Dead Fred

This a favorite story of mine, because of its form, where I take a true event and exaggerate it beyond reason.  I did work many years as a paramedic, and did talk to a recently resuscitated heart attack victim who was clinically dead for a short time.  He did tell me that he wasn't worried about dying any more.  The rest? Well, there is much truth in any well told tale, and the line between what is and what might be quite often blurs.

                                           Dead Fred

                                           By Dick Morgan

I’d been a paramedic for almost ten years and was used to all kinds of strange situations, taking most of them in stride as a part of the job.  But when a dead guy comes back to life long after being pronounced, his time of death recorded, and his body covered up for removal, that’s unnerving, to say the least.  And I’m not talking about the gradual coming out of a coma a few eyelid flutters and finger waves at a time.  I’m talking about a flat-liner who wakes up fully aware and talking about family matters, the kind of occurrence the medical profession would call impossible and the church of your choice, a miracle.  I saw it myself, but can’t prove any of it.

That particular day, I was doing my in-service rotation in the St. Vincent Hospital Emergency Room, a standard and ongoing part of our training.  I was not particularly happy to be there.  The fire training officer had set up the rotations and told us we’d better show up, “or else.”  But after emptying bed pans, wiping up spilled blood, and staying mostly silent and polite when told by the regular nurses and medical techs that we were clumsy and just in the way, I’d begun considering how bad “or else” could be. 

I’d had to change from my firefighter uniform into sea green medical scrubs, but I’d forgotten to bring along comfortable shoes, and my firefighter boots were killing my feet.  I was constantly on them cleaning and fetching; there was never any place or time to sit down.  I’d missed the only interesting case the E.R. received; my rescue partner got to witness a code-99, a full cardiac arrest resuscitation attempt.  I was told it had been dramatic, but unsuccessful.  Meanwhile, I’d been busy holding a little boy still so a med-tech could stitch up his torn knee.  

During a lull in the patient action, I sneaked off to a seldom used room I’d found—the cast room, where orthopedic doctors took patients with broken parts to immobilize them.  The room was at the farthest corner of the Emergency Room, at the end of a dark hallway.  It didn’t have a crash cart full of medicines and equipment for critical patients, and so was almost always empty.  But it did have one thing—an actual chair, which I intended to use with my boots off until the nurses found me.

But I discovered that the room wasn’t empty. There was a gurney stretcher in the center with a body on it, covered by a white sheet.  My feet hurt so bad, I went in and sat on the chair anyway.  I was a bit uncomfortable sitting beside a dead person, but I was a paramedic after all, so I pretended to not mind.

I’d seen death many times, and often it was embarrassing.  Women drinking themselves into a stupor from which they don’t recover; Men slumping over in the middle of a big shit—it happens more often than you think.  I was wondering what this one had been doing.  Personally, my biggest fear is that I’ll die in the middle of something.  It will either be something embarrassing, or something of great importance, but incomplete.  I don’t imagine God ever says, Oh, I’m sorry, was this not a good time?  No; one moment you’re on the brink of achievement, and the next, you’re on a slab with a toe tag, and there isn’t any next.  

I’d been a team member on several field code-99’s, few of which are resuscitated successfully.  Most of the time, while we worked our protocols to their end-game, we would all watch as the person’s face turned to a mother-of-pearl color, their lips turned dark, and the stilled blood made a dark purple arc from collarbone to collarbone.  There would be no lights and sirens for these unfortunate souls.  The team leader would declare them dead, note the time in his medical log, and call the medical examiner as various relatives began their inevitable wailing. 
         As I sat in the chair rubbing my feet, I began to wonder if anyone was wailing for this person, who upon dying, had become just something in the way, wheeled into this deserted room to make space for more viable patients until the medical examiner could come and wheel him out.  Or her out.  I became curious about who this person had been—what gender, how old, what their life had been like for them.  So I got up despite my aching feet, walked over and pulled the sheet away from the dead person’s face. 

It was a man with a full head of silver hair, clean-shaven, mouth slightly open revealing a fine set of cared-for teeth.  His skin was the waxy yellow-white common with people in his condition, and his lips were a bloodless purple-grey.  He had the look of a well-groomed rich guy.  I smiled at the irony of that; success in life wouldn’t be a bit of help now.  I wondered what his last conscious moment had been like, and whether he’d had time for a final summation—that realization that this was his final moment, and what his life had meant.  I wondered whether he had a wife and kids, or grandkids maybe, and had a brief moment of regret for them, and for himself.  I reached out and lightly touched his forehead, making a criss-cross sign there as I has seen done in the movies, and said, “Peace.”

Just as I finished crossing my criss, his mouth opened wider and he took an enormous breath, then opened his eyes.  I pulled my hand back as close to my body as it would go, as though I’d touched a coiled snake. 

“Oh, my,” the dead guy said toward the ceiling. 

I was completely dumbfounded.  I stood stock still, not even breathing for a moment, until the general quarters alarm in my lungs began to outweigh the one going off in my head.  I took a noisy gasp for air, which seemed to stimulate the not-so-dead guy even further.  He looked around the room, his head rolling from side to side as he licked his lips, which were pinking up again.

As his eyes focused on me, he said in the gravelly voice of someone who has recently had an intubation tube shoved down his throat, “Where am I?”

“You’re in the hospital,” I said.  

His head rolled slowly from side to side again.  “Where in the hospital?” 

“This is the cast room.” 

“Why am I here?”

I really didn’t know how to answer that.  He was here because his code-99 team had given up on him, pronounced him dead, covered him with a sheet, and wheeled him out of the way.  I shrugged and said, “Well, they did all they could for you…” 

“But I died,” he interrupted. 

“Well, actually…” 

“I know that I died,” he said.  “I watched them work on me.”

 “What?” I said.  Then the reality of what was transpiring hit me.  I was talking with a guy who was supposed to be dead, but had somehow spontaneously revived. The scientific impossibility of that aside, logic dictated that his condition was likely very unstable.  “Look,” I said.  “I really need to go get a doctor for you.”  I started to back away toward the door, still in my stocking feet. 

“Wait, please,” he said to me, clear eyed, struggling up onto one elbow.  “I need to talk to someone, and you’re already here.  I really don’t know how much time I have.” 

 I couldn’t argue with that.  I stopped backing up and returned to my chair.  “Okay, but just for a moment, and then I’ll have to go get someone.”

“What’s your name, son?” 

“Dick,” I said.  “What’s yours? 

”He paused for a moment, touching his free hand’s fingers to his dry, cracked lips. He pursed them up tight and then smiled, but not a real smile.  It was the kind of grimace where you’re trying to wake up dead lips.  “My wife calls me Fred, he answered slowly, uncertain of his pronunciation.  “My grandmother calls me Frederick.  She did just now.” 

“What? Your grandmother?  Is she still alive?” 

“No,” Fred said.

 “I don’t understand.” 

“She died thirty-some years ago.  But I talked to her just now, on the other side.” 

“On the other side of what?” I said. 

“Look, young man.  Dick you said.  I know that I died.  I saw it.  I was in the emergency room, and there was a big snap, and suddenly I was floating above my body.  I could see all the doctors working on me, but from up above them, looking down on their bald heads.  They were sticking needles in my arms, putting a tube down my throat, and shocking me with that machine of theirs, but I didn’t feel any of it.  I shouted at them, Hey, I’m up here! But nobody paid any attention to me.  And that’s when I saw my grandma.  She was floating up in the corner of the room beside me.  She said Hello, Frederick, just like I’d been up to her old mansion the day before.  You’ve gone and died, she said.  It was very unsettling at first.” 

“I’ll damn well bet,” I said, licking my lips.  My mouth had been open the whole time he was talking, and I’d started to drool on my surgical scrubs. 

“She said I’d made a mess of my life.” 

“Did that scare you?  I mean, being dead and all, maybe you thought you’d be going to hell soon.” 

“Posh,” he said.  I never gave that religion stuff much weight.  Besides, Grandma left me a quite an inheritance, and I made more by investing it.  I’ve never had any worries—until now, that is. Having money doesn’t make any difference now.”

“Did you get what she meant then?” 

“Oh, sure, sure.  She said, When was the last time you talked to your kids?  Well, she had me there.  Been six months since I heard from any of them.  They’re all grown up now, and moved away.  Took their mother’s side in the divorce, you know.  They’re just waiting for me to die.  Good reason to come back, just to mess with them.”  He tried to smile, but his mouth wasn’t working quite right yet.  “Anyway, she told me not to make the same mistake she did.  She said I had to come back down here and fix that.” 

“This is incredible,” I said.  “I’m going to go get a doctor now.”

“Wait,” he said.  “I have one more thing to tell you.” 

“What’s that?” 

“Well. it’s this.  I’m finding myself here instead of dead, and that’s a big shock.  I was sure that was it for me.  But you know what?  In spite of my grandma’s attitude, it wasn’t so bad.  The thing is, I’m not afraid of dying anymore.”  He smiled, and this time succeeded with a slow, calm and peaceful smile I will never forget.  It was the kind of smile that infected every part of you, and for a moment everything stopped hurting, everything was okay.  ”You’d probably better hurry, he added.  “I’m feeling a bit, um, unworldly.  I don’t know how long I have.”  

         I put my hand on his arm and said, “I’ll be right back, I said.  What more was there to say to reassure a dead guy?  I smiled.  “Don’t go anywhere,” I said, thinking about Heaven and Hell, and about how small my own life circle was.  I’d never even been to Forest Grove.

         I left the cast room and ran to find a doctor in my stocking feet.  The first one I found was my least favorite, the senior E.R. doctor, a contentious Jew named Hornblast.  I knew that he didn’t like me, but it wasn’t personal.  He didn’t like any sweaty, grimy paramedics cluttering up his well-ordered space.  So when I babbled out that his dead code-99 had come back to life, he snorted and shook his head, because, being impossible, this undoubtedly confirmed his suspicion that paramedics were an inferior species, and in fact were all crazy. 

“Post-mortem muscular contractions,” he muttered.  “Sometimes happens as Rigor sets in.  Leave me alone.” 

I actually pulled on his sleeve until he swatted at me.  “He’s talking,” I said.  “Does that happen in Rigor?” 

Hornblast closed his eyes the way one does when carefully laid plans go awry.  He looked as his watch, gave a nurse some patient directives, and finished his coffee.  As he set his cup down, he looked at me as though I were a large bacterium, and said, “I’ll give you two minutes.” 

When the two of us finally reached the cast room, Fred was lying face up on the gurney, eyes open and fixed, pale as a cue ball, dead as road-kill.  Hornblast told me in very colorful and unmistakable terms what an idiot I was, to stop playing with the dead bodies, and to never bother him again, ever.  He told me to put on my boots because my feet stank, and to stay out of the cast room.  Then he stormed out the door. 

I was sorry to see Old Fred gone again, although I’d had no reason to actually take a shine to him.  After all, his kids didn’t even like him.  But we’d had a fine conversation, and he’d given me this gift; He’d told me he wasn’t afraid of dying anymore.  And that was something. 

I decided it would be appropriate to cover him up again, and then to go back to interfacing with real, live people.  But as I was pulling the sheet up over his face, he suddenly took a huge gasp of air, and blinked several times.  I dropped the sheet on his face and jumped back in shock.  

“Don’t you just hate it when you wake up and your face is covered with a sheet?   I do.”  Fred reached up and removed the sheet from his upper body. 

“But you were dead!” I stammered. 

“Death is actually a prolonged transitory state,” Fred said.  “But I did get a bit further into it this time.  Don’t know why I’m back here, really.  I was told that I had to go back, that I had a job to do. 

“Who told you that?  What did they say?” 

“Well, I don’t know who it was, but he was all shiny.” 

“Like God?  Or, or, maybe Jesus?” 

“Oh, I don’t think so, nobody that important.  They must be further in.  There’s a humongous long line to see them.  I felt like I had the last ticket to a rock concert.  No, this person was like a big shiny door-man.  Spiffy uniform, like a marching band conductor.  Even had one of those ball-on-a-stick thingies. Anyway, he barred my way with his stick and told me I had to go back.  Or come back. Depends on where you are, I guess.  Both places are equally unreal to me.  I’m not really sure which one I’m in any more.” 

“You’re here on Earth, talking to a very confused person,” I said.

“Yeah, me too,” Fred said.  They keep telling me I have something to do, but I have no idea what.” 

“I feel that way a lot.” 

“My whole life has been like that,” Fred sighed. “I shouldn’t be surprised that death is any different.  Anyway, here I am, talking to you.  Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do.  Maybe we never know what we’re supposed to do, and accomplish our destiny completely by accident.”  He smiled, but it was thin and half-hearted, and did not warm me up. 

“What are you going to do now?” I asked.

“My grandma said that I should give away all my money.  Can you beat that?  A couple of million dollars.  Hell’s Bells.  Well, I don’t need it now, and my two sons don’t deserve it.  I told her I’d be happy to, if she could arrange to send me back.  And here I am.  Can you get me a piece of paper and a pencil?  Better make it an ink pen.”

I closed my mouth, which had been open and drooling on my scrubs again.  “Sure,” I said.  “Be right back.  Only, if you die again while I’m gone, could you say ‘hi’ to my grandma?  She died ten years ago.” 

“What’s her name?” 

          “Lillian Johnson.  Grandma Lily.” 

          “I’ll do my best,” Fred said.  “But the thing is, each time I go I get a bit further in.  Next time, I’ll probably not be back, you know.  I won’t be able to deliver any messages from her.”

          “Of course.  Just tell her I’m fine, I’m a paramedic now.  I’ll go get that paper and pen.”

          By the time I got back to the cast room with paper, a pen, and another doctor besides Hornblast, Fred was dead again, and just as pale and dark-lipped as though he’d never revived at all.  And now I was the laughing stock of the E.R.  Dick the nut-case, the guy who talks to dead people, official paramedic of the Oregon State Mental Hospital.  And of course, when the doctor left, Old Fred woke up again.

          “Damn, I’m back,” he said.  “Oh well.”

“You’re ruining my life!” I said.  “Everybody thinks I’m crazy.”

“Might be that you are,” Fred said.  “Likely we both are.  You got that pen and paper?”

I handed these to him along with a clip-board to write on.  He scribbled intently for a moment, then stopped and said, “Your Grandma Lily says ‘hi’ back.  She says your new job is better than being a damned writer.  Pishhh, she said.  That make any sense to you?”

Unfortunately, it did.  Ten years before, I had visited her while she was lying on what we all knew would be her death-bed.  She’d asked me what I was going to do with my life, and it didn’t seem like the time to lie to her.  So I said I was going to be a writer.  Pishhh, she’d said.  She was a wise woman, although her life had caused a certain harshness about her.  But I was certain that Fred had actually spoken with her. 

“She caused quite a commotion,” Fred said as he began to write again.

“How’s that?”

“Well, other souls overheard her telling me to deliver a message, and they began lining up.  Message-delivering from the dead to the living is quite rare, I’m told.  People wanting their loved ones to know something they considered important in life, statesmen wanting some last oration, gurus for this or that church wanting some last profundity let loose on the world-- quite a stir.  Anyway, Einstein crowded to the front and started screaming at me.”

“What did he say?”

“He was shouting, Divide by eleven!  Tell them to divide by eleven! He said, E equals M C squared, divided by eleven, there being eleven universes, and all.  I swear, I didn’t understand anything he said the whole time he was talking.”  Fred wrote another few lines and then signed his name with a big flourish.  He dotted it with a period like stabbing a bug.  “There, it’s done,” he said.

He handed me the paper and then the pen.  I read his scrawling sentence, which left his entire fortune to the Salesian Missions, whoever they were.  But I doubted anything would come of it, since a last will and testament written by a guy who is already dead would be highly contestable.

Fred lay back onto the gurney and crossed his arms on his chest, a faint smile on his purple lips.  “I’m going now,” he said, and closed his eyes.  His breathing slowed and his face paled.  Then he opened his eyes one last time and looked at me.  “Oh,” he said.  Your grandma said not to marry anyone with a name that starts with a ‘K’.”  Then he closed his eyes again.

“I already married a girl named Kathy,” I said.

“Too bad.  Won’t last,” he said.

“What am I supposed to do now?” I said.

“Live,” he said, and died.

I stayed around for a couple of hours, until the end of my shift, but Fred didn’t come back.  I wished him well, on his way to that big line in the sky.  And I felt well enough too; my normal routines seemed less significant somehow, less worrisome.

I still have the will.  I wasn’t going to let a strange aberration of nature make me into the news media’s joke of the week, and a bunch of lawyers rich as well. I have enough trouble making my way in the world without any divine guidance save for the occasional chance counsel of accidental messengers.  And those tend to be either unreliable, indecipherable, or too late.   

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