Bright Lights, Big City

The narrator has a dream about Coma Baby. He sees a door. On it, there’s a plaque that reads L’Enfant Coma. The door “opens into the Department of Factual Verification” (54). There, he sees Elaine and Amanda snorting lines of cocaine off of Yasu Wade’s desk and hears them cursing in French. On his own desk, the narrator sees Coma Mom. She’s stretched out and wearing a white gown. When he looks more closely, he sees that the gown is open around her abdomen. Her stomach is a translucent bubble. Inside, the narrator sees Coma Baby who opens his eyes, looks up, and asks what the narrator wants. The narrator asks if it’ll come out. The baby refuses, saying he’s getting all that he needs. If the mother dies, he asserts, he’ll die with her.

Suddenly, there’s a knock. It’s Clara, who announces herself as the doctor. The phone rings. When the narrator answers, the receiver slips out of his hand like a live fish. Nothing around him is solid. The receiver is an old one—the kind in which one piece goes to the ear and the other to the mouth. He answers the phone in French, but the caller is Megan, who wanted to make sure that he was awake.