Is it murder if the subject is willing to accept demise? The psychologist stated the observation. It was about only one relation but fit with all. “Life and death stuff is pretty serious to have a relationship where one person is literally willing to kill to maintain it and the other willing to die for it….it’s one of the strongest bonds I’ve ever run into. Overcoming fight or flight. Yes this stress will kill you.” So the question remains…is it murder? All I ever asked for was a break…some time, some peace.
I never lost consciousness…if I ever had consciousness. None the less, I came to in a Bosch nightmare. The apparatus and machinery hummed and gurgled, plopped and bubbled. I awoke in a giant aquarium of sounds and dim lights. It was meta-realism…Dante had nothin’ on this.
I was surrounded by souls. I was surrounded by the living dead. I spoke to them but they answered not, they could not, in their place, my place on the cusp. White dressed creatures could be heard, properly referring to them as the hunks of meat they, we were. I spoke to one, she looked at me as if confronted by impossibility. She stammered, “uh high” and quickly turned away. Was it my vision that was blurry or was the world indeed melting?
A surgeon was called. He came in. A nurse gowned him, adjusted his mask, helped him glove. Mel’s chest was quickly and deeply cut, the ribs exposed, the lung un-moving. In minutes the bracheotomy was complete. Mel was stitched. The bloody sheets removed. The floor mopped. The respiration equipment restarted. Mel’s swollen sickly yellow brown leg and foot hung un-blanketed over the beds side by the bag nearly full of black urine. They weren’t perfect, but, who in that room would ever know?
There is nothing more amazing than being allowed to watch your own life restarting. To witness the point that allows “near death experience.” To watch you’re very own heart, slowly, very, very slowly, begin to beat again. To have seen the light and be pulled back by the giddy child like wonder of the doctors amazements…that it could possibly happen. First as an accident, what did they do? Then, oh yes, our science allowed this miracle. I was happy for them.
But I learned hope is the most terrible of all the emotions. Isn’t it hope that things really aren’t, that breaks our hearts, that kills us? The family visited the tub next to mine. In it was a father, nine months, nine months he’d been there. “Papa, open your eyes…we know you can…Papa open your eyes…don’t you want to see us?…Papa, we love you.” “Sorry, you have to go now.” ”We’ll be back tomorrow, thank you.” I still have hope.
A few weeks later, I mentioned to a nurse the strange place I had been. She said, “yea they’re really weird down there.” I said, “well, I thought the nurses were strange too.” “I was talking about the nurses”, she laughed.
“I’ve been in a lot of ICU’s but this one was different”, I said. “Yea, that one is special” she whispered, “we call it the cabbage patch. You get sent there when you’re not gonna make it.” Surprise, surprise!