“I need to see my mother.” These were the first words 20-year-old Jason Yarris elected to speak on rousing from his coma after 63 days following a two-vehicle smash-up.
But now this brave young man who has had to fight for his life is still occupying a bed in Ward B2 at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) although he was discharged since March 17.
Michelle Scotland, Yarris’ mother, is now fighting to further fulfil her child’s need for her by adamantly refusing to remove him from the hospital. “I can’t take him home,” she explained. “I won’t be able to take care of him well enough there.”
The woman said that so far no one has made any objection to Yarris still occupying his hospital bed after being discharged. Scotland made it clear that if any objections were raised she wouldn’t move him because he is still too weak to sit up and may need further medical attention.Once strong, energetic and well-built, this young man is now frail. After waking up from his death-like state, he said he first noticed that it was daytime when he opened his eyes.
“It was daytime,” Yarris recalled. “I woke up and I saw it was daytime. I told the people around me that I need to see my mother but they said that they didn’t know where she lived,” the young man explained, eyes darting in all directions as he lay in bed.
Two eyewitnesses to the accident that put Yarris in his present state recalled last week for this newspaper what they remembered from that morning of December 21 last year.
The eyewitnesses said the taxi that Yarris was in, was travelling east along Broad Street that morning when a pick-up travelling south along Russell Street slammed into the side of the car. “The impact sent the front of the car slamming into a large tree just at the corner of Russell and Broad Street,” one eyewitness recalled. “Later we saw a young man [Yarris] pinned down by the car. He was covered in blood and we thought he was dead.”
Scotland said she had heard similar reports. The woman said it was a long and hard journey nursing her son during the days he lay almost dead and she was happy that he was awake now.
“It is my faith in God that has given me this happiness of seeing Jason alive today,” the woman said.
She related that Yarris was an independent-minded young man and at the age of 15, he left her house to live with his father. By the time he was 17, she said, he was working at a shop as a labourer and at 18, he had started using drugs.
At present, he has a case pending in the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court for a charge of possession of narcotics, Scotland said.
“I thought he was in jail!” The woman explained. “After he appeared in court during 2006 he was placed on bail. But I thought no one had paid the bail and he was still in jail,” Scotland remarked. “But the day after the accident I saw my son’s father and he told me about the accident. I was shocked. But I have never left him since.”
The woman explained that her son is now praying with her daily and shows great signs of improvement. However, he sometimes slips off into his own world and begins to mutter streams of gibberish, which she feels may be a sign of some brain damage.
Yarris regained consciousness some time between February 22 and 24 and he spoke for the first time between March 3 and 5. “It has been 95 days since he’s been here (at the hospital). I have counted each day, prayed each day and cried for many of these 95 days.
I thank God for answering my prayers and giving me the continuous strength to look after my son. I can only hope that this new lease of life will help change my son into a better man and others can learn from my experience,” an emotional Scotland said.
