FLIRTING WITH THE SHADOWS
Reluctant as I am to dwell upon the sad farewells incidental to the departure of souls from this sphere, I feel that the history of this episode would be incomplete without some account of the circumstances and personal sensations attending the crisis. My strength having been seriously impaired by the first operation and the resultant attack of poisoning, after the second operation I sank lower and lower, until the physicians practically abandoned all hope. And though I was kept in ignorance of their diagnostic conclusions I sensed the gravity of the situation both from my own feelings and from the mysterious actions of those about me; and every time I closed my eyes it was with a feeling of final submission to what seemed the inevitable. Death, which in the distance I had always pictured with unmitigated horror, seemed now to have lost much of its terror; and though its proximity gave me a ghastly feeling, in a way it appeared more like a messenger of relief than a harbinger of ill. Sometimes in my desultory sleep its phantom-like skeleton form seemed to move stealthily about the room, its sunken eyes steadily fixed upon me; and once I imagined it reposing beside me in the bed. The sensation was so shockingly uncanny that I involuntarily put out my hand; and fancy my astonishment when I awoke to find myself clutching the arm of the night nurse, whom I had startled out of a comfortable doze at my bedside!
On the fifth day it was decided that I had but a few hours left, and that a transfusion of mercurochrome was the last forlorn hope. It was a hazardous alternative and would either kill or cure in about forty minutes; but if it killed there was nothing to lose, for I was lost anyway; if it cured there was everything to gain. A well known physician, afflicted with septicemia in a neighboring hospital, had taken it the day before, and died in thirty minutes. My wife asked one of Doctor Will’s assistants for his honest opinion on the probable outcome in my case; to which he answered, “He still has a fighting chance. If he doesn’t die of uremic convulsions inside of forty minutes, he may recover.”
My family were brought together at the bedside.... Lying in a state of semi-consciousness, I remember seeing one of the doctors approach the bed with a huge bottle of reddish fluid (mercurochrome) to which a long rubber tube was attached. Having no idea of what they were going to do, and mistaking this for the usual pink mixture of loganberry juice and castor oil, which I supposed they wanted me to drink through the tube, I closed my eyes and set my teeth. Presently someone raised my arm, then I felt the needle inserted, and when the fluid began to circulate through the veins, my limbs became numb; and as the paralytic feeling crept over my body it seemed as if the bed were slowly moving from under me. Then I imagined my head was in the hub of a great horizontal wheel which spun around with terrific speed for a while, and gradually slowed down till it barely moved. Like the propeller of an aeroplane, its momentum held me aloft over a deep chasm, and when the speed slackened I could feel myself descending, feet first, into the depths. I reached frantically about endeavoring to find something to cling to, but there were no supports, and startled at the increasing rapidity of my descent I opened my eyes—as one will awake from a terrifying dream—and stared about, wondering why so many people had gathered in my room. One physician clung to my pulse, while the other attendants stood about with bowed heads. Suddenly I caught the meaning of it all, and as I closed my eyes resignedly I felt my loved one’s tears on my face. With a final conclusion that all was over, I remember whispering, “Good-by; no flowers, please.” I knew nothing more for two days.
I have heard that persons approaching the gates of Paradise have been known to hear music and angel voices beckoning from within; and although fully conscious of the fact that I was close upon the portals of eternity I could catch not the slightest glimpse or sound of anything beyond; which convinces me that there is at such times no physical communication whatever between this world and Elysium, unless perchance it happened that I was nearing the wrong gate.
During the critical forty-minute interval, while five physicians stood waiting the outcome, one of them quietly recommended that any absent relatives be promptly notified. It was a toss-up with the Grim Reaper—and I won; though the victory was not assured for several days.
Later when I inquired after a missing member of our party I was told that about the time of the crisis he had been dispatched posthaste for home to shovel the snow off the family lot.