by Mary Deal
From the back doorway of the restaurant I heard, “Hey, get out of here, punk! Get away from here!”
Sirens wailed, tires screeched. I dared a peek between the slats of a crate. Intermittent blue lights flashed their circular pattern. Excited people crowded the street. The police and, hopefully, medics had arrived to tend to the victims. The creep straightened, tucked the gun into his waistband and pulled the tee shirt loosely over it. One last look and he turned and strutted toward the alley entrance, acting nonchalant.
Since the cops had arrived, I'd be safe. The shooter wouldn't dare take out anyone in front of the police and the crowd.
As the shooter walked, I jumped from my hiding place sprinting back to the kitchen doorway. Then my nerves went raw. I saw the shooter catch a glimpse of me. His head jerked back in my direction. I heard the shot and time kicked into slow motion like electrical power being unexpectedly cut.
* * *
Something slams into me from behind but I barely feel it. My body jolts in a slow motion charade that seems will never end. Already in motion, I'm sent flying in a long wind glide. I land hard, head first, and feel a corner of concrete slice into my forehead. The vertebrae in my neck crackle. I crumple face down but don't physically feel any of this. The pain comes slowly because I'm already detached from what's happening. I'm beginning to shake as if I'm inside my body but not attached to the outer shell. The vibration makes a noise that sounds like the rough sides of two rocks being coarsely grated together as I begin to lift. An ominous buzzing fills my head and ears. I'm vibrating severely as I exit through the top of my head. I see a person lying crumpled in the alley as I hover above. I lift higher and higher and see two men running from the restaurant toward the body sprawled on the filthy concrete. Police at the alley entrance throw a man in a white tee shirt to the ground and wrench his arms behind him. I realize how high I've risen. My ascent seems effortless and normal.
The images on the ground disappear as if diluted into oblivion. Strangely, three large golden orbs above me burst with muted popping sounds as I ascend through them. The void fills with radiant white that changes to endless glowing hues I've never before seen. When I focus on the new colors, I'm filled with the realization that this is unimportant and I float still higher. That's the last time I am able to think of much. My emotions and rationale are fleeting. I simply… am.
A glowing that has no end envelops me and I know nothing but total peace. I am more whole now than I have ever been. I perceive in every direction at once, having no limitations of front, back or sides. The radiance persists as far as I can sense and probably beyond. I am simply inside the all-encompassing light with it inside of me. I am at one with it and feel total peace the like I've never known.
My head feels unusually gorged with a new kinetic energy. With that thought, I realize my ability to rationalize is returning. I'm feeling my emotions again and find it disappointing. I sink… sink… down out of the radiance. Wait! I want to cry out. Why was I shown this if I can't stay? I sink and sink until, as if peering through a softly lighted tube, I again see the body on the ground. The clothes have been cut away and lay nearby in a shredded heap. It's completely naked except for a large square patch of white over the lumbar area. As the police watch, two medics place a harness around the body's neck and place a board over the body and securely strap the body and head to it. They roll the body and board over in unison so the body is face up.
My dismay grows. I'm sinking down out of the glowing and can't stop myself. Slowly, I realize I'm re-entering the body on the ground. I slip easily back in through the top of its head and settle in near the solar plexus. My senses come alive again with tingling like every cell had been asleep. The brilliant glowing begins to pull back in toward the center of my being like a light withdrawing back into its source. The last remnants of radiance dissipate in the air around me as well as inside me in bursts like miniscule stars exploding into a million more.
* * *
“Pity,” someone hovering above me says. “Close to the spine.”
I can't stand the pumping pressure on my chest. I choke and retch. Air floods my lungs.
“Hey, we've got him back,” she says as she presses fingertips against the side of my neck. She puts an oxygen mask over my mouth and nose and I breathe a whole lot better.
My body tingles and I barely endure the nervy feeling. I want to shake my legs and arms but find I cannot move. My head feels like it's rocking back and forth and is still full of the new current I picked up in the light. My thoughts run amuck and time seems stretched, but judging from the movements of the medics, it just seems slow because my mind is racing. My emotions run the spectrum from shock to elation, often stalling in the high. In spite of some prickly feelings, I remain detached from my surroundings and could get to like this heady sensation if it can keep away the confusion.
Fingers probe and needles prick. My senses seem heightened and raw. The smell of a damp alley was never so putrid, dingy brick walls never so vibrant, voices never as piercing, and night was never so translucent.
I'm lifted on the board and carried away. Sirens blare.
The prickly feelings persist, especially in my legs. I see inside myself as tiny stars continue to implode throughout my limbs and body. I'm vaguely aware of simultaneous universes within and without, the one within, glowing, ethereal, inviting. A guy dabs at the top of my forehead and comes up with bloody gauze.
“Can you feel this?” the female medic asks.
I try to see and, by her movements, know she jabs the soles of my feet or flicks at my toes but I don't feel it. The pain in my back seems distant, as if belonging to someone else. The current in my brain keeps me occupied as if pain is unimportant.
“You'd better log this,” the man says as he applies constant pressure on my forehead. “What time did we reach this guy?”
“Eleven twenty-four.”
“Karen,” I say. I wonder if she ever showed up. The man lifts the mask but my thoughts are fleeting. Random shooting. Senseless. Karen's always late. “At least she didn't get shot.”
I begin to understand what happened—that at the moment I was shot my soul left my body for an interlude in Spirit. I must have had a near-death experience. I'm awed and yet have to accept my body again, but in spite of endorphins protecting me, I refuse to accept that my legs may be paralyzed.
Clinging to the memory of my heavenly visit, what I want to do is escape the ills of life and return to the radiance I didn't know existed until I was out of my body. Why hadn't I seen the tunnel of light that people report seeing when they die and come back to tell about it? What pulled me back to physical consciousness? With the streetlights behind him, I hadn't seen the perpetrator's features. Certainly I wouldn't be able to later identify him. I'm young and in the prime of life, but I have no unfinished business as far as life goes. People die unexpectedly all the time and life goes on. Why was I made to return to a broken body or any body, when all I wish for is to stay in Spirit?
With the thought of Spirit, I revel in the hyperactive intensity of my mental processes. In addition to simultaneous myriad thoughts, there's still that ominous buzz inside my head and ears that, surprisingly, is calming instead of distracting. My mental acuity has been accelerated into high gear. I am an observer watching my thoughts race on with enough speed to power a row of turbine engines. The ambulance sways and rocks in its flight. The medics jostle around and hover over me. I am only a smiling observer sinking with awe into an ethereal abyss while watching them in that other realm.
Thoughts are questions. Why had I not been truly able to disconnect from the world? Like when I realized that, in Spirit, I was at peace for the first and only time and that earthly happiness fades to nothing in comparison. I must have had something with which to compare that thought that kept me attached to worldly consciousness. And colors—how did I know those were colors I hadn't seen before unless I remembered colors I already knew? Those were colors I can't describe with
earthly words. Why hadn't I seen departed loved ones like people claim when they have a near-death experience? Had I really almost died?
For the moment, I choke up and want to scream profanities at life, the real purpose of which I now admit I know nothing at all. Again, I see the medic touch my legs but can't feel her fingers probe. The thought of paralysis filters in and I thrash and scream, “I don't want to live with a broken body!” The mask on my face muffles the words but the glut of kinetic energy in my lips keep them from moving properly anyway. They quiver and twitch and make me stutter as if I'm cold. Yet, every time I try to attack my anguish with hatred and ire, the negativity is dissolved before it has a chance to fester.
My thoughts race on, seeming to elongate time as understanding pours in. Something cathartic is taking place. In addition to vanquishing negative emotions, I think I can accept my predicament as my mental agony is dissolved by a power that leaves me mystified. If my mind playing tricks on me is a by-product of natural endorphins, I say, so what? Bring on those numbing hormones. I feel too good to feel bad.
My mind is glutted with indescribable hyperactivity. Instead of asking endless questions, I find myself calming. Each single thought receives clarification, each unfinished thought, an ending. The knowledge enters my mind that I wasn't meant to die but had an out-of-body experience instead. I wasn't meant to die.
Mentally, I grope for thoughts that might help me understand what's happening. Vivid remembrances of Ruthie, whom I met through Karen, and who turned me off because of her belief in higher consciousness, parade from memory.
“Ruthie,” I nearly yell as I realize why she comes to mind. “Ruthie.” My dislike of Ruthie's beliefs had forced a tentative wedge between Karen and me.
The attendant lifts the mask. “Is she your wife?” the guy at my head asks. “Sir?”
“Remember that name,” the woman says. “He said 'Ruthie.' ”
“Yeah, and I think he said 'Karen' earlier.”
“…caused by trauma—illness—deep meditation….” Ruthie had said that.
“He's incoherent,” he says, replacing the mask.
“Sir, can you tell us your name?” the other asks.
Ruthie had a horrifying experience and later said her mind had been running full tilt ever since.
“Psychotic,” I say softly.
“What's that?” the attendant asks as he lifts the mask again.
Doctors called Ruthie's episode a psychotic break caused by the trauma of rape. Her only solace afterwards was to go deep into meditation where she had an out-of-body experience. “Not psychotic,” I say, remembering that Ruthie had been found suffering no psychosis. Since the occurrence, she had written several papers about her experiences and someone evidently thought her credible enough to begin charting her greatly enhanced IQ. “The human mind,” I say as my tears spill out. I strain. Why can't I move? Let go of me!
“He's delirious,” the man says. “Rambling.”
“Combative too,” the woman says.
I had treated Ruthie poorly, hadn't believed her. When we met, she was reading books about the wonder of the human brain and how ordinary people can transcend physical limitations.
“It's clear,” I say. This time the attendant doesn't lift the mask. I try to flail my head but feel the man's hands holding it firmly in place. The odor of drying blood crimping the skin on my face seeps under the mask and stinks.
“Don't try to move any part of your spine,” he says.
Ha! I'm unable to move any part of me. I cry out, and yet feel foolish because through all this, each time I take my attention away from the current in my head, I only want more to return to it. I take a deep breath and resign myself to knowing that something else is going on, over which I have no control, and which relentlessly seesaws me back and forth across the realm of sanity.
As I remember my conversations with Ruthie, waves of confirmation wash over me. I had not had a near-death experience. It was an out-of-body-experience and I owe the understanding of it to that woman. I owe her an apology.
“Her name—what was her last name?”
Through normal processes of the human mind, I've just been given a peek into a higher realm of consciousness. My body may be broken but my mind has metamorphosed. My spirits soar. The human mind, through the brain, is capable of such an accomplishment.
I'm being lifted out of the ambulance. The attendants and several others wearing white run with me on the gurney down a corridor. That damnable antiseptic hospital smell gags me. Noise levels rise and send me fleeing inwards. I close my eyes to shut out the glare of the lights.
“Single gunshot wound to the lumbar,” the woman medic barks to new attendants. “No exit. Laceration and hematoma above the right temple, possibly a small bleeder. Patient is delirious, combative. Pulse is thready, pupils—”
“Trauma Bay One,” someone yells.
Mentally, I check out as I remember clips of emergency room TV shows with everyone talking at once, frantically barking orders, the pokes and sticks of needles. I've seen it all and now it bores me. I want to flick the channel. I struggle to move and speak. More hands hold my head in place. These people need to know I'm okay. Someone else holds the remote as I'm backed up and plugged into things. Or they into me. I concentrate on the woman who has been my saving grace. “Ruthie,” I say.
“Sir?” one of the faces hovering above me asks. “Can you hear me? I'm Doctor Malcolm, a neurosurgeon. I'm gonna take a look at your spine.”
A nurse lifts the mask. “What's your name?” she asks. Voices seem to come from another world and stab into my sensitized brain.
My mind begins to swim. “Ruthie,” I say again. My mouth is dry, yet I feel clammy. “Karen….”
“Sir, what's your name?” she asks again.
I don't reply because I'm smiling and can't help thinking that it doesn't really matter. None of this matters. My arms are freed but moving them feels like learning how all over again. The energy that numbed my lips has also filled my limbs, glutting in my hands and fingers and rendering them sluggish.
“We're going to move you,” a face hovering over mine says. “Don't try to help.”
Me… help? I'm lifted and scooted and land on a more comfortable surface. I'm as limp and sluggish as a wet piece of paper and have about as much feeling. I need to let them know I'm okay but have as much input as I do watching one of those TV shows. It dawns on me that I am not my body and that prospect fills me, literally, with waves of joy. By the stunned looks of the attendants when I revel in momentary delight, they must think I'm nuts. Why do they keep asking me what's going on? They wouldn't understand if I knew how to explain.
“Can't sedate him till we learn what's causing his delirium,” Dr. Malcolm says. He turns to an eager looking young guy draped with a stethoscope and who looks more like a child playing doctor. “What's your take?” he asks.
Don't let that kid cut on me!
“Could be spinal shock if the cord's been insulted,” the kid says. “Could also be lack of blood flow to the brain.”
I'm not delirious. I thought I had screamed it but my mouth hadn't moved and no one took notice. I try to grab someone for attention. My arm is pinned down again.
A policeman standing nearby holds something familiar and reads. “Name is John Marks. Age, thirty-two.”
Hey, that's my wallet. As I make the connection to something of mine, the energy intensifies again and I begin to feel as good as when I had been out in the ozone. The energy stabilizes and goes into whatever you concentrate upon, Ruthie had said.
“Would you look at that?” someone says. She giggles and points to my groin area and the men chuckle.
Wondering what is so startling, I try to lift my head to see, but feel an uncomfortable pulling shoot up the length of my spine and stab into my brain. I cry out and fall back, but not before I see the meager cloth covering my pelvic area lift a little. The movement I made and the uncertainty of what was happening sent my head
reeling. That new current coursed through me again and I saw it as if I had x-ray vision into the ethereal realm that surely exists inside of me.
“He's got an erection,” someone says.
“Aha, the ol' sudden sympathetic-parasympathetic nervous system discharge,” the kid doctor says.
The new energy stimulates the brain, makes you overly horny, Ruthie had said as she laughed. I thought she had exaggerated, a con to get me to see things her way.
I lift my head and wail, “The energy is real.” But why can't I feel my own erection? Someone pulls my head down again.
“I wonder if he'll remember any of this,” a nurse says.
Why hadn't I felt my own erection, since stimulation has always been a motivating factor in my life? My anger flares. I don't want to be paralyzed. Not now, now that the mysteries of life are within reach.
I want to lash out. Karen would have stayed with me tonight. She would have. I thrash. The multiple IV lines dance like loose clotheslines in a storm. “I want out—have to find that woman.” I struggle to sit up, have so many questions. Hands restrain me.
More poking and probing as a thin needle-like piece of gleaming metal is stuck into the soles of my feet and walked up the length of both legs waiting for a response I can't produce. Poked above the hip, I yelp. My frustration flares as I realize what I direct my thoughts to intensifies in this new state.
“We need to find out why he's combative… delirious,” Dr. Malcolm says. “If there's spinal cord damage or lack of blood flow to the brain, sedation will only mask it.”
“Are you in pain?” a voice asks.
“Mr. Marks? Hey, John,” another woman says. “Calm down. We're going to roll you over. Relax. Don't try to help.”
As if watching TV again, the doctor huddles behind me and comes up with bloody, gloved fingers. That blood is mine, but why didn't I feel him stick his fingers inside my back? “Hey,” I yell through the mask. No one listens.
“Okay, get him to X-ray, stat,” the doctor says. “Then straight up to OR.”