I'm certain that many of you must have heard about near death experiences. Perhaps some of you even had the experience. Although I don't call it such, chapter 2 describes a near death experience. The reason I don''t call it that is because there is so much controversy surrounding the subject. Not for me, I KNOW what I experienced. The scene occurs as I am being rescued from the suicide attempt. ***Someone was wiping dribble from my mouth and chin. I could hear techno beeping sounds and humans whispering words as if I were eavesdropping on a telegraphed code from earth to hell. The word “why” was repeated as often as the beeps. Beep. Beep. Beep. Why. Why. Why. I could sense hands undressing my body. Don’t leave my body naked on the gurney! The hands covered my body to the neck with a sheet, but I could not feel the contact of the cloth with my skin.
Dead. Dead. As if I were suspended from the ceiling, I looked upon my body. I saw a sad bag of bones with ghostly white skin and dark blue shadows under the eyes. I was finally dead.
Someone started using my name: “Lynn, Lynn, breathe, take a deep breath, breathe, hang in there! ECHO! STAT!” I sensed the tension as they tried to resuscitate my body. An urgent voice was shouting: “Blood pressure 60 over 40!”
Was that 40 over 60? How I wanted to tell them not to bother! I was not worth the effort. Stop! Stop! As much as I wanted those words to form on my lips, they remained in my brain. The body would not obey the mind, as if the body and mind were separate entities without connection. At death, I felt as powerless over my own body as I had been in life.
I heard: “I got a pulse!” It felt as though a dresser had been dropped on my chest, causing a sharp pain over my heart and a steady ache at my sternum. My head was throbbing with each heartbeat. My throat hurt with every swallow. As I breathed, I coughed. When I coughed, I vomited. My body trembled, my teeth chattered. What went wrong? I thought I was dead.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a wall of beeping monitors that cast a green light in the dim room. My body was shuddering uncontrollably, probably from the cold. As a nurse rolled a thermal blanket up to my chin, I noticed that I had been dressed in a hospital gown. “Your belongings are in a plastic bag under the bed,” she said. The image of a bag lady came to mind again.
A dark man in a white coat said, “Welcome back. I am Dr. Fernandez.” He spoke with a kind tone in a Latin accent. “How are you?”
Did he expect a response? I waited awhile, but he did not go away. Neither did the nurse, who was explaining the insertion of a catheter to empty my bladder. Apparently, not all physiological systems were receiving messages that the brain was transmitting.
“Did I die?” A hoarse sound rose from a dry well so deep below the surface that I did not recognize my own voice. The doctor looked at me. I avoided his eyes.
He answered, “Yes, you were gone for two minutes. You are in the intensive cardiac care unit. You have cardiac complications and there is a fifty/fifty chance of brain damage. You are on seizure precaution. Your condition is critical. All you can do for now is rest.”
Alas, I was alive. I alternated between sleep and waking. Please, God, let me fall asleep and never wake up. My eyes closed. ***