If you ever get a chance to almost die, do it.

It might change you forever.

The clock was actually spinning backwards … and melting at the same time. And I wasn’t much upset at all … because I could still hear the ticking.

I was amused by all the scientificky bleeps and blips… and the squeaky nurses’ shoes on linoleum floors … lit up like runways at night.

I got very comfortable with the reappearing faces … bringing this and doing that … and small talkin’ me all the while.

Time passed in chunks … but sometimes minutes behaved more like hours. And lots of days just vanished. That’s why I could deal with the broken clock.

It was an unfun run.

In and out of hospitals. Heart. Lungs. Appendix. Pneumonia. All in one spectacular disaster. And it happened so quickly, it was hard to keep up with all the break-downs. One after the other. One big body-fail.

Then mystery drugs and freaky procedures. Tubes and hoses and wires. Stuff hangin’ from poles … and just hangin’ on. Faces fading in … and fading out. Like a flicker film of old.

On and off tables … in and out of beds. Flying around hallways … with pit stops in machine shops with low lights … whirry gadgets and big, big gizmos … manned by efficient Igors who were all business.

A Seuss nightmare … bizarrely bizarre bizarreness … really surreally … an illusion delusion.

But I was never alone … even when I was by myself. Not being cryptic-creepy here … just tellin’ the truth. Lettin’ you in on a mystery.

For some reason … I was never cold … and I’m cold a lot. And I was never scared. Not once. Not even when those around me were frightened for me.

I was a batch of calm. Because she was there. She was always there. Never saw her. But I sensed her. Always.

And she walked with me along the edge. Steadied me. Braced me. Pulled me back. Took away every fear.

And she whispered me … and smiled me. And wouldn’t let me die.

She held my hand … and never touched me. Pushed on my chest … and never laid a hand on me. Spoke so gently … and never said a word. She was gorgeous-beautiful … and I cannot describe her face at all.

Of all the voices that spoke to me … hers soothed me the most.

Wherever I went, she was with me. Whenever I spoke, she listened. Whatever I felt, she understood.

I worried it would all end when the tubes were yanked … and the medicines taken away. Afraid I might’ve disneyed it all … pixeled it out of my peculiar imagination. Just another creative escapade … helped along by potent potions.

After a long while, I got well enough … and went home.

I wondered if she was with me … or left behind in a dimension I didn’t quite understand. That troubled me more than anything else … sliding back into my old life … without her. Alone. Again.

But she followed me. Like a sweet haunt … an apparition that loved me … and refused to let me go. And when I was all alone … in my own bed … crowded again by sweet souvenirs … she aura-ed the room. Glowed it.

And I smiled in that twilight … because she’d crossed over into my reality … and was there with me.

All I had to do was find out who she was. And why me. Why’d she bother with an almost dead guy.

And I never once thought that an impossible task … because there was this … this mystifying seduction going on … and I wasn’t even sure what end I was on. I couldn’t figure out if I was chasing her … or she was running after me.

And then it was all so obvious … and I wondered never more.

We had been racing toward each other … tangled in the same karma … fortuned into each other’s lives. Finally brought together because I had become unwell.

So … if misfortune visits you … remember … “it is never mournful to the soul that accepts it … do always see that every cloud is an angel’s face.”

The rest is for you to figure out.

Denis Ian