Vehicle of Life #atozchallenge #shortstory

 “You will die today.”

I heard the words clearly as the bus gears ground to life. I shook my head not knowing if those words had been audible. My husband said nothing. I shook again chastising myself and my imagination. I couldn’t look up at the beautiful coastal plants blooming in magnificent fuchsias and purples. The words: “you won’t believe what I thought I heard…” were on the edge of my lips.

Then there  was nothing, no piercing sound of brakes, no slamming noise of metal clashing against metal, no baby screams, no calling out from the front seat, no sense of blood spurting out from my assaulted arteries. … just nothing.

But I felt arms wrapped about me taking me to a safe place far away. I felt warm peace like the smooth Pacific as it laps the edges of the earth at dawn.

“I’m dead I know. I am ready.”

I was wrapped in a naked glow and filled with something unexplainable. Then I heard an old woman’s voice. At first I didn’t know who it was.

“I told you when it’s time you will know. They won’t understand. They didn’t when I died and came back an hour later. It’s not yet time. You must return.”

Hands like velvet lovingly touched me in various places on the right side of my body. My eyes opened as a nurse was turning on the morphine drip.

***

One doctor said, “it’s a miracle.” The others shook their heads all willing to collaborate that I hadn’t really died.

But it didn’t really matter. For some reason, I was alive and there was more for me to “do” on earth. I felt a profound purpose in each day.

The radiologists found the odd markings of a large scar on my right lung.

“I’m charting it as TB, ma’am.”

“Not possible.” The nurse in me chimed in. ” My medical tests just came back and I was negative for TB.”

The chart stands as a permanent record that I had a huge scar in my right lung from TB. I knew that it was a softball sized hole created by a car accident.

There was a long, prominent scar running down my right arm, ending at the edge of my main artery. The scar  hadn’t been there before the accident. The proof that I had been hurt in the car accident was the 10 inch long and several inches deep gash over my right eye. It looked like someone had sliced into my head with a sword.

“There is no way whatever slashed through her head should have stopped less than a millimeter above her eye.”

This doctor who believed what he saw wrote in his physician’s notes: “miracle” Someone later changed the word to look like the word occipital.

When I got home from the hospital, I looked in my notebooks curious. There she was a picture of me and Agnes; the med /surg patient that died before I could help her with her ADLs. I only got a few minutes with her as there were news crews from three counties and countless medical staff trying to find an excuse for her dying or not dying..

“There is nothing to fear about death child. It will come when it comes,” she said with a radiant face.

“I’ll see you soon, Agnes,” I said as I pinned up her photograph.

****

Please read part one “Unexplainable”

 

Though this story is slightly fictionalized (I still had another year of nursing school to complete, I can’t remember my son’s exact exclamations)  this story is mine. Agnes words to me were added as I do not remember what she said to me.  As I was writing this story,  I realized through my life journey,  I have met others like Agnes who had died and come back to life. One man I met was in the morgue for an entire day. No one can explain what happens because it outside of the human realm.  It is medically proven that a  body cannot live if it is deprived of oxygen for more than 6 minutes. However, doctors have no way to explain what is out of their sphere of knowledge or influence.

I do know that there are a number of people who have lived through death. Call it near death. I really can’t. I was not near to death I was dead. Near eternity would be a better explanation.

I have written bits and pieces of this story over the years but this is the first time I had the courage to put the entire scenario of the day that I died. I will celebrate year 23 of life after my death this May the 2nd.