The First Time I Died

by Joanne Macgregor

  “First off, we know that the fight-or-flight response to impending death causes abnormal functioning of dopamine and a huge release of noradrenaline in the locus coeruleus,” Perry said, “Which may account for the sensation of seeing one’s life flash before one’s eyes.”

  “I didn’t experience that.”

  “Depletion of blood and oxygen flow to the eye can cause tunnel vision — literally.”

  “I didn’t have that, either.”

  “How about hallucinations, disorientation and confusion?”

  “Now we’re cooking.”

  “Those are also caused by a lack of oxygen in the brain. And that euphoria you mentioned?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The stressed brain can trigger a rush of endorphins, causing a sense of bliss or peace. And damage to or misfiring in the temporoparietal junction could arguably cause the sensation of being outside your body.”

  “Right, that makes sense.”

  I capped the pen and tossed both it and the notebook aside. Perry wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t read in my research session the previous night. The neurological explanations were plausible but not conclusive, and there wasn’t definitive proof for any of it. From what I’d read, the science didn’t always line up with people’s near-death experiences. For example, many of the people who described visiting heaven (and sometimes hell — I’d been amazed to discover that nearly a quarter of NDEs were deeply unpleasant experiences), or encountering long-deceased relatives had not been suffering a lack of oxygen at the time.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m playing devil’s advocate here, so please don’t think I’ve gone over to the dark side, but what about patients revived from death who know what happened while they were supposedly dead — like what music was playing, or what was said in the room?”

  I was thinking about an apparently famous case in which the patient recalled that Hotel California had been playing while she was brain dead, a fact later verified by the surgeons working on her.

  “Those are probably cases of anesthesia awareness — those patients weren’t actually dead, merely heavily sedated but not fully unconscious. It’s not an uncommon phenomenon.”

  His explanation didn’t match what I’d read. I began picking at my foot again, trying to tease a shred of tough skin away from the sole with nails bitten down to the quick. Slipping automatically into the habit of a decade ago, I opened the drawer in my bedside table and rummaged through the remains of my teenage essentials until I found what I was looking for — my old pair of tweezers, a tube of Neosporin and a bottle of pink vitamin E oil.

  “What about when they’ve been dead, and I mean verifiably flatline, but have seen things in the room that they couldn’t have seen from their position on the bed?” I asked Perry. “I think it’s called nonphysical veridical perception.”

  “Ah, you’ve been doing some research?”

  “I have,” I admitted. “There’s this case where a woman who died in a hospital resuscitation room claimed she floated outside her body and saw a tennis shoe on a third-floor window ledge. Afterward, they found the shoe exactly where she said it was.”

  Tucking the phone between my ear and shoulder, I bent over my foot, gripped an edge of skin with the tweezers, and pulled steadily down. Peeled off a thin strip. Sighed with relief.

  “I’m not familiar with that specific case,” Perry was saying, “but you’ll probably find there were some errors or inconsistencies in it. These are, after all, the subjective reports of people who want to believe, rather than double-blind objective scientific studies. We can’t vest too much significance or validity in their so-called ‘findings.’”

  I tore a page out of the notebook and dropped the shred of skin onto it then began feeling for the next uneven edge of skin, while Perry continued, “I do seem to remember there was a huge and scientifically rigorous study recently where they placed pictures of symbols on specially installed shelves up near the ceilings of operating and emergency rooms, so that supposed NDE experiencers could float up and take a look. And not a single subject reported seeing them.”

  Cognitive bias — remembering only what agreed with your worldview or what you wanted to believe — didn’t just govern oddballs like my mother. Professor Perry, ultra-rational scientist that he was, apparently also had selective memory. Because I’d read up on that very study the night before and discovered that there had been some serious methodological problems, including that the sample size had been so small that any findings were statistically insignificant.

  Although the experiment ran for over four years and across fifteen hospitals, and included over two thousand cardiac arrest victims, only three hundred and thirty of those patients survived. Of those, a mere nine individuals claimed to have experienced an NDE, and just two of those described having an out-of-body experience. One was too ill and exhausted to participate in the study, which left a total sample of one single subject. And, as luck would have it, that particular patient had not been treated in one of the hospital rooms with the ceiling-height picture installed, so the whole point of the experiment was never tested. Even so, the patient’s account of what had transpired in the three minutes while both his heart and brain were in total flatline matched what was verified to have happened in the room at the time.

  Also, having been through the experience myself, I’d put good money on the probability that the experiencers were concerned with other things during the time of their NDE, not floating about the top of the room checking out pictures on shelves. Certainly, I hadn’t been paying attention to fish or patterns on the surface of the pond ice at the time I’d been dying.

  But I didn’t tell Perry any of this — I wasn’t on a mission to convert him to the reality of NDEs. On the contrary, I wanted him to convince me that they were merely the glitches of a dying brain.

  I picked up the tweezers again.

  24

  NOW

  Wednesday December 20, 2017

  I peeled another strip of skin off the sole of my foot and then forced myself to return the tweezers to the drawer. It would be all too easy to drop back into the deep end of my old habits.

  “What really bothers me,” I told Perry, “is the uncertainty of it all. Explanations are plausible, but not proven. Connections between brain activity and NDE features are probable, likely, possible, but not definite.”

  “Garnet, if you become a therapist, you’re going to have to get a whole lot more comfortable with ambivalence and uncertainty,” Perry said.

  “So, we don’t know anything for sure?” I challenged. It was infuriating.

  “The fact is, we simply don’t have enough accurate NDE data to establish definite correlation, let alone causation. And in the absence of proven scientific explanations, phenomena such as pseudoscience, religion and mysticism rush in to fill the information breach.”

  “You’re telling me. You wouldn’t believe some of the bizarre stuff people believe.”

  It seemed to me that near-death survivors were so convinced of the mind-blowing reality of their personal experiences that few felt the need for reductionist scientific explanations. Meanwhile, most scientists regarded the whole field of NDEs as nonsense. They ridiculed any attempts at explanation and denied it was a suitable field for serious enquiry. So, each camp went about believing what they chose, with very few attempting to bridge the gap between faith and evidence.

  “But that’s always been the path of scientific progress,” Perry said. “First there’s a mystery, then cultures generate a mystical explanation to account for it, and then science hypothesizes a different truth and eventually proves it, whereupon that becomes the new, commonly held view.”

  One commonly held view was that one shouldn’t use expired medicines, and the tube of Neosporin had kicked the bucket back in 2010. But how bad could antiseptic ointment truly go? Deciding to risk it, I rubbed a little of the cream into the raw strips on the sole of my foot.

  “Fortunately,” Perry con
tinued, “science is always curious and always advancing. In rat studies, for example, they’ve identified a sudden spike in brain activity just prior to flatlining, which might explain the vivid sensations and images these people report experiencing. It’s arguably—”

  Might. Arguably. Again with the inexact, tentative language.

  “—just a hyperactive spasm of the brain resulting in sensations which feel hyper-vivid. And then survivors create some order from the chaos of their experience by assigning it meaning. Plus, there’s a mass delusion effect because we’ve all seen movies and TV shows where people die and ‘go into the light,’” he said, in a mocking tone. “So, we’re primed to experience what you called ‘the whole nine yards.’ We may even collude in adding the visuals because we’ve been exposed to them in the media.”

  I didn’t tell him that NDEs weren’t a modern cultural construct. There were records of what sounded a lot like what I’d experienced dating back to medieval times, or even further back — some of those biblical visions matched modern descriptions of NDEs.

  I crumpled the paper holding the skin filaments into a tight ball and lobbed it across my room into my trashcan. Then I opened the bottle of vitamin E oil and sniffed the familiar rose-scented aroma. I squeezed a small puddle into the palm of one hand and massaged it into the sole of my foot. First you scratch it, then you peel it, then you fix it.

  “Besides,” Perry continued, “people want to believe in something more, that they have a spirit, that there’s a life beyond death, and that the process of popping their clogs will be somehow mystical and transcendent. When they’re brought back to life they need to believe there’s a possibility for redemption, for a second chance at living according to a better set of priorities.”

  I had to admit there was something to that. Since the drowning, I’d felt restless, irritated at many of the trivialities of daily living. Perhaps some of my desire to find out what happened to Colby, for myself and for Cassie, was an attempt to give my survival meaning. It was a shock to discover that, despite what I’d always believed about myself, deep down I also apparently thought I was more than just meat.

  “Have you had any other unusual experiences that can’t be explained by what we’ve discussed?” Perry asked.

  I wanted to believe the logical explanations he’d given me, so I made no mention of my hair standing on end, cold breezes in sealed rooms, malfunctioning electrics, words and colors blooming in my mind, the strangeness of a clearly terrified old dog growling at me, or the metaphysical meaning of a piece of quartz. I could chalk them up to coincidence, an overactive imagination, and the degenerative effects of age on a dog’s brain and senses. And I’d always known my mother’s theories on stones — on most things — were complete and utter bullshit.

  So, I merely said, “No.”

  A glint of light off a shiny object in the box of Colby’s belongings caught my eye. It was a medal from the only time he’d ever placed first in a swim meet. As I picked it up, a succession of images ghosted through my mind: diving off a board into a pool, cold water, burning muscles, touching the far wall with both hands, a flood of joy, looking down at the medal lying on the pecs of my chest. My wet, hairy, male chest.

  I dropped the medal as though it burned.

  “It’s happening again, right now!” I babbled into the phone. “I just picked up a medal Colby won for swimming, and I relived the whole race. What’s happening to me? My mother” — I blew out a frustrated breath — “I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but my mother, who’s a certified kook, says that I’ve become psychic, and I’m picking up on Colby’s vibes or something.”

  “I see. And do you agree with her?”

  “Of course not! But how can I know things I never experienced, or saw, or read about? Your neurological theories may account for what happened in my near-death experience, but they don’t explain what’s happened since.”

  He paused for a moment, as if collecting his thoughts. When he spoke, it was in calm, measured tones. “Memory is a funny old thing — notoriously inaccurate and unreliable. It can be bloody hard to tell the difference between what you yourself have truly experienced, and what you’ve seen in old photos or videos, or even what you’ve been told, imagined or dreamed. The mind often mixes these up, mistakes one for another. Are you sure these ‘memories’ are real? Have you checked their accuracy with others?”

  “No.”

  “Is it possible that some of them may be things you’ve previously been told, and your subconscious has added elaborating pictures or a soundtrack, to the basic facts?”

  “I guess.”

  “For example, were you at that swim meet where Colby won the medal?”

  “No, I missed it.”

  My mother, I recalled, had insisted I help her out in her shop that day. I’d been furious with her for making me sell joss sticks when I could’ve been supporting Colby.

  “But you knew he’d swum and won his race?” Perry said. “And you must’ve had a good idea of what swim meets looked like in general? Maybe you’d attended some previously or seen him swim on other occasions?”

  “Yeah, that’s all true.”

  “From there, it’s a short jump to imagining what it must have been like that day. If you imagine it with enough sensory detail, you can fool the brain into thinking it was real. You’ve heard me say it many times: at its deepest levels, the brain cannot tell the difference between what’s real and—”

  “—what’s sufficiently vividly imagined,” I completed the phrase for him.

  I knew this. I’d studied it. The phenomenon accounted for why hypnosis worked, and why it felt so real; for why we screamed at the movies when the killer raised his chainsaw, even though we knew full well, in our conscious minds, that it was all make-believe. It was how we terrorized ourselves into panic attacks by imagining the humiliation of a failed examination or a flubbed speech.

  “So that’s what this is? I’m just imagining things, not actually hallucinating?” I asked, feeling relieved.

  “I think it’s the most likely explanation. Perhaps being back in your home town is bringing it all up for you. Do you think you dealt with your grief thoroughly at the time of your boyfriend’s death?”

  “Probably not.”

  Definitely not. I’d shoved it all down into a box of my own labeled “do not open”, locked and buried it deep in the mausoleum of me, and never returned home or exhumed the memories again.

  “What might have shaken your memory tree?” Perry asked.

  “My near drowning, I guess. And probably also visiting Colby’s family. They’re not doing well.”

  “How did seeing them again make you feel?”

  “Sad. Angry.” I popped the cap of the fountain pen and began doodling on the back of my hand. “Guilty.”

  That surprised me. I hadn’t realized I’d been feeling guilty.

  “What do you feel guilty about?”

  I mulled it over for a few moments. “That I’m alive and he’s not. That my family’s okay and theirs isn’t — my mother has a broken ankle, but Colby’s sister is dying of cancer.”

  “Survivor guilt — it’s the pits. Any unfinished business from way back then that may be making you feel guilty in the present?”

  “We’d had something important we needed to discuss, Colby and me. I’d asked him to come over so we could talk. That’s why he wasn’t at home safe with his family. He was out alone, on his way to me. That’s why he got killed.”

  “You have to know that it wasn’t your fault, Garnet.”

  Did I?

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I suspect these symptoms may be your psyche’s way of punishing yourself. Your subconscious is creating graphic images of Colby’s death, and of the life he no longer has, to remind you of the guilt you feel you deserve.”

  That made sense. “So, you reckon I don’t need to go back to the hospital to get myself checked out?”

  “You say the scans were clea
r? There were no bleeds or other pathological findings?”

  “They said it was all normal.”

  “Give it a couple of weeks to settle down,” Perry advised. “Take it easy, get lots of sleep and rest. That’s on the physical side. And on the psychological side …”

  I stopped doodling and pricked my ears. “Yeah?”

  “Forgive yourself. Do whatever it takes to deal with your guilt and appease that part of you that’s accusing and possibly punishing you.”

  “Okay. So, what do I need to do?”

  He chuckled. I should have known better than to ask a shrink for specific answers.

  “Only you can know the answer to that, Garnet. Perhaps you already do.”

  I thanked him and ended the call. Then, feeling like a fool, I closed my eyes and made a deal with myself. Listen up, I silently told the supposedly punitive part of me, I’m going to investigate Colby’s death properly. I’m going to find out exactly what happened, and who did it. And then my debt will be paid. I’ll have done what I can for you, and you’ll need to let me go, okay?

  It didn’t escape my notice that while I’d started off speaking to myself, it now felt like I was talking directly to Colby.

  I replaced the cap on the pen and read the three words I’d scribbled on the back of my hand.

  Always

  Forever

  GUILT

  25

  THEN

  Friday, December 14, 2007

  “Still nothing?” Jessica asked.

  “Still nothing. It’s freaking me out,” I whispered back furiously.

  “Good morning, future scientists!” Mr. Wallace greeted the AP chemistry class in his usual way. “Please get out your notes for your research projects; I want to do a progress check with each of you.”

  Jess, sitting on a high stool on my right, plonked a binder on the lab table and sighed. The stool to my left was still empty; Colby was late.

  Like me.

  While Mr. Wallace droned on about control samples and accurate measurements, I picked at the scab on the back of my hand — a result of my hurried flight out of the house this morning. I’d been desperate to escape my mother and the stupid prediction her tarot card reading supposedly prophesied for my life, and in my rush, I’d scratched my hand on the holly bush growing beside the front door.