afraid that Thibault would never come back, so my mental exercises would be less effective, and I wouldn't wake up in time. Then, I was afraid that something had happened to him. Through all of this I had no doubt that my body would start working again. But now I'm not so sure.

Luckily that had the effect of stimulating things a little. My sense of touch comes back occasionally. I also think I may have perceived a vague scent of jasmine when the care assistant squirted it on my neck the other day, but I can't tell whether that information was real or just an effect of my imagination. Once again I just chose to believe that it was real. If I'm going to die, I just need to store away as many different types of information as possible, whether that means actually sensing the smell of jasmine, or just inventing it.

I feel like a bag filling itself with an assortment of things, some real, some artificial, some beautiful, some grotesque, all tangled up in each other. I can't distinguish or classify all the information that assails me anymore. There is more and more of it, and it's as though my brain is arriving at saturation point. As though the active zones only cover a few nanometers squared, and these last three weeks have used all the space available. They stack themselves up and superimpose themselves onto each other and I am terrified that they'll all end up blending into one another. That's why I tell myself every day that I might be wrong, that it could be less than a week since Thibault said, “See you tomorrow.” But the cleaning lady's radio confirms the date each night.

And it's strange, because my sister didn't come on Wednesday either. Maybe she had exams. Maybe that last visit shook her too much. I don't have much hope that anything will have happened with Steve. He definitely isn't a part of the swarm of boys that follows her around. I hope she gets there though. Steve deserves a proper love story, and she ought to be the one to share it with him.

I would have liked one for myself.

I think it is at once both absurd and essential to think like that. In my state, how can I possibly attribute such importance to my love life? I should just want to live, to be able to move, to get back onto a glacier, see my family, meet other people, discover the world, and to smile endlessly, and laugh at the sheer miracle of being here. I know that those are the important things. Enormously important. But being in love is what adds color to all of that.

I smile in my head. I could teach my sister a thing or two about colors now. I could help her with her Fine Art. I wouldn't wish a coma on her to learn all that I have learned, but I'd like to share the insight with her. I don't know if she'd be able to adapt it to the real world with paint and brushes, but it would certainly be worth a try.

There I go—I'm starting to distract myself again. I need to stop thinking. Or at least to stop thinking about so many things at once. About so many people. It muddles me.

I found a solution yesterday—well, during the time span that I think was yesterday. I had already had it for a while, but I hadn't realized how much this little activity allowed me to forget everything else and eased my mind. So, I'll try it again now.

I want to turn my head and open my eyes.

I want to turn my head and open my eyes.

Occasionally a furtive thought tangles itself up in this. An “I want to love,” which I chase away immediately, before it develops into a much more harmful digression.

I want to turn my head and open my eyes.

Even if it doesn't happen until half a second before my mind switches itself off once and for all, I want to turn my head and open my eyes.