A functioning vegetable

At lunch, after my colleagues explained to me how a young woman they had recently seen on television spent one lucid hour a day with her otherwise comatose boyfriend thanks to the administering of a sleeping drug which, among the non-comatose, has been known to prompt the users to assault and battery -- or even driving -- while asleep, Eliza who was eating a mandarin on a length of kitchen paper told us about her time on a neurological ward, where a young man who had suffered brain damage after a honeymoon ballooning accident spent his entire day wanking. There were endless meetings about what to do with him. She didn't remember what transpired. He was a vegetable, she said: but a functioning vegetable.