Island Hideaway 24 - No Further Signs of Life

By Terrence Oblong

Sat, 11 Jan 2020

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Mo was alive I was certain of it. I had seen her eyelids open.

But it had been four days and there was nothing else. I googled medical sites trying find out if there was something I should do now that she had shown the first sign of waking from her coma, but there was nothing. What I needed to know was too specific for the lay-focused-sites, what medical intervention would be appropriate for a coma patient who had opened their eyes once, briefly, then showed no further sign of life. Perhaps the only way I'd find out is by doing a six-year medical degree, but I couldn't do that without leaving the island, leaving Mo’s side.

I googled some alternative medicine sites and found one aromatherapist who claimed she could wake people from a coma, as well as curing cancer, at which point I gave up.

Smell, though. Maybe it wasn’t so mad. I'd tried that before. I cooked spaghetti and ate it in the room with Mo, hoping that the smells would trigger her brain back to life. After spaghetti I read her pages from my autobiography. I read the passage where I first met her, hoping that it would trigger memories. But it didn't work.

The following morning I went down to the Boatman to collect the mail and gossip. He was over half an hour late and I'd almost given up on him when he finally arrived.

"Problems with the boat?" I said. The Boatman liked to moan about the engine, even when it was working fine and he arrived on time.

"No, not today," he said. "It's been fine."

"Oh, so why you late. Mrs Nancifer get all chatty on you?"

The Boatman looked through me for a while, saying nothing. "No, truth is young Terrence I was here on time, or would have been, when I saw a boat round the other side of the island, so I sailed round to take a look."

"A boat?" I said. "I've not seen anything."

"No, and I don't think it wanted seeing. Modern thing, it was, soon as I appeared to sped off," he said, spitting the words 'modern thing'. He didn't like modern boats.

"I wonder what they were doing here?" I said, all innocence, though of course I realised what had happened. In spite of all of Eddie's cautions they must have found out about Mo, whoever 'they' were. Well, if they were spying on the island I wouldn't have to wait long to find out.