Chapter 40
I was pure thought. The concept of ‘me’, ‘I’ was meaningless. I drifted, cut loose from my moorings. I knew I had a name, but ‘name’ was a word I found useless. I floated in a void so empty that I wasn’t even aware that I or the void existed. Gradually, a light appeared. A diffuse glow that I followed to its source. I could hear nothing, see nothing but dark and light. When the light overpowered the darkness, a vibration disturbed the light, so that it pulsed in time with the vibes.
I identified it as a heartbeat and immediately words began to have meaning. Light became images. I opened eyes I didn’t know I had and looked down at a body laid out on an exam table, hooked up to machines that breathed, recorded the heartbeat, pressure and respirations, a body that was on was life-support. The readings from the EEG machine were flat line, the other graphs slowly declining.
Me. It was me I recognized on the table. Stretched out, both arms flat with IVs, poor shrunken legs covered with a sheet and thin blanket.
I looked down at myself, saw the room was crowded with people still wearing fancy suits and dresses. Thanksgiving decorations were on the walls and windows. I could not hear their words, only see their faces and tried to touch them as my feet floated to the floor.
Felice, her face a hollow cheeked mask of fear, her parents around her. My father looked like he’d had a heart attack. The Secret Service men who were like family expressed that same fear. I would’ve thought it was anger.
I saw the monitors go flat and medical personnel fly into the room, pushing my family aside as they brought the crash cart to my bed. Zapped me, worked on me for thirty minutes before they gave up and walked resolutely out to break the bad news.
Drew the sheet up and brought my family in one by one to kiss me goodbye. I watched it all curiously, it’s hard to be concerned with your own death when you’re still alive in your mind.
They left me there until the last person said goodbye, and when they were all gone, two orderlies came in, checked my wrist band, covered my face as they slid me onto a gurney and took me down the hallway to the morgue. Curious, I followed them, passing through the doors without needing to open them until we descended to the basement where the morgue lay hidden. I saw no other newly dead spirits. In truth, I didn’t feel like a spirit but more as if I were dreaming. They left my body outside in the hallway in a line of other gurneys and other bodies as one of them went to open the doors to the outside ambulance bay.
I touched myself. Felt my cool skin, but felt no connection to this form other than that I knew it was mine.
As the doors slid overhead, I saw an ambulance back up and from behind that a black SUV with blackened windows. Three men exited, climbed the dock with stretchers and walked down a short hallway towards the two orderlies. I watched as the strangers pulled silenced weapons, and shot the orderlies in cold blood, point-blank, picked them up and threw them into the SUV. Next, they examined and rejected everybody, but mine.
One man removed his hood and I saw his red skinned face. He closed his eyes, his body went very still, and I could hear, feel and see again.
“Hello, little kachina,” he whispered. “Keith, Turtle. This will be violent. As soon as I release him, hit him with the adrenaline.” He let me go and I felt the snapping, rushing sensation as my mind was sucked back inside my body at the same time as a huge needle punctured my flaccid heart. It felt like I’d been zapped by the mother of all lightning bolts. My heart galloped like a mad horse with its tail on fire. I gasped in air and my face turned beet red. The Indian put an oxygen mask on me, his fingers on my pulse.
“Heart’s over two hundred. Hit him with that vasodilator.” Another needle into my elbow vein. “Welcome back, Danny. We’ve learned a few things about you since the Colonel had you. Now, since you are officially dead, no one will miss you. Whoops, the morgue attendants sent your body to the crematorium by mistake. When you wake up, I’ll explain how I trapped your mind out of your body.” He gave me a third shot, and before he even pulled the needle out, I was asleep.