Near Death

by Glenn Cooper

  Emily Frost had volunteered to be on call for the Children’s psychiatry service. She didn’t consider it much of a sacrifice. She was a nondrinker, had few friends in Boston, and wasn’t exactly turning down exciting plans for the evening. Her roommate, a pediatric surgeon, was visiting her parents in New York City and Emily had the flat to herself. So she kept her beeper on her hip and settled into an easy chair with a book. She’d taken a recent interest in Shakespearean sonnets and lightly skipped from one to another as the snow fell.

  Marian and Marty canceled plans to go out to a restaurant owing to the blizzard; and besides, Tara had developed a smidgen of a fever. Marian was hovering, checking the girl’s temperature every hour but Tara looked fine and Marty was discouraging his wife from subjecting everyone to a harrowing drive to the emergency room if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

  Cyrus was in his garden apartment steadily working through a six-pack of beer. As usual, Brazilian music was leeching through his thin walls and he was employing Bach as a countermeasure. The TV was black, the way he liked it most of the time. His book for the night was King Lear, his favorite of the tragedies, so miserable in its conceit that he thought it might take the edge off his own misery. He came to a familiar passage.

  As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;

  They kill us for their sport.

  He let the book close and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm.

  Is that all we are, he thought, flies to wanton boys? Is there no bigger rhyme or reason? What about God? What about His purpose? And if He had a grand plan, what possible reason could there be for Tara’s sickness?

  It flew against his core beliefs but maybe the truth was darkly simple: fate was nothing more than randomness. God was an artifact of man, built to give false hope. There was no grand architect after all. His little Tara was only a fly swatted by wanton boys, furiously buzzing on the windowsill with a crushed wing, trying to keep alive.

  Alex and Jessie were comfortably lying on top of their bedcovers, each eager with anticipation. Alex would go first, then Jessie, willing subjects in a grand experiment to find the right dose of the Uroboros compound. If half a milligram only got them halfway across the river, then perhaps a full milligram would get them further; but that wasn’t happening. Doubling the dose got them no farther than midstream.

  So, they tried increasing the dosage again, and again, until two and a half milligrams landed Alex in an unresponsive state for hours. Jessie had spent a frantic night checking his vital signs, wondering if she should call an ambulance, but she held off for fear they’d be found out, that she’d never be able to take the drug again.

  When he finally did come to he had this to report: despite its longevity, his experience was the same—certainly marvelous and wonderful, but no better than lower doses and still less ecstatic than the pure liquid they’d first taken.

  So they’d settled into a pattern of taking only a miniscule mound of crystals, half a milligram at a time, each trip a marvel. They never tired of them. Once they returned, all they could talk about, all they could think about was the next time, and the next time, and the next time.

  Yet, that didn’t stop Alex’s mind from grinding away.

  The natural compound was better than the synthetic one—and the younger the “donor” the more profound the experience.

  There was more work to be done. He needed more samples, younger victims. He’d foolishly believed the killings could stop, that the man-made chemical was enough. He’d been wrong. He had to follow the science.

  And on New Year’s Eve, he had the darkest thought of all.

  I’m a pediatrician.

  I see hopeless cases every day … children who are going to die …

  I can help them get to a better place.

  One child in particular came to him; a pretty little girl beyond help—a little girl with a father who was persecuting him, trying to derail one of the most important scientific inquiries of all time.

  Tara O’Malley.

  Jessie called his name and brought him back. He opened his mouth and let her lovingly drop the crystals onto his tongue. He would start the New Year with a joyous journey to the other side—for more time—more achingly wonderful time with Dickie Weller.

  Twenty

  There was a pile of boots and shoes in the hall amidst a spreading puddle of melted snow. Alex flitted nervously around his living room spending a moment or two with everyone. All the regulars were there: Davis Fox, Arthur Spangler, Larry Gelb with his young girlfriend Lilly, Frank Sacco, and Erica Parris.

  Spangler leaned in close enough for Alex to smell the mints and pipe tobacco on his breath. “Surely you’ve got something for us tonight, Alex. I mean, start of the year and all that. Don’t really have the stomach for another lecture about archetypes.”

  “We’ll see, Art,” Alex replied. “I’d hate to disappoint you.”

  Spangler told him not to be so damned enigmatic but Alex had spotted someone entering and left the professor wondering.

  To his delight, Sam Rodriguez was back. He clapped the young man between the shoulder blades. “Good to see you, mate.”

  “Yeah, I thought I’d give it one more shot.” As he said this, he was looking at Erica’s round backside.

  “Uroboros or Erica?” Alex asked.

  “Whatever, man.” Sam chuckled.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here. Jessie’s in the kitchen. She’ll get you something to drink.”

  At eight o’clock Alex asked them all to take their places on cushions in their traditional circle. Fourteen were present. He stood astride his cushion and winked at Jessie, the two sharing the secret.

  “Happy New Year, one and all!” he boomed. “Hope you had a good holiday and all that blather. I think this is going to be an interesting year for our little group, a breakthrough year. Starting tonight.” He paused for effect and scanned the candlelit room for reaction, pleased that everyone appeared keenly attentive. “We all share a common interest in trying to figure out how our lives fit into the bigger picture. Is this, our interval, our time on earth between birth and death, is this all there is? Well, you know where I’ve stood on this. And everyone here who’s had a near death experience stands at the same place. We believe there’s more. Call it afterlife, call it heaven, call it anything you please, but we come to this belief not through religious doctrine or indoctrination. We come to it because some of us have, and all of us have read about and talked about, vivid life-altering experiences that lead us to a profound conclusion. And you know that here in our salon, we’ve shared these experiences, we’ve studied the Jungian collective unconscious, sacred texts, myths, the scientific literature, anything that might bring us closer to answers. And we’ve been engaged in active exploration, taking substances to try to bring us closer to that line between life and death, to try to get a glimpse of what might lie beyond. Now these chemicals have been crude, even primitive, I’d say: LSD, salvia, DMT, ketamine. Okay, we’ve had a bit of fun but the experiences we’ve had are so varied, so heterogeneous, that I’m afraid they’re false approximations of NDEs. Well, tonight, my friends, all of that changes.”

  Arthur Spangler couldn’t contain himself any longer. He was hyperkinetic, almost bouncing on his cushion. “Christ, Alex, this is so goddamn overwrought. Spit it out, will you? What do you have?”

  Alex laughed and briefly disappeared into his bedroom. When he returned he had a juice goblet in his hand filled with thin tubes of multicolored wrapping paper, each one sealed with twisted ends. The packaging was Jessie’s idea and he loved it. Elegant thin straws filled with his crystals. “This. This is what I have.”

  “Okay, what is it?” Gelb asked.

  “I call it the Uroboros compound. Most of you know that in my research I’ve been searching for the biological basis for shared and common near death experiences. I think I’ve found it. It’s a naturally occurring brain chemical produced in abundance at the moment of death. It seems to be co
mmon to several mammalian species.”

  Frank Sacco looked surprised and almost hurt. Alex could read the disappointment on his face that he’d been kept in the dark about experiments going on in his own lab.

  Sam Rodriguez politely raised his hand as if he were in class. “What about humans?”

  Alex kept a poker face and thought, yes, man too, but said, “That would be a tough experiment to do, Sam, unless you’d care to volunteer. To isolate the chemical one would need to severely oxygen-deprive the human brain, as I’ve done with animals. It would be rather difficult to get that by an ethical review board! Having said that, you’re looking at two people who’ve taken this drug and are here today to talk about it.” He told Jessie to stand up. He put his arm around her. “The two of us have been using it for several weeks. We can honestly say it’s the ultimate experience. There is nothing like it. Nothing.”

  Jessie nodded. “I can’t even describe how beautiful it is.”

  Spangler continued his display of impatience. “Well, what’s it like, Weller? Give us some details!”

  “Here’s why I’m not going to do that,” Alex replied. “I’ve got enough here for everyone. If you want to try it, Jessie and I will stay sober and look out for you. When you’re done tripping, we’ll compare notes. I don’t want you to be influenced by the power of suggestion.”

  “How long’s the trip?” Erica asked.

  “For Jessie and me, with the dose I’m offering tonight it’s been lasting less than hour. It comes on pretty fast, though.”

  There were questions about safety, side effects and the like.

  Alex patiently listened to the concerns and said he wasn’t going to lie to them. He candidly admitted that two people wasn’t much of a sample size. Still, he and Jessie had no ill effects even in higher doses but he couldn’t offer any guarantees. It was risky. Everyone needed to accept that—but trust him, he said, it was going to be worth the risk. Anyone who was worried or scared should sit it out and help as monitors. Whatever happened, he demanded that everyone swear to secrecy as they’d done each time when they’d collectively taken recreational drugs.

  He went around the circle polling each member to see whether they were in or out. Spangler was in immediately, showing almost a childlike glee. Through a pinched-faced skepticism, Gelb said yes, and his girlfriend Lilly obediently followed suit. Erica and Sam were quickly on board. Virginia Tinley, the patent lawyer with owlish glasses and severely pulled-back hair, openly debated the pros and cons with herself for all to hear. She was scared of any and all drugs—including aspirin—but was one among them who’d had a bona fide near death experience. It happened in her doctor’s office after an injection, whereupon she’d had a severe anaphylactic reaction and cardiac arrest. She remembered floating, entering a tunnel, seeing light ahead, feeling free and happy for the first time in her life but that’s as far as it went. She was successfully resuscitated and came back convinced there was profound meaning in what happened. Now she surprised the others when she stopped debating herself, looked into Alex’s eyes and said “Yes.”

  Davis Fox also said yes enthusiastically. When Alex got to Frank, the young man nodded but threw in a zinger. “I can’t believe you held out on me, Alex. I mean, I work with you.”

  Alex kept a smile as he thought, no, Frank, you work for me, and it was a mistake to ever involve you with Uroboros. Instead, he said, “Sorry, mate. It was one of these need-to-know projects. You’re going to like it though.”

  All told, three people declined: an ever-quiet MIT student from Korea, an architect whose wife was expecting a baby within a week and was constantly checking his iPhone for reports of the first signs of labor, and an anatomy instructor at Tufts Medical School who just couldn’t get around his fear of taking an unknown drug.

  Alex cheerfully recruited the nonparticipants into the ranks of caretakers and assigned them each two or three people to monitor.

  Alex turned down the music while Jessie went around making sure all the candles were safely out of the way. Then, like a high priest delivering a sacred offering, he moved around the circle, letting people choose a thin straw of paper from the goblet.

  “What do you do with it, Weller?” Spangler demanded, sniffing at the paper tube.

  For everyone’s benefit, Alex explained. “Untwist one end and let it out on your tongue. Be careful. There’s only a tiny amount of crystals in each one. It’s a little sour but not too bad. It’ll mostly dissolve but swallow when the urge comes and the rest will go down.”

  No one wanted to go first. In the low light of flickering candles, all of them fiddled with their straws and watched what the others were doing.

  Sam Rodriguez, fed up with the group indecision, piped up. “Screw it.” He bit the end off of his blue straw and poured the crystals into his mouth. After he swallowed, he announced, “Tastes like a bad sour ball. Everyone who doesn’t go now’s a pussy.” He crossed his arms and looked around the circle with attitude.

  One by one the participants followed his lead, emptying their straws and swallowing. Jessie made the rounds with paper cups of cold water to wash away the sourness and the caretakers took their positions behind their charges. Alex whispered tenderly to Jessie that their turn would come later.

  Alex would remember the next hour for the rest of his life.

  Ever the scientist, he recorded as many details as he could but the task soon became overwhelming. With nine subjects there were too many time points, too many observations to jot down. Time to first eye-fluttering, to recumbency, pulse rates, respiratory rates, pupillary reactions, facial expressions, twitches; stray words, moans, and sighs. He also had to keep reassuring the three new caretakers that everything was okay, that the unresponsive people lying on the floor were doing fine, that everything was going well. The Korean caretaker started to cry and Jessie wound up spending more time reassuring her than watching her three charges—Gelb, his girlfriend Lilly, and Virginia, whose thick glasses miraculously stayed in place the entire time.

  Alex was particularly interested in their faces, assiduously trying to read the shape of a mouth, lines on a brow, moistness of the eyes, what was happening inside their heads. Sam was smiling impishly most of the time. Erica looked peaceful but twitched with small, constant movements, like a puppy sleeping. Gelb wore a quizzical expression not terribly different from his usual demeanor. Lilly, nestled next to him, had tears streaming down her smooth cheeks. Virginia concerned him more than anyone else. Her pulse was racing at 140 and she was breathing fast and moaning loudly, not in pain but apparent pleasure. “Jesus,” he whispered to Jessie half in jest, “I think Ginny’s going to come!” Her visceral responses didn’t fade in a climax, however; they remained intensely plateaued, and Alex nervously kept up with her vital signs. Forty minutes into the trip, he openly fretted about her persistent tachycardia. “I wish I could pull the plug on her, Jessie,” he whispered. “This is too much for her. I’m getting worried.”

  Then, in just under an hour, one by one, they started coming out of it, blinking their way back to Alex’s living room. He furiously tried to record their ending times and their reactions at the moment of awareness, all the while kneeling by Virginia and continuing to fuss over her. She was still far away but her pulse, though fast, wasn’t thready; it remained strong and regular and her color was good.

  Sam, first in, was first out. He awoke with a surprised look and tried to stand but his legs were rubbery and he planted himself back on the pillow. His wandering eyes searched out Alex, who would later tease him that the first words out of his mouth were wholly prosaic.

  “Holy … shit … man. Holy shit.” Then the young man buried his face in his hands and his chest began to heave.

  Jessie rushed to his side and rubbed his shoulders with the flat of her palm, softly saying, “I know, I know, I know.”

  Gelb was next. The man had a perpetually mischievous quality, like the cat who’s just eaten the canary. He awoke with a shock and instinc
tively reached for Lilly, who was still asleep. “Lilly!” he cried. “Wake up! I was with my mother! Did you hear me, Lilly? My mother was there.”

  Alex went to him and took his hand. “Lilly will be back soon, Larry. Give her a few minutes.”

  “Christ, Alex, I’ve never, ever, in my whole life, experienced anything like this.”

  “I know, Larry. Here, have some water. We’ll talk about it soon. Wait for Lilly. Be there for her when she wakes up.”

  Erica was next, sobbing joyously; then Spangler, looking dazed; then Frank, visibly trying to hold himself together and avoid a public show of emotion. Then Melissa Cornish, a young professor from Northeastern; Vik Pai, a grad student from Harvard Divinity School; and Steve Mahady, a science teacher from Boston. All except Virginia were conscious and the room was filled with these words: Oh my God! Christ! My mother! My father! My brother! Did you see it? There was a river! It was amazing! I had no idea! Jesus, Alex!

  Virginia was the last one. As Jessie and the caretakers saw to the needs of the awakeners, Alex returned to her side and silently prayed she’d come back. And then, an hour and a quarter after her exposure, she roared back, thrashing and shouting like a Holy Roller about the glory of it all, the glory of God! Alex tightly wrapped her up in his arms, not because he felt close to her, but because he was scared she might flail about and hurt herself.

  She was screaming, “Patty was there! Patty was there! She was with God, I’m sure of it! Oh my God! Oh my God!”

  “I’m happy for you Ginny,” Alex said. “Believe me, I am. Who’s Patty? Tell me who she is, sweetheart.”

  “My sister! She’s my twin sister! She’s been gone for twenty-five years. Oh my God, she was calling me! Please let me go back there, Alex! You’ve got to help me!”

  The woman was near hysteria and her shouts and physicality were disorienting everyone else in the room trying to come to grips with their own experiences. Alex had Jessie grab hold of her and frantically went hunting for his bottle of Christmas brandy, which he hadn’t put back in its usual cupboard. When he found it he poured out several fingers and forced Virginia to drink it down in one go. She coughed and sprayed, protesting she didn’t drink, but she held it in and measurably calmed.