In 1971 I was a passenger in an automobile accident at midnight while making a left turn at a huge intersection. My friend and I were following other cars in front of us, all going out to the county to visit a friend who could not attend the bbq party we had just left. All the cars made the left turn, and soon we came up the intersection to turn. Something was not right as we began to enter the intersection.I saw before us, a set of headlight coming down from the air, as if it was a plane coming down. Months later I realized I was seeing a car coming up and over a hill crest, and down into the intersection. It was hidden until it reached that crest. I tried to speak to the driver of the car I was in, to warn him, but my voice would not say anything. Everytime I looked at the car headlights coming toward us, they were getting bigger and bigger, and then they were at my side window, right before my eyes. I new we had made the left turn.I can’t tell you how fearful that was, seeing the headlights next to my face at my window.
Now it was silent. I became aware that I could hear nothing. I became so surprised that I was not feeling any pain. It defied my mind. Within a few minutes I was up in the dark about 15 feet or less, from the front window of the car. I was looking down. I saw a girl in the front seat. She was lying with the left side of her face, and her left ear, on the seat of the car, all curled up, but her body was under the steering wheel.
I realized she was wearing the same clothes I was wearing and I thought this was most unusual, my hovering over the front windshield, seeing a “twin”. Then I saw her face. It was me. I also felt no pain yet.
Then I felt myself being sucked slowly downward to the windshield. I thought I was going to slam into it and tried to shield my face with my arm. The next thing I knew I was hearing some voices near my right ear. I realized that was strange but I then remembered I saw myself lying on my left side. I became aware the left side of my face was on this cool-like cushion. At that moment, I felt someone hold my hand and call my name. He identified himself as my friend, the one in the car before us that already went through the intersection. I faded away again.
I never remembered anything until I heard a voice tell me I was in an ambulance and he asked me what hospital I wanted to go to. I remembered my mom lived on the other side of town. So I told him where I wanted to go. I also heard him swear, and then said, “Hit it”. I fell back unconscious. I saw myself again hovering over my body in the ambulance and was surprised to feel the ceiling of the ambulance at the back of my head and touching my shoulders.
Suddenly I felt a bump and knew we had gone over the railroad tracks by my mom’s house, and I knew where I was. I heard the siren screaming. Then I was aware I was back on the cot, and I said I could not breathe. I felt the oxygen coming to face and drifted out again.
The next thing I knew I was alone in a room that looked like a “kitchen”. There were counters all around and cupboards. I turned to my right and saw a resident doctor. I recognized the back of his head. A week before a girlfriend had called me up and said the older brother of one of our classmates was not a resident at that hospital. I called his name. He suddenly jerked around and looked at me with a frightened stare. I said his name, and to please help me. He was shocked.
Now I was hovering over my body again, but this time it was in an operating room, and I was up at the ceiling again, looking down. There I was, the body on the table. And all these nurses and doctors were around me, I saw their backs of their heads. The nurses were still wearing white and some at their white hats on. One girl to the left of my body had short dark hair.
I felt a sudden jerk again, and it was like I began to be lowered one foot at a time closer to my body. I thought this “body” and I would crash together and hit our heads, so I began to call out and brace myself. I began to hear a man’s voice calling my name and telling me to breathe, take a deep breath. Do not stop. Breathe. I became aware I was on my back and my attention came to my lungs. I was wondering why he was saying that to me. I was also aware I was not breathing, and was not even desiring to. I did not feel like I was suffocating. I was peaceful. I wanted to sleep, but the Dr. kept asking me to breathe.
I got upset at him and did not want to do it, but just to get him to leave me alone, I took a breath, thinking he would stop talking to me. The first breath I took, I forced it. Then I did not go again. The Dr. kept telling me to keep going. Don’t stop. I could not tell him to not talk to me. So I took one other, then I said I was going to not do it anymore. But instead I began breathing on my own. I suddenly opened my eyes. I was immediately facing the nurse with the dark hair, to my left and thought that odd.
Then she gasped and put her hands to her face. She said, “we did it. We did it. She’s breathing”. I followed each person from her, toward my feet and up again to my right side, to the Dr’s face. They were all the way I saw them from the ceiling.
From that point, I went in and out and only remember screaming when they lifted me to a bed. I lost 14 units of blood. Nothing inside me was where it was supposed to be and I was bleeding internally faster than they could get the blood in me.
Later I found out from my mom that she and dad were told I had died. Then came back. Then died. And came back. I was not ever to walk again. But God had other plans. He made me look at the bathroom door beside my bed. I hate the bed pan. I desired more than anything that I would rise up and become independent and make it to that bathroom door. And in 3 months, I did.
J.A
© 2007 – 2009, Lekatt. All rights reserved.
