1.When I died
ELLE
I died on a Wednesday morning.
Mom and I were walking down a park when, without warning, I got hit by an unknown force and blacked out.
The moment I regained consciousness; I was hovering above my own body which was getting carted away on a wheeled stretcher.
I stared at myself, rattled by the reality of being split into two. The conscious me had taken a new form. I suddenly had no edges and felt completely weightless.
A team of worn-out doctors pulled my body forward to the surgery room. My left leg on the stretcher was bleeding and someone from the team held a white gauze firmly over the injury to add pressure. But over here where I was standing, I felt no pain on my leg.
Actually, I felt nothing.
I was trying to make sense of what was going on.
"Her heart has stopped," yelled one of the doctors. "Bring the defibrillator!"
My mom was there the whole time. I watched her follow them behind, crying after the advancing healthcare team.
“Please bring my baby back! Elle, come back!" she pleaded, her screams filling my ears and breaking my heart.
To comfort mum, I approached and tried taking her hand, to make her see I was right here. But my palms only swam across her frame. I couldn't hold, I couldn't touch. I panicked.
"Ma'am, we'll take care of her, kindly go to the waiting room. Allow us the space to do our work properly," a nurse said impatiently. Mum pressed a kiss on my body's forehead and threw me a last pained glance, before leaving with one of the younger nurses.
"Please, mom stay!" my plea was unheard, since it didn't come from my body's mouth, but from the transcendent form that I had now.
Without wasting time, the chief surgeon pressed the machine on my chest many times willing me with the look in his eyes to get a pulse, as jolts of electricity coarsed through my other body, making it jerk, relax and jerk all over again. But it was dumbfounding that I couldn't feel a thing here.
I looked at my pale face, at the beads of blood dripping from my ginger-haired scalp down to my forehead; small bruises extending over my temple to my left cheek, no colour at all in my parted dry lips. I didn't know that I could look even more pale than my usual fair complexion. I guess I was wrong.
I looked pretty much dead.
I tried to move, to get back to my body. But somehow, I was split in two, my body and my soul? Weren't together anymore. Was I really dead?
Now I was only some shadow of consciousness hovering over my semi-dead self.
Please, bring me back!!! I'm too young, I'm only. I can't die now! I begged the doctor. But no voice left my limp, numb body on the bed. Does it mean I am a ghost now?
"Her heart is beating again!" the same doctor said.
I felt a calm sense of relief was over me and my nerves relaxed. But why didn't I go back to my body then? I was still watching the whole scene playing from above, filled with desperation and impotence. Quickly, the surgeon began a brain surgery.
Seeing your own brain being operated is not pretty and I don't want to talk about it. I guess not even after death or whatever state I find myself in, I could escape such a trauma. The worst part being, I don't even know what event made me end up here on this cold operation table. I had no recollection of any accident. I just knew that my head was greatly injured and that now I'm a levitating bodyless version of myself.
The heart-wrenching sound of my mom's voice reached my hearing and I watch as she tried containing her the pain in her heart as she rocked herself back and forth, rocking herself inadvertently on the reception seat in the hallway. Anyway, I feel so bad for her, I can't even imagine the hell she's going through right now. I'm pretty much sure she'll be throwing glances to the door that led to the surgical theatre, hoping, praying with all the will left in her to get her daughter back.
My name is Elle, I'm nineteenth years old, and this the story of how I found love after death.
