Once Upon A Second Chance

I remember dying vividly.

It was 1977 and I was a nineteen year old who thought I had figured it out and had nothing new to learn. There was nothing to look forward to and nothing to look back on.

Living and breathing, my heart was pumping steady pulses of blood throughout my body but I was in purgatory. A state of only existence and nothing more.

-

It was dark, I can’t recall the exact time.

My escape for the night was alcohol and I was over achieving. Drunk, high already on few other things I’d ingested from people I barely knew. Lying on a couch surrounded by other men and women in the same state. Broken, self medicated and feigning a semblance of happiness.

Tom Pettys voice floated through the air in all directions.

I start laughing, delirious, singing along,

“She was, an American girl.”

One of the men next to me, shaggy hair covering so much of his face I thought he might be asleep, sat up with zero hesitation singing along. I hear the chiming sound of his dog tags as he repositions himself to watch me.

The song ended and someone far off changed the tape.

Music purred back to life swirling through all of our senses,

He starts, “Carry on my wayward son, there’ll be peace when you are done.”

As I return, “Lay your weary head to rest.”

“DONT YOU CRY NO MOREEEE.” We shout in unison.

Sometime during our antics we stood up, swaying back and forth in no talented fashion but moving with the music nonetheless. Before I could grapple with how I came to be full fledged dancing in the first place he pulls me in for a kiss.

It's worth noting that at that point in my life kissing meant nothing more than shaking hands. A way to greet someone and leave a lasting memory. He takes my hand to spin me into a drunken twirl before he pulls me back in close enough to hear his whisper and smell the smoke on his breath,

“Let me show you how to reach the stars.”

I give a slight nod as an answer and we start to walk.

-

He leads me through the house. As we stumble over the labyrinth of passed out and entangled bodies, We make our way past the room with the beaded door where everyone is huddled together passing around joints, sharing war stories. I notice the one person in the corner sitting alone and watching everything unfold.

Getting to the back of the house felt like a marathon and not a sprint when in reality it was maybe 30 feet. We reach a room with an old wood door that looked like someone had once taken their frustration out on it. As we open the door to find a single bed with yellowed-from-age sheets that didn’t quite fit so they were lifted up at the corner. Darker, more tattered sheets served as curtains on the window and a large, cracked mirror sat in the corner, propped against a wall.

I assumed we were here for sex because if kissing was shaking hands then sex was hugging someone goodbye. Another escape, if only for a moment.

However, the man I now knew as James sat down on the bed and pulled out an old tin box. He opened it smiling at me, reaching in and pulling out a tourniquet of sorts.

Something in my brain clicked.

Heroin.

I’d never tried it before but I’d heard so much about how it was deeper and harder than any high you could achieve normally. The ultimate escape. I’d also heard stories of it consuming people. It’s funny that if the grim tales aren’t happening directly to you, it makes them less real. Makes them easier to ignore.

-

I found myself thinking about home.

Mom had been gone a long time and my stepfather had drunk himself into a stupor ever since.

I thought about how hard I had to work at the diner to pay his bills. I thought about caring for the house and then coming home to it destroyed, broken glass, vomit, the smell of alcohol slapping me in the face the second I put my key in the lock.

I thought about the fact that he hadn’t acknowledged my existence in at least a year.

-

“Are you here? Come sit!”

I snapped out of it to see him full grin laughing at me, he couldn't have known where I just was so I laughed with him, shrugged and sat down.

What did I have to lose?

I watched as he wrapped the tourniquet around my arm.

Took a deep breath as he raised the ready needle to the spot where my vein was bulging from my skin, trying to escape the pressure. I remember trying to figure out how he got the needle ready so fast in the first place as he shoved it into my arm.

It stung as it went in, dull, like it had been used many times before. James slowly presses the plunger down and it feels...immediate.

I let my body fall back onto the bed while everything goes black, the beginning notes of a Blue Oyster Cult song vibrating somewhere in the distance.

-

Two minutes, 120 seconds, from injection until my heart stopped.

Seven minutes, 560 seconds, for one of the party goers, a former army medic, to get my heart beating again.

Five minutes, 300 seconds, to get to the hospital where they threw me out of the backseat at the emergency entrance before speeding off, afraid of the repercussions.

For one week roughly 579,600 seconds, I was placed in the intensive care unit as a machine kept me alive.

-

Behind my eyes I never left.

I got up from the bed where James was leaning against the wall beside me, eyes closed. I left the dark room, back through past the beaded door, out to the field behind the house that I was dancing in an hour ago.

It was light now, somehow,

And deserted.

Everyone must’ve gone home.

There was a single bench in front of me, next to the tree I was watching the stars under as I took my first drink of the night

I think I find the last straggler from the party sitting on it, unmoving, pain etched on her face. Her hair was shiny, pinned up, the darkest shade of mahogany. Her pressed lips were painted pink which went perfectly with her unblemished, porcelain skin. She couldn’t have been much older than I was but she definitely didn't belong in a place like this with people like me.

Without speaking she gestured for me to sit next to her, softly patting the bench. I was too confused and exhausted to protest, so I obliged.

We both sat in silence for what seemed like hours, neither one of us willing to speak first.

“Why are you here Annie?”

Her soft voice startles me and my eyes shoot up.

She was looking across the field, thinking of something far away from here. Completely oblivious to the aboslutely bewildered expression I was toting. Without thinking I put up every defense I have.

Scoffing I say,

“How do you know my name? Do I know you?”

Nothing.

“Who are you? Do you need something from me? Did my boss send you? Tell that asshole if I'm late today its because I'm sick, raging flu. I'll be there.”

Nothing.

I finally laugh,

“Okay, I’m far too hungover for this shit.”

Standing up I have every intention of going back inside, finding an empty bed and losing myself to the sweet peace of sleep.

The woman speaks, much louder this time,

“You’re dead Annie.”

-

I stop as if an invisible barrier is in front of me. I didn’t want to acknowledge her obvious descent into madness but I felt compelled.

“Excuse me?”

She finally raises her eyes to meet mine,

“And I know your name,”

She sighs standing and closing the distance between us,

“Because I gave it to you.”

Finishing the sentence with a sad smile.

-

A wave washed over me knocking the breath out of my lungs.

The mahogany hair that suddenly looks so much like mine, if I actually took care of mine and it wasnt a beraggled mess. Porcelain skin I cursed every summer when I would burn from the sun so badly I couldn’t move.

-

I demand,

“What’s your name?!”

“Claire Jellings.”

Nothing made sense anymore. This had to be a sick joke, a bad high most likely. Claire Jellings died a long time ago, Claire Jellings didn't exist anymore. Claire Jellings was my mother.

“That name died eleven years ago. I watched her take her last breath.”

I had to admit she looked exactly like I remembered my mother looking and the pictures that helped me remember but after eleven years the woman standing in front of me was probably only three or four years my senior.

Claire tries reaching out to me but I back away,

“You know who I am. You're afraid, that's understandable. That’s why I want to know why you’re here, Annie. Why are you dead?”

-

The world shook as memories from the night before flood back into my brain. It must’ve been the drugs. I was less than half of James' size, he must not have known to give me less. Or maybe he thought my tolerance matched his which judging by the healing wounds along the insides of his arms was not comparable.

Suddenly, standing seems like a chore and I make my way back to the bench where I sit, head in hands, until I can breathe again. I feel her take her seat back beside me after some time but I dont care to acknowledge it.

No part of me wants to make this real.

-

She waits patiently for me to speak and I finally do,

“What happens now?”

She pauses taking the time to make sure she uses the correct words,

“That’s up to you. People that die like me, from illness or old age, die because its their time and they get to stay forever somewhere spectacular.”

She gestures to the landscape in front of us,

“Somewhere far better than this.”

-

I roll my eyes staring at the ground. Her words giving me flashbacks of her funeral full of people who barely knew her and seemed to only speak one useless phrase,

“She’s in a better place.”

-

Claire clears her throat bringing me back,

“Then there are the lost souls, Annie, like you.”

I look up at that, tears brimming but not quite falling. The overwhelming realization of her probable shame chokes me but she shakes her head slowly, placing her hand lightly on my cheek, assuring me that my thoughts held no merit,

“You’re not alone. There are many of you here, lost souls. The earth harvests upon evil and many feed on its crops. This is why you have a choice. You can go on, take my hand and stay, be safe. Or you can choose to go back, make a difference and not let what you were born into become who you are.”

What kind of choice was that? I had nothing to go back to. The world for me had always been dark and painful. Except when numbed by the kind of things that killed me in the first place but that was just a mask, nothing was ever real.

“So you’re saying I can stay and be happy with my mother or CHOOSE to go back to hell on earth?”

She chuckles a bit at this,

“Your world is what you make of it. I can’t make the choice for you but I can tell you that you are capable of lighting the world on fire,”

Claire looks at me, smirking,

“in a less than hell sort of way of course.”

-

I had to laugh with her. Mostly because of how ridiculous this all was. I was laughing with my mother that died when I was eight years old and now I was dead too or something very very similar.

-

I knew my answer before she finished her explanation. Borderline cutting her off and without any real thought I blurt out,

“I want to go back.”

I was going to get a second chance, the same one I used to pray that my mom would get when she was struggling for breath in a hospital bed.

Mom just continued to smile unphased by my interruption,

“I knew you would.”

-

I didn’t get a chance to respond before I awoke in my hospital bed, gagging from the tube down my throat.

A woman with a laminated “Nurse Jane Flier” lanyard around her neck rushed in and patted my arm,

“It’s okay sweetie, I’m going to get some help.”

Without another word she ran out of the room spouting off different code words into, what looked like, a walkie talkie set I had when I was a kid.

One MORE week roughly 579,600 seconds later and I was released from the hospital into a treatment center.

-

One month later I close my notebook the therapist has given me. She thinks that writing about my near death experience will help me heal.

-

The thought of NEAR death was still laughable to me.

For 7 minutes I was with my mother.

For 7 minutes I was dead.

-

I grab my cup of tea as I walk over to look out of the window.

The sun was starting to rise on my second chance.