The Color of the Season Read Free Page B

table was mine and I was not inside it.
    Strangely, this didn’t trouble me. I was glad not to be in that ravaged body on the table. The whole situation looked rather gruesome. Especially the sounds—the suction machine collecting a seemingly endless supply of blood, the smoky sizzle from the electro cautery, the repetitive clicks and snaps from instruments opening and closing.
    “Spleen is shattered,” one of the surgeons said. “Grab the artery here, put pressure on it until I can clamp it… Another Kelly, please and zero ties. Keep them coming. We’ve got lots more bleeders.”
    I didn’t know what any of this meant.
    Some kind of alarm went off on one of the beeping monitors and the anaesthetist said, “Doctor”?
    I continued to watch with an unemotional curiosity.
    “I know, I know,” he replied, digging deeper into my guts. He reached in and clamped down on the artery to my spleen. “Zero tie!” He tied furiously. “Mayos.” He took the scissors and made a few snips, then pulled out my spleen and dropped it into a steel bin. “This should do it, release the clamp…slowly…”
    They all watched in anticipation.
    Then blood started to stream again. “Shit.”
    Another alarm sounded. “We’re losing him!” The anaesthetist’s voice spoke with urgency as he quickly squeezed a bag of blood into my arm.
    I hoped, for their sake, they could work out the problem. As for my own, I didn’t really care.
    “Get me another six units of PRBCs and FFP.”
    A nurse ran out of the room. The heart monitor began to hum in a high-pitched, unbroken tone, and everyone moved about in a panic.
    “We need chest compressions now. Clamp what you can to stop the bleeding.”
    The charge nurse dropped the chart to the floor, pulled on a pair of gloves and rushed to help. She began pushing on my chest under the sterile drapes.
    The surgeon yelled, “More clamps…now!” as the suction machine rose to a crescendo.
    I watched the nurse pump on my chest and understood that I was dying. Oddly, I was indifferent to that. Then I felt a presence behind me. Slowly, I turned.
    There was a light in the back corner of the OR. I felt the physical sensation of being drawn toward it. None of this seemed out of the ordinary—not even to me, the most spiritually skeptical person in the universe.
    The next thing I remember, after moving through some sort of dark, wide tunnel, was being met by a number of people. Though “people” isn’t exactly the right word because they weren’t really human. They seemed to be made of light and shadow, so it was impossible to recognize them in a physical sense, though somehow I understood I was with my paternal grandmother.
    There were others as well. I might have known some of them… I suspected I did. They felt familiar and intimate, though I couldn’t seem to articulate in my mind who they were.
    Then the vast, open space all around me began to spin like a tornado. I found myself standing in the center of it, reliving every moment of my life from the time I was born, through childhood and adolescence. I felt everything as if it were happening in real time, except that I could reflect upon it and comprehend every ripple effect of every choice and action—with the wisdom and hindsight of a man who has lived his life a thousand times over.
    Or so I thought.

Destiny

Chapter Eight

    When I was a kid, I lived with my parents and siblings in a modest white bungalow in a small town on the outskirts of Boston. Back then, there were no cell phones or video game devices in the back pocket of every kid, so we spent a lot of time outdoors, playing street hockey and riding our bikes.
    My best friend was a boy named Riley James who lived at the bottom of the cul-de-sac in the biggest, most ostentatious house in the neighborhood: a two story brick colonial with intimidating lion statues flanking the gated driveway.
    Riley’s dad was a neurosurgeon, so he was hardly ever home, but his mom was really nice.