The Color of Heaven by The Colour of Heaven (html) Read Free Book Online Page B

closer, I realized that it was not a hal ucination. It real y was my daughter, and I was no longer alone.
    o0o
    A heavy splash startled me. I looked up and saw oodles of tiny, sparkly bubbles floating around a shifting black shape. It took me a few seconds to
    grasp that it was a scuba diver with flippers and a tank.
    I darted quickly out of the way.
    With quiet fascination, I watched as the diver scooped me up into his arms and carried me to the surface.
    Megan was gone by then. She had said what she needed to say.

Chapter Twenty-one
    The ambulance ride was strange. I looked quite dead on the stretcher – my skin was ashen and my lips were blue – but no one was trying to revive
    me with CPR or anything like that. They were only trying to keep me warm.
    The female paramedic listened to my heart every minute or so with a stethoscope and kept shaking her head, but she told her partner that I wasn’t
    real y dead until I was warm and dead. She also mentioned that her own dog had been accidental y shot in the woods, trapped in snow for over an hour, but had made a ful recovery.
    I was surprised by that. I wanted to ask her more about it, but I knew she couldn’t hear me.
    The noise of the siren was startling. I wished the driver would shut it off.
    At last, we arrived at the hospital. The ambulance doors flew open. The paramedics pul ed my stretcher from the vehicle and the wheels extended
    to the pavement.
    Suddenly there was a team of nurses and doctors al around me. With great efficiency, they rushed me inside.
    o0o
    According to Wikipedia, clinical death is “the medical term for cessation of blood circulation and breathing, the two necessary criteria to sustain
    life. It occurs when the heart stops beating in a regular rhythm, a condition cal ed cardiac arrest.”
    That’s what happened to me, almost a year after Megan passed from this world. I stopped breathing when I sank to the bottom of the lake, and I
    died there.
    My circumstances, however, were outside the norm, for the reduced temperature of the water caused my blood pressure to drop, and al my
    systems slowed. Everything except for my heart and lungs continued to function, including my neurological activity – which didn’t exactly explain why I was able to sit beside the paramedics in the ambulance and witness everything they said and did.
    I wasn’t questioning that, however. At least not while it was happening. It had al felt quite normal.
    I was not in any pain, and the panic was gone. It had subsided completely after I left my body. I was no longer afraid of dying. Al I felt was an intense yearning to go back to the lake and search for Megan. I wanted to see her again, desperately so, but I just couldn’t seem to stray too far from my
    poor lifeless form on the gurney.
    o0o
    As soon as I was wheeled into the emergency department, the doctors and nurses set about bringing my body temperature back to normal, then
    they began aggressive cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I watched al of it from an elevated location in the corner of the room, just below the ceiling.
    The head emergency doctor placed the defibril ator paddles on my chest and said, “ Clear !”
    Everyone paused and watched the monitor.
    Perhaps that’s when I re-entered my body. I can’t be sure, but I do recal that I lost my breath for a moment. I zoomed through the air like a bul et.
    Here, my memory fails me. Al I can say is that I was no longer an out-of-body spectator, staring down at myself on the gurney. There was only
    darkness and silence, and I could think of nothing but what Megan had said to me at the bottom of the lake.
    “ There are things you need to do, Mommy. Questions you need to ask. You can’t be done yet. You need to forgive someone .”
    Who doesn’t, I ask you?
    Perhaps you should think about that, while you’re healthy enough to do something about it.
    Take my advice. Don’t wait until you’re dead.

    Going Home

Chapter Twenty-two
    On the day I left the