Author : Gray Blix

Patient 7 lapsed into v-fib, triggering his brain implant and the one in Dr. Gottfried, miles away, who dropped his tuna salad sandwich and slumped in his office chair.
“What’s happening to me?” thought the patient,” as he looked down on the Code Blue Team working feverishly below.
“Ventricular fibrillation. Your heart’s not pumping,” thought Dr. G., right there with him floating over the scene.
“Why am I flying? Am I dead?”
“Yes.” The doctor was distracted by the paper card his assistant, Shaylene, had taped to an IV pole. “You’re clinically dead.”
‘I LOVE U,’ the card read.
“You love me?” thought the patient.
“No, she loves…”
A tunnel appeared, bright light emanating from within.
“Clear,” said someone below.
BAM! A thousand volts from the defibrillator melted the patient’s implant.
“Are you OK?” asked Shaylene.
Sitting up, “Did you mean what you wrote?”
Flicking tuna salad from his lab coat, “But that could only be read from above…”
“Did you mean it?”
“With all my heart.”
That very afternoon, they were engaged.
“Congratulations,” said a member of the review board. “But about that patient? They stabilized his heart, only to discover he was brain dead from your implant.”
“Regrettable…”
“You’re supposed to be investigating your patients’ near death experiences, not euthanizing them. Four fatalities. Three brain deaths. Your experiment is a FAILURE!”
“My experiment is a SUCCESS. I floated with them. I saw the tunnel.”
“So you say. Regrettably, Dr. Gottfried, we must…”
He didn’t hear the end of that sentence, because Patient 8 was thinking, “OHMYGODI’MDEAD,” as the two floated above the Code Blue Team.
“Don’t panic. They might still bring you back.”
BAM! The defibrillator discharged into the flailing heart.
“I’m a goner.”
“Your brain is still functioning and,” proudly, “so is the new implant.”
But as he thought that, the monitor displayed a flat line.
A tunnel appeared, bright light emanating from within.
“I’ve proven they are true,” thought the doctor, “those NDEs related by patients who came back…”
“I’m coming back?”
BAM! Another shock.
“Am I gonna make it, doc?”
Glancing again at the flat line on the monitor, “No. You’re past that. You’re a…”
“Calling time of death at 10:41,” said someone below.
“goner.”
They watched the team disperse and found themselves drawn toward the tunnel, as if by magnetism.
“What’s happening, doc?”
“I have no idea. This isn’t medicine. This is… supernatural.”
“I’m passing over, aren’t I?”
Confused, “Maybe… or maybe your dying brain is comforting you with one final dream.”
“He’s right,” came a thought from the tunnel.
“Who’s right?”
“HE is.”
“Which one of us? Me or him?”
“HIM.”
“He’s passing over?”
“Right.”
“To what? The afterlife? Heaven?”
“To a different state.”
“Wait, what are you? The Grim Reaper? An angel? An angel who speaks English?”
“I’m not ‘speaking English.’ He’s translating my thoughts into your language. And I’m not an angel. I’m… what you call energy. Dark energy.”
Not surprised that he wasn’t surprised, “So, this IS science, after all.”
“Science?” thought Patient 8.
“I’m no physicist, but I know they suspect the universe is full of dark energy and that it’s pulling everything apart, causing things to expand. They don’t know the source of that energy…”
Patient 8 was sucked into the tunnel, disappearing in the light.
“What happened to him?”
The light pulsated.
“I changed him.”
“From matter to energy?”
“From one form of energy, what you call a ‘soul,’ to another. He had no choice, but you, you can willingly join a universe of…”
“NO!”
He awakened to learn that he was no longer ‘Doctor’ Gottfried or Shaylene’s fiance.