Chapter 5: Family
Mum had barely been back from Greggs for twenty minutes when I heard voices in the corridor.
"That's Nathan," she said, already standing up. "And I think your dad's with him."
Right. Okay. Here we go.
I'd been going through my phone and whatever memories this body still had from before. Between the two I had enough to not completely embarrass myself.
The door opened and Nathan walked in first.
Tall. Broad. Bigger than the photos made him look. He was wearing a hoodie and jeans and he had this look on his face like he was trying to play it cool but his eyes kept flicking to the machines next to my bed.
"Alright, bruv?"
He said it from the doorway. Just standing there, hands in his pockets. I could tell he didn't know how close he was allowed to get.
"Are you just going to stand there and look at me like I'm some house plant, mate? Or are you coming in?" I said.
He grinned. It broke the tension immediately. He walked over, grabbed my hand, and pulled me into this half hug thing that was awkward because I was still in the bed and connected to an IV but it didn't matter. He held on for a second longer than you'd expect from a bloke like him.
"You scared the shit out of us, you know that?" he said, pulling back. "Mum was in here every day. Every single day. I had to practically drag her home some nights." He grabbed the chair, spun it around, and sat on it backwards with his arms crossed over the back. "So how are you feeling? And don't give me the doctor answer. How are you actually feeling?"
"Honestly? Weird. Everything feels a bit weird. Like I've been away for ages and now everything's the same but also different. I don't know how to explain it. Like the room looks right and you look right and Mum looks right but something in my head just feels off. Not bad off. Just different off."
"That makes sense. You were out for five weeks, mate. Give or take. That's a long time to just be lying there doing nothing. Your brain's probably still catching up."
The old Liam had been unconscious for five weeks before I took over. That was good to know.
"You look alright though," Nathan said, looking me over. "Better than I expected. I thought you'd be all skinny and pale and looking like death."
"I mean, I am skinny and pale."
"Yeah but you're always skinny and pale. This is normal skinny and pale for you, mate. Not coma skinny and pale like in the movies. If you want to be like me you need to hit the gym, ey." He flexed one arm and grinned like an idiot.
I laughed at that. A proper laugh. Talking to Nathan just felt easy. No pressure, no heaviness, just a bloke talking to his brother.
Then Dad walked in.
Paul Reed looked exactly like his photos. Stocky. Strong hands. Face weathered by decades of outdoor work. He was wearing work boots and a jacket that had seen better days and he looked like he'd come straight from a job site, which he probably had.
He stood in the doorway for a second. Didn't say anything. Just looked at me.
Then he walked over, put his hand on my head, and said, "Good lad."
That was it. Two words. But the way his voice cracked on the second one said more than any speech could have.
"Hi, Dad."
"How you feeling?"
"Good. Tired, but good."
He nodded. Pulled up a second chair and sat down. Didn't say anything else for a bit. Just sat there, being there. And honestly that was enough.
Mum was already there obviously, still working on her coffee from Greggs. The room was small and with four people in it, it felt properly crowded. Nathan was taking up half the space just by existing and Dad's chair was blocking the door and Mum kept fussing with the blinds because she thought there was too much light and then not enough light.
"So when are they letting you out of this place?" Nathan asked, and then he reached into Mum's bag and pulled out a sausage roll like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Give that back! That was for Liam!" Mum said.
"Relax, there's two in there. I wouldn't take all of them. I know he hasn't eaten in a long time."
"The other one is also for Liam!"
"Mum, it's fine. I can't eat two. I wasn't even allowed to eat two hours ago but you just had to go and get them anyway. Let him have one."
"You're recovering. You need the energy," she said with a pout, and looked away a little.
Nathan looked at me. I looked at Nathan. He took another bite. Mum made a noise like she was going to argue but then gave up because she knew she'd already lost.
"Dr. Patel said maybe end of the week," I said. "They want to run more tests. Scans and stuff. Make sure my brain's working properly."
"Is it?" Nathan asked. "Working properly?"
"Yes and no. I forgot how I got here and I got the year right but not the month or the date. But the rest is working fine. I can still remember that you reversed into a bollard in the Tesco car park, so there's that."
That one I'd got from the phone. Nathan didn't need to know that.
Nathan's face went red. "Who told you that? That was supposed to stay between me and Dad."
Dad made a sound. It took me a second to realise it was a laugh. A quiet one, almost like a cough, but it was definitely a laugh. Mum was already laughing.
"He's fine," Dad said. "He's taking the piss. He's fine."
We talked for about an hour after that. Nathan did most of the talking, which I got the feeling was how it normally went. He told me about his job. Apparently his boss was an idiot who couldn't organise a delivery schedule if his life depended on it, and Nathan had been basically running the place while the boss took credit, and he was thinking about looking for something else but the pay was decent and he couldn't be bothered with interviews.
Then he told me about Biscuit, who'd been staying with Mum and Dad and had apparently eaten one of Dad's work boots.
"That dog is a menace," Dad said.
Nathan looked at Dad. "That dog is not a menace. He's a sweet little dog that gets anxiety when he's near you."
"Nathan, you can tell yourself whatever you want, but he ate my boot. My boot. For God's sake. That is not anxiety. That is straight up being mean."
"Yeah, and you left it by the door where he could get it. That's on you, Dad. Biscuit saw an opportunity and he took it. Respect the hustle."
Dad looked at me like he wanted backup. I held my hands up. "Don't bring me into this. I've been in a coma."
I was grinning through the whole thing. This I could get used to. It felt like the kind of family I'd always had in my old life but now just with a dad and a brother and not only a mum. Just having fun and being yourself. That's all that matters. And now it was mine.
Mum asked me if I remembered things. I said some of it was foggy, which wasn't a lie. She told me stories. About Christmas last year, about that bollard in the Tesco car park again which made Nathan groan, about my first day at uni when she cried more than I did. I nodded along and laughed at the right moments and filed every single detail away.
After a while the nurse came in and said visiting hours were ending soon. Nathan stood up, stretched, and looked at me.
"Need anything? Clothes, books, anything from the flat?"
"Can you bring my laptop? If I'm stuck here for a few more days I'm going to lose my mind."
"Yeah, course. I'll drop it off tomorrow."
He gave me another one of those half hugs. Dad stood up, put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed once, and nodded. Mum kissed my forehead three times because apparently once wasn't enough.
"I'll be back in the morning," she said from the doorway.
"I know you will, Mum."
They left. The room went quiet again. Just me and the beeping.
Three days later, Dr. Patel came in for his morning round, looked at my charts, looked at me, and said, "Mr. Reed, I think you're ready to go home."
Mum was crying. "Oh my... Liam," she managed between breaths. "You can... you can come home, baby."
I didn't say anything. I just let her hold me for a minute. What do you even say to that? This woman waited five weeks for her son to wake up and now she's being told she can take him home. The fact that it wasn't really her son anymore was something I was going to have to live with. But right now, in this moment, I was her son. And that was enough.
"Come on, Mum," I said. "Let's not flood the room. The nurses will charge us for water damage."
She laughed through the tears. "Shut up, you."
I sat on the edge of the bed in the clothes she'd brought from home. Jeans that were slightly too loose because I'd lost weight.
Nathan was waiting outside with the car. Dad was at work but he'd sent a text that said "glad your coming home son" with no punctuation and one spelling mistake and it was the most Dad text I'd ever seen.
I stood up. My legs were wobbly. Five weeks in a hospital bed will do that. But I could walk. I could breathe. I could think.
Mum linked her arm through mine like I was going to fall over, which to be fair I might have done.
"Ready?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said. "Let's go home."