My Wife’s in a Coma, and I Like the Attention
Howard Pell has been invisible for twenty-six years.
He works at an insurance company in Greenville, South Carolina, at the same desk, parking in the same space, eating the same bowl of bran flakes at 5:48 every morning, two minutes before the alarm. His coworkers have spelled his name wrong on the office email for six years. He decided long ago that correcting it would be a bigger scene than letting it ride.
His marriage is no louder. Howard and his wife Joanne have worn each other down into something polite and quiet and completely without friction. The most personal thing either of them says all day is “Anything happen today?” The answer is always no.
Then the phone rings.
Joanne has been in a terrible accident. She is in a coma, and the doctors will not promise anything. Howard is frightened. He is also, to his own surprise, strangely calm. And then the casseroles start arriving.
A neighbor shows up with chicken and rice. Church ladies bring a prayer shawl. Somebody starts a meal train spreadsheet with HOWARD PELL in capital letters across the top. A cleaning woman appears, paid for by someone else. The whole office signs a giant card, and a dozen of them spell his name wrong anyway. And the woman across the aisle, the one he has admired for two years without once speaking to her, finally says hello. She says his name right.
Howard knows what he is supposed to feel. What he feels, with growing alarm, is appetite. Then he opens a filing cabinet and finds a life insurance policy, and a bank account his wife never mentioned, and a number on a legal pad that he cannot stop looking at.
Then Joanne starts to wake up. And the whole town is praying for exactly what Howard isn’t sure he wants.
My Wife’s in a Coma, and I Like the Attention is a short, dark, deadpan story about loneliness, good manners, and what happens when a man who has never been noticed gets a taste of it. It is a complete standalone, about 12,000 words, built to be read in one sitting. Casseroles, a staircase, and a very patient wife are involved. It is not nearly as polite as it looks.
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