That nervous voice belonged to someone.  His voice has been there the whole time.  A voice filtered through cotton, the low tones keeping me company without any clear words.  When you’re in a coma, you know it.  You scream for connection as frustration fights your will to connect.  But he’s been here for a while, his voice keeping that monster of frustration at bay, all the while holding my hand.  I can feel his thumb gently rub across my knuckles as he peers beyond closed eyelids and wills me to calm.  The angry voice searching for human contact shuts up long enough to fight rationally.
    He leaves thirty seconds before each new visitor comes in.  I know this because the clock on the wall sounds like a metronome.  It rings into my head.  I cannot tell you what time it is, but I can tell you exactly how many seconds pass before each person comes and goes from the room.  The morning nurse comes in every forty-two minutes, give or take fifteen seconds, and wears a very cheap version of Escada, which for those of you not in a coma smells like fruit soaked in alcohol.  The daytime doctor comes in every three hours and thirty three minutes and reeks of Armani.  Not the cheap stuff, the real deal, and he bathes in it.  The entire room fills with scent when this man comes in.  I would be willing to bet, without ever meeting the man, if he farted it would smell like patchouli.
    The afternoon nurse comes in every fifty-five minutes and makes a rude comment every time she changes my urine bag, as if her piss smells any better.  I’m beginning to feel a sisterhood with the blind, knowing every inch, smell, sound and taste of this room without ever seeing it.  Each part of me I took for granted is reminding me why it exists.  
    The thumb strokes my knuckles again.  I can tell by the count of ticks from the clock it’s around two in the morning.  A voice mentions through cotton, another stroke of my knuckles.  A smell?  
    There was a scream in my brain so loud I actually felt my spine.  Not in the sense of a tingle, I felt the length of the shaft I know as my spine from the bottom of my **** to my brain.  “BREATHE!” It screamed.
    I inhaled audibly.  Apparently loud enough to set monitors in motion.  I had to find the smell.  There was something familiar, yet so foreign.  For the first time in God knows how long, I felt the air come into my lungs.  The light burned, and the sounds became muddled.  The gentle grasp on my hand released.  
    Brut!  I somehow remember.  I try to speak, but the tube in my throat prevents anything from coming out.  I search the room frantically, but my eyes settle on Wool Cap.  A nurse is turning off beeps and speaking in calm panic for assistance.  Rose Petal.  I know her.  She likes bubble baths and hums frequently.
    I look past Travis through the window and see a green tattered jacket limping down the hallway.  Only Rose Petal picks up on it.
“Him?  Oh honey, he’s been here every night since you’ve been here.  Just calm down now.  Lot of folks been waiting to hear from you.”
    She begins taking the tubes from my face as the room fills with people, voices, and smells.  Everything solid from what I knew filing in with jubilant congratulations.  I can’t focus.  I search past the bodies down the now vacated hall for the smell of Brut and the gentle thumb.
“Dad?” I whisper.
    Ten minutes can sometimes feel like an hour, but the doctors and nurses rushed everyone out with subtle authority saying, “she really needs her rest.”  And I did.  But I somehow had trouble falling asleep this time, without that hand holding mine, gently rubbing it’s thumb across my knuckles.