dead, and now I have a terrible thought, one that spikes fright a degree closer to panic: What if they put me down the wrong way and my tongue slides backward and blocks my windpipe? I won’t be able to breathe! That’s what people mean when they
say someone swallowed his tongue, isn’t it?
Second voice (Rusty): “You’ll like this one, Doc, he looks like Michael Bolton.”
Female doc: “Who’s that?”
Third voice-sounds like a young man, not much more than a teenager: “He’s this white lounge singer who wants to be black. I don’t think this is him.”
There’s laughter at that, the female voice joining in (a little doubtfully), and as I am set down on what feels like a padded table, Rusty starts some new crack-he’s got a whole standup routine, it seems. I lose this bit of hilarity in a burst of sudden horror. I won’t be able to breathe if my tongue blocks my windpipe, that’s the thought that has just gone through my mind, but what if I’m not breathing now?
What if I’m dead? What if this is what death is like?
It fits. It fits everything with a horrid prophylactic snugness. The dark. The rubbery smell. Nowadays I am Howard the
Conqueror, stock broker extraordinaire, terror of Derry Municipal Country Club, frequent habitueòf what is known at golf
courses all over the world as the Nineteenth Hole, but in ’71 I was part of a medical assistance team in the Mekong Delta, a scared kid who sometimes woke up wet-eyed from dreams of the family dog, and all at once I know this feel, this smell.
Dear God, I’m in a body bag.
First voice: “Want to sign this, Doc? Remember to bear down hard-it’s three copies.”
Sound of a pen, scraping away on paper. I imagine the owner of the first voice holding out a clipboard to the woman doctor.
Oh dear Jesus let me not be dead! I try to scream, and nothing comes out.
I’m breathing, though … aren’t I? I mean, I can’t feel myself doing it, but my lungs seem okay, they’re not throbbing or yelling for air the way they do when you’ve swum too far underwater, so I must be okay, right?
Except if you’re dead, the deep voice murmurs, they wouldn’t be crying out for air, would they? No-because dead lungs don’t
need to breathe. Dead lungs can just kind of… take it easy.
Rusty: “What are you doing next Saturday night, Doc?”
But if I’m dead, how can I feel? How can I smell the bag I’m in? How can I hear these voices, the Doc now saying that next
Saturday night she’s going to be shampooing her dog, which is named Rusty, what a coincidence, and all of them laughing? If
I’m dead, why aren’t I either gone or in the white light they’re always -talking about on Oprah?
There’s a harsh ripping sound and all at once I am in white light; it is blinding, like the sun breaking through a scrim of clouds on a winter day. I try to squint my eyes shut against it, but nothing happens. My eyelids are like blinds on broken rollers.
A face bends over me, blocking off part of the glare, which comes not from some dazzling astral plane but from a bank of
overhead fluorescents. The face belongs to a young, conventionally handsome man of about twenty-five; he looks like one of
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those beach beefcakes on Baywatch or Melrose Place. Marginally smarter, though. He’s got a lot of black hair under a
carelessly worn surgical greens cap. He’s wearing the tunic, too. His eyes are cobalt blue, the sort of eyes girls reputedly die for. There are dusty arcs of freckles high up on his cheekbones.
“Hey, gosh,” he says. It’s the third voice. “This guy does look like Michael Bolton! A little long in the old tootharoo, maybe .
. .” He leans closer. One of the flat tie-ribbons at the neck of his green tunic tickles against my forehead. “But yeah. I see it.
Hey, Michael, sing something.”
Help me! is what I’m trying to sing, but I can only look up into his dark blue eyes with my frozen dead man’s stare; I can only wonder if I am a dead man, if this is how it happens, if this is what everyone goes through after the pump quits. If I’m still alive, how come he hasn’t seen my pupils contract when the light hit them? But I know the answer to that … or I think I do.