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  The paramedic giving CPR stopped and gasped for air and placed two fingers on Carson's artery. "I think I've got a pulse," he yelled between sucking in gulps of air.

  "Let's go! He'll do a lot better in the hospital."

  They quickly placed Carson on a stretcher and hurried toward the ambulance. His body was like a giant rubber doll. One man slipped on the muddy bank.

  "Oh God! No!" Linda screamed.

  The man recovered quickly and moved off the slimy muddy bank.

  Linda cried when she entered the ambulance - the reality of what was happening suddenly hit her like a tidal wave. Carson's skin was gray, his hair was soaked with blood, and he looked like a corpse. Within minutes, they arrived at Red Bank Hospital and Carson was wheeled into one of the emergency rooms. Several doctors and nurses followed the gurney into the well-lighted room.

  "It's Doctor Hyll!" one of the nurses shouted. "I worked with him when I was at Ocean Village." The others looked at each other and picked up their pace. One nurse attached wires to his forehead, chest and fingers. Another felt along his arm looking for a vein to start an IV. Linda followed the activity - her face a distorted mask of fear. They worked frantically on Carson - mouth-to-mouth, shots of adrenaline and finally electrical shock.

  "Clear!" the doctor holding the electrodes yelled.

  Carson's body jerked and Linda wailed in fear, as the green line on the EKG monitor remained flat.

  "Clear!" the doctor yelled again.

  After several more attempts, the energy in the room paled and a shroud of silence overwhelmed everyone.

  "We're sorry," said the doctor holding the electrodes.

  "Nooooooooo! You can't stop now! You can't stop now!" Linda screamed. "Try again! Try again! NOW! Pleeeeeeeeeease!!!"

  A nurse ushered her out of the room and slowly the other nurses and doctors left the room as if they were in a funeral procession - a procession for Carson.

  The nurse squeezed Linda's hand and said, "He's gone, Mrs. Hyll. I’m sorry."

  The Awakening - Chapter 2

  He could only lift his hand a few inches. Something was all around it. He only had enough space to bring his hand to his chest and feel the cold skin on his ribcage. He began to shiver. He felt along his hips and then down along his right leg. He was naked. He opened his eyes and saw only blackness. He closed his eyes and saw the same blackness and it scared him - black on black. He frantically ran both hands all around him with the slim hope that he could push the blackness away and find the light. The obstruction felt like smooth, cold plastic, and then his hand hit upon a metal object. The metal ran in a straight-line parallel his body and stuck out a bit. He continued to feel it - the metal line was about as thick as a pencil and it had grooves. Carson continued to run his finger along the metal line. It went past his face and over his head, and then stopped. He traced the metal line again with his index finger and found a small square smooth spot along the line above his head. Suddenly, his throat tightened.

  "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" He screamed. The noise swallowed his consciousness, his entire being in a white noise of fear. The scream would not stop and completely controlled him, his thoughts, and his soul.

  He knew where he was.

  * * *

  Dick Harrington, a thin man with a round head covered in closely cut white gray hair, got off the elevator and pushed an empty ER stretcher past the double swing doors into the dark corridor near the morgue. He heard what he thought was a scream. It was 5 am and he had a couple of hours left as the senior orderly on the third shift. Probably, a patient on one of the upper floors having a nightmare, he thought. In the past, the sound had moved down along the heating pipes in the ceiling echoing through the dungeon-like halls. It was common. He continued and thought of his granddaughter, Dawinda when one of her braids got caught in the chain on her backyard swing and she began to scream in fear.

  "Helpppppp!" a second scream. He stopped and listened more intently. The screams came in a continuous volley. He backed up towards the double doors and pulled the stretcher with him. The screams were louder now, his chest tightened, and his hands shook as he slowly entered the dark, cold room. A strong scent of formaldehyde and disinfectant filled his nose, but he was used to it and hardly noticed. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he felt along the wall for the light switch. The room flooded with white cold light and he looked along the wall of giant silver drawers, each numbered, and each containing a dead person. He walked towards the rear of the room and the screams stopped.

  With a shaking hand, Harrington reached down and opened a drawer near the floor. He unzipped the black shiny bag and saw blue-gray face of an old man with his mouth open. He quickly zipped it shut and turned away feeling a rumbling in his stomach. He closed the drawer and walked towards the double doors holding one hand over his mouth and the other on his stomach. His shirt was soaked with sweat. As he reached the doors, the screams started again. He froze – that moment when everything even your consciousness stops consumed by a single powerful force. He turned and stared at the wall of drawers. One door seemed to move slightly. The shrieks overwhelmed everything in the room. Harrington cautiously walked toward the drawer and with his shaking hand pulled on the large handle; the drawer slid towards him effortlessly. The black bag inside was writhing like a snake. He reached for the zipper, missing it several times because he couldn't control the shaking in his hand and because the bag kept moving out of his reach. The howling from inside the bag set every one of his nerves on fire. When he finally pulled the zipper back, two wide eyes filled with terror met his and he screamed, and the body screamed back at him. Then the "corpse" reached out, grabbed his arm, and squeezed it like a vice. Harrington pulled away yelling, slipped and fell, but the "corpse" held him securely. Now its arms were half out of the drawer holding Harrington's arm with agonizing strength. Tears ran down Harrington's face as he struggled to get free and then the "corpse" let go. Harrington slammed his body against the double doors, bolted down the hallway, and vanished up the stairs screaming the entire way.

  The Revelation - Chapter 3

  The light hurt his eyes as he opened them. He couldn't see very clearly - there seemed to be a mist over them.

  "Where am I?" he asked.

  A man standing near the edge of his bed looked up from a chart and smiled, his blue eyes sparkled.

  "You're in Red Bank Hospital. I'm Doctor Westwood. We're glad you're back - you were in a car accident and suffered a concussion. The concussion must have triggered some bad memories," the man explained.

  "More like nightmares," Carson said. "What happened?"

  "We don’t know. All we know is that your car went off the Red River Bridge. Lucky for both of you your wife was not knocked unconscious," he explained.

  "Linda? Is she?"

  "Oh yeah she’s fine. She pulled you out of the car or you would have drowned," the doctor said. "The water is pretty cold at this time of the year and hypothermia sets in in less than fifteen minutes. It's really a miracle that she got both of you out."

  Carson moved his arm to brace himself up and then stopped.

  "Ouch! Why is my arm burned? Boy, that hurts," he said. "Did the car catch on fire?"

  "It's not only your arm, Carson. It's your whole body. We think it's some kind of psychological reaction to the crash or maybe something was in the water and you're having an allergic reaction to it. We're still doing tests. It's not that serious - the burns are like a severe sunburn so you should feel better in a few days," Dr. Westwood explained.

  "How could that be?"

  "We don't know. We first thought there might be some kind of pollutant in the water and your skin reacted with that, but our tests show that your internals were slightly damaged by...well, some kind of heat. You show all the symptoms of a person who suffered a heat stroke...someone who stayed in the sun for days without water," Dr. Westwood explained.

  "The hottest day we've had so far has only been around 50 degrees and I wasn't sun
tanning," Carson said.

  "We're aware of that and we’re still doing tests. Don't worry you're recovering nicely. You should be out of here by Saturday."

  "It's probably from waking up in the body bag," Carson said.

  Doctor Westwood was silent and looked down at the chart.

  "Strange. I don't remember falling asleep while driving," Carson added.

  "Well, we'll have one of our staff psychiatrists look in on you if you want. You hit your head pretty hard."

  "No, that's okay. I'll be fine," Carson replied. "Why was I in the morgue?"

  "I don't know. I wasn't the attending physician."

  "Where's Linda?"

  "Your wife? I believe she's on her way. Now get some rest. I'll see you again tomorrow."

  Carson noticed a foul, burnt odor. He began to smell the sheets, and then he brought his arm up to nose, and discovered the origin of the smell - it was his own skin. The skin smelled burnt, foul and rotted, yet his skin was only damaged to the degree of severe sunburn. Only burn victims would have such an odor, he thought. He was puzzled. He thought about it for a moment and then drifted into a peaceful sleep staring at the flickering images of the TV floating above his bed.

  * * *

  When he opened his eyes, a face stared down at him.

  "Linda!" he said.

  "Oh, Carson I thought I lost you. I was so scared," she said her eyes watering.

  "I love you," Carson said weakly putting his arms around her despite his pain.

  "What happened?" Carson asked.

  "You fell asleep, the car went off the bridge, and I pulled us out," Linda said between tears.

  Her face hardened. "You damn near killed us! You should have let me drive or we should have stayed at Sean's if you were that tired!"

  "But, I wasn't tired. I was wide awake and then there was nothing."

  "You must have passed out from exhaustion. From now on I’m driving home from any parties."

  "I guess so..." he said.

  "You were DOA, Carson," she said. "I watched them try to revive you. You were dead."

  "DOA? No wonder I can't remember any of it," he said. "I came back...in the morgue." He shuttered at the thought.

  "It's a good thing that orderly was there. I would have been pretty damn mad if you left me," Linda said squeezing his hand and smiling.

  "All I remember is holding onto your hand. I'm still puzzled how I could have fallen asleep. I was wide-awake and having fun driving on the bridge," he said.

  "You remember holding my hand?"

  "Yeah and I floated towards you, and grabbed your hand, and together we floated to the surface."

  "You didn’t grab my hand. You were unconscious the whole time," Linda said. "I remember waking up and staring at you. You were in a daze. The next thing I know the car is drifting towards the railing and then it crashed through. I was thrown forward, and the dashboard seemed to float downward, and my whole body lifted slightly. I screamed as the car fell and I remember the seat belt suddenly getting very tight against my shoulder. The car hit the water, I was thrown forward, and then everything went black except for the dashboard. There was a scraping sound and the car came to a stop. I could see a faint outline of tree branches pushed against the windshield from the headlights. Then water sprayed into the car from all over. It all happened in slow motion, and I remember every detail - it was the most frightening experience of my life!"

  The Symptoms - Chapter 4

  "Hello, Doctor Hyll," said Doctor Matthew Stokes as he passed Carson in the hospital corridor. Stokes was the prominent chief of staff of the Ocean Village Hospital and towered at least a foot over Carson. "Good to have you back," he said as he scratched the side of his round, baldhead.

  "Thank you, Doctor Stokes," Carson said. "Three weeks seems like an eternity. I was beginning to get into the soaps."

  "Well, you take it easy these first few days. We don't want you back here as a patient," Stokes said and disappeared down a hallway.

  Carson raised his hand slightly in a sort of half wave and kept walking towards the ER. Within seconds after arriving, the police radio alarm came to life.

  "Here we go!" a nurse yelled. "We have a white female coming in with head injuries from a car accident. Age seventy plus. Vitals are iffy."

  The double doors slammed opened and three paramedics hurriedly pushed a stretcher through. Several nurses rushed towards them along with Carson.

  "It's Mrs. Whitehead!" one nurse screamed. "What's she doing still driving?"

  "Her forehead is lacerated. Get me a saline pack," another nurse said.

  "The old woman is delirious. She's mumbling something," another nurse said. They pushed the stretcher into the closest empty room. One nurse rubbed her wrist looking for a suitable vein to plug in an intravenous needle. Another wiped a large section of blood off the woman's head; another attached contacts to her chest, which led to an EKG machine.

  "We've got cardiac arrest!" the nurse yelled who had just placed the contacts in place.

  "Bag her, now!" Carson yelled.

  "Doctor! We don't have air flow!" A nurse yelled.

  "Grab that tank over there!" Carson responded. "NOW!"

  "Pads! Hurry!" he yelled. "Two hundred. Charge!"

  A nurse handed him the pads, then spread the conducting jelly on the bases. She set the voltage at its minimum setting of 200 Joules. He placed the oval units on the old woman's chest.

  "Clear!"

  Carson pushed the buttons and the lifeless body flopped violently on the stretcher.

  "Pulse?"

  "Nothing." a nurse replied.

  "Charge, 360! Clear!" Carson yelled.

  The body bucked again.

  "Still no response," said the nurse by the EKG monitor.

  "Charge! Clear!" Carson yelled again.

  "She's gone! She's gone!" the nurse said between tears.

  "No activity," the EKG nurse said. "I think we lost her."

  "Bullshit! Nurse, help me with CPR!" Carson said.

  He pressed the heel of his hand so hard onto the woman's frail chest it looked as if he would touch her spine.

  "Nurse, I want an Epinephrine IV push," Carson ordered.

  A nurse hung a second intravenous bag to the hanger and connected the thin, clear tube.

  "Any pulse?" Carson said between gulps of air. "Any breathing?"

  "Nothing."

  "Pads! Charge! Clear!" he yelled.

  "Atropine, now!" Carson ordered.

  Twenty minutes passed and Carson stopped. He gulped air through his small narrow mouth like a hungry animal, his skin flushed and sweat cascaded down his temples.

  "Are you all right, doctor?" a nurse asked.

  "Yeah," he replied softly. "She was the first patient I've ever lost and I didn't know it felt this way."

  Carson stared at the old woman.

  "No. No. This is not happening! I'm not going to let this happen! No. No. Clear! Clear!"

  Carson placed the defibrillator pads on the dead woman again and pushed the buttons. The body bucked again. The nurse near Carson placed her hand on his arm to tell him it was not his fault.

  Suddenly, the doors swung open and a large figure appeared.

  "Carson! I got here as soon as possible!" Stokes said rushing towards the table. "Is everything okay?"

  Carson looked up startled.

  "No, we lost her," Carson said, the volume of his voice trailing off.

  "Oh, no," Stokes said.

  A nurse slowly pulled a white sheet over Mrs. Whitehead's face and turned to leave. The others followed. Carson and Dr. Stokes remained.

  "This your first?" Stokes asked.

  "Yeah."

  "First one's tough," Stokes added.

  "Does it ever get easier?" Carson said.

  "No, not really, but you tend to feel less. You know not to get too close because it will destroy you."

  "So we should all be cold, unfriendly bastards!" Carson shot back.

  "No.
Just keep it professional and don't take it personally. You have to learn to accept that these things are not your doing. There are other forces working here...forces none of us can control or hope to influence, but we try anyway...try to beat the odds...save a life, prolong another."

  Suddenly, the beeping of the EKG machine broke the pall. The screen showed a jagged, moving green line. Then there was an agonizing, piercing sound.