Turn me on, dead man part I

It was the happiest moment of his life. The moment of life. Screaming into existence like a beam of purest radiance.
All the joy and expectation of a life ahead, a life of possibility, of surprise, a life that knew nothing save potential flooded into being. To know nothing of jealousy or envy, disappointment or rage that was for this one true moment to be. To be!
He opened his eyes. His eyelids were lead weights and the light hurt and to know this struggle was to know existence. To know!
He glowed love, to be was to love that was the first thing he knew.
He also knew there was a lifetime of knowledge and experience behind him. He knew through some prior existence that he was in a hospital bed but not how he got there. He knew what to do next, he pushed a button and a nurse came running from down the hall.

The first face he saw, he recognized from a thousand memories or more. It was his brother. Everything was a revelation now.
“Hey buddy, how you feeling?”
He gave his brother the thumb’s up and tried to smile. His brother left the room in a jerky dash. Mike. Mike was his name. He was Adam. Everything was fresh and new. To be really alive for the first time! He looked out the window at the blue sky streaked with whiteness, he saw the tops of some grey and light brown buildings. To know that this world was his to explore!
Mike scrambled back into the room with a small ageing woman he recognized as his mother. She was quiet except for the hup, hup, hup of her sobbing. Adam was happy to see her, an old friend from a past life. He felt like he could communicate with eye blinks and tried to reassure her.
After a time, he slept.

The things outside the window fly by a bit too fast, he can’t make out what they are, then the uniforms crowd around him.
“He’s gone,” one uniform says.
No.
“Grab his legs.”
No!
He sees the world through tinted lenses, laughing all the time. He sits on the grass one minute, laughing, then he feels his legs being pulled up.
“Don’t say these things to me,” he tries to say, “I’m alive goddamnit!” No one listens.
He runs across the grass to a building surrounded by trees. Only one way out. He opens the door to the building to get to the other side. Empty white room. He opens another door.
Empty white room.
He was sitting on the grass laughing.
Another door. And another. And another.
Empty, empty, empty.
On and on opening doors, finding nothing but empty space, he gets to what must be the center of the universe or maybe the center of his mind. “My God," he says, "it’s so empty.”
Sitting on the grass in an open field, he remembers laughing. He leaves, driving away.
What was he laughing about, again?
He understands that he is not alone in the room and that it is not really empty. A presence is felt, something that has always been there even when he thought he was alone. It’s Him. Here he is in the center of his mind and it is so empty and he is not alone because he knows He is there. And there’s no fooling Him, there’s no pretense, there’s no convincing, there’s just Truth. He screams at the top of his lungs and no uniform hears him.
What was so funny?

“What do you remember about the accident,” the nurse asked. She oozed syrup from every syllable.
“Not much,” he’d been there a week and still he spoke with difficulty. “Um, The road was wet.” He strained to remember more.
“It’s okay,” she squeezed his hand and leaned in, smiling. “Car accidents are very traumatic. But you’re here. You survived!” She slapped her knee on ‘vived’ to emphasize the miraculous nature of the event.
“Um, it happened pretty quick.”
“Of course.”
“I was trapped. I could hear myself squealing like a pig. Screaming, like.”
“Ssshhh,” she patted his hand. “I was in an accident. Not as bad as yours, but I was shaken up about it for a long time.”
“They said I was missing for three days.”
“Yes. It must have been about half a year before I could ride in a car without wincing at every turn, and tensing my legs when we went the speed limit.” She stared outside, the squares of the window hid her moist pupils. She caught herself and turned back to him, smiling a big Stepford Wife smile.
“I feel fine.”
She began to say something.
“Actually,” he interrupted, “I feel great.”
He started to understand her emphasis. To be, to know he was alive. A new soul.
The hospital staff marveled at his recovery. Occasionally they’d find him shuffling and wandering down the halls, staring out the windows, studying the contents of the snack machine like a monument. They found he was a quick study. He became a master of knowing when and how to sneak off unnoticed, holding court with the other patients and visitors, entertaining the children. They wondered about his mental state.
“Many times,” the nurse began cautiously, “patients recovering from near death experiences go through a period of readjusting to reality. They view their post-accident life as ‘bonus time.’ They take uncalculated risks, their behavior becomes slightly brash and unpredictable. Does this sound familiar?” She smiled.
He nodded. Psychological examinations were much easier when he was agreeable. But not too agreeable.
“You have a new lease on life, and that’s something really special. But you need to take it easy. Slow down, take a deep breath and say ‘ah, I can relax now.’ You can’t live every moment all at once.”
He thought about that for a long time after she left.

Something began to happen as he entertained the children. He grew sensible to pain. He knew which kids were really sick and which ones would get better. He took a keen and special interest in one little girl in particular, Abbie.
Abbie was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of seven and had been at the hospital six months for treatment, he knew she was dying. But he didn’t treat her any extra special than he had Julio, the five year-old boy who had his tonsils removed the day earlier. In five minutes time, they were all old friends of his.
A few nights before he was to be released, he couldn’t sleep. Abbie had the soul of an artist and such was her pain that she made you feel it, for Adam it was agony. It was too big for her little body to contain and she sent it flowing out in waves down the halls and undulating up and over the stairs into his mind, lapping like a sea of broken glass. At the right time he left his room and trod silently down the halls where he wouldn’t be stopped and made it all the way to her room. He knew no visitors were allowed at that time of night but she was afraid and her pain called out to him. Her bald little head looked too big for her body, she was top heavy and her shallow little breaths didn’t even disturb the thin blanket that covered her. He looked in from the doorway and thought about what he’d like to say to her, rolling the words over in his mind getting them just right and sending them to her just like he would a paper boat on a lake.
Abbie’s mother returned from the down the hall with a can of coke.
“Can I help you,” she asked.
“You know,” he replied, “if you think thoughts of her, make sure they’re positive.”
Her face turned five shades of red. “Don’t you ever tell me how to help my daughter,” she said, trying not to yell. “What are you doing here, anyway? You know, I ought to call the police--”
A male nurse peeked his head from around the corner down the hall and interrupted her, “Miss, is everything okay?”
She turned back to Adam but he was gone. When she looked into Abbie‘s room she was smiling.
It was the first time he had gone to someone in the spirit of love and was met with aggression. When he returned to bed the pain was gone but he still couldn’t sleep. To be was to love and to love was to know pain, that was the second thing.