Chapter 5
This afternoon Michelle stuck an iPod in my ear and played me an old song by someone from the 80s named Stevie Nicks. I’m not good at picking out lyrics, but they were something like—
‘Maybe I’m just thinkin’ that the rooms are all on fire
Every time when you walk in the room
There is magic all around you, if I do say so myself
I have known this much longer than I’ve known you…’
Michelle said that Aunt Polly told her it had always been her favorite song—and now, it was how she felt after I’d changed her.
Michelle wanted some kind of explanation to that. But I could only say. “That’s a pretty catchy tune.”
- From His Recorded Words
Michelle and Sally came with me the next day and gave Danny hugs. Sally ran her finger down the length of his head scar, and he giggled a little. “It’s hardly noticeable with your hair growing back,” she said. “And look at this!” She spread the tips of fingers across his checks. “Wow. Your checks are fairer than mine now.” She laughed and he looked a little embarrassed at her teasing. “You really look good!”
Danny was happy to see them and seemed to get livelier as they sat on the edges of the bed and talked to him about staying in the hospital—was the food tasty and could he order seconds (in case they got hungry too); what TV he watched during the day (“You don’t like Oprah?”); of course, how long he would have to stay. They went on to some of the things happening at school, such as (Sally informed gleefully) Tim losing his third football game in a row due to interceptions; Sally getting a C minus in math on her latest report card (less gleefully); and did Danny want to go back to the amusement park when he felt better (Sally suggested we bring our own monster costumes so we could mix with the other monsters).
They even got him to stand up for the first time, and bit by bit he began walking around the room, initially with someone’s arm around him, then by grabbing bed posts and chairs to keep steady. Danny was all lit up like I’ve never seen before. Pretty girls, chatter, and perfume will certainly do that to you.
His physical movements—jerky of course because of the injuries—had changed slightly too. It took me a few days to come up with a way to describe it, but it was as if he were somehow standing outside his own body, like a puppet master, observing it, appreciating each footstep and arm movement like a cool slow motion scene from a karate flick. And pretty much everything made him laugh. At the time, I guessed it was just the newness of getting out the coma.
At one point, Sally stepped back to whisper, “He’s so playful.”
It was true, but I was also getting annoyed. “Let’s see what’s on TV.”
Danny sat back down on the bed. I had already taken a chair and was flipping through the channels. Sally perched herself on my chair arm, poking me when I came to a channel she liked, poking me a little harder when I would keep flipping. I heard Michelle sigh as she stood at the window.
Danny said, “How’s your aunt?”
“Aunt Polly? Oh no. I don’t want to bring people down,” she said. “We’re here to celebrate your getting well.”
“I understand. But you really look upset. How is she?”
Michelle shuddered before letting out through dribbling tears—“Well, she’s in and out of consciousness. She’s on a lot of drugs because of the pain. When she’s awake and the drugs are working, she dopey and not really aware what’s happening. When she’s not dopey, she cries a lot and says she afraid and doesn’t want to die. I’m trying to help, but she doesn’t seem to want it. You ask her if she wants a mile high pepperoni—that’s her favorite pizza—and she says, “I’m dying’. Ask if we can contact any old friends from around home or her flight attendant friends from the airline? She says, “I’m dying’. Can I bring Snoopy, Aunt Polly? And she loves that stupid poodle of hers. Nope: ‘I’m dying.’ I don’t know what to say to her any more. And what do you say to a person who is dying?” Her head sank. “I can’t take it.”
Danny put a hand on her shoulder as she sat on the edge of the bed. “You’re a good niece. It must be hard to comfort someone who believes everything they’ve ever known is being taken away…even if it’s not.”
Michelle gave him a teary smile, “You know what she’s really interested in? I’ve been telling Aunt Polly and my mom all about you, all about the accident and your recovery…how the doctors brought you back from—you, know, on the operating table and all that.”
“Oh.”
“She’s wants hope.”
Danny said, “Ouch.”
“What do you mean, ouch?”
Danny glanced at Michelle, then tossed a pillow at me to get my attention. “Joe, can you get a wheel chair? Michelle, I’d like to see her. Can I see her?”
She gave him an odd expression.
“Would that be okay?” he asked. “Maybe…maybe I can help.”
Sally interrupted gently, “Danny, is this because of what happened to you on the operating table?”
“Hey, guys, can we talk about something a little less spooky?” I said, but they ignored me.
Danny said. “I know it sounds strange, but maybe I can give her—well, not hope. That’s useless. But maybe…an insight?” He closed his eyes in concentration. “Yeah—let’s go see her.”
Michelle said, “Well…okay. My mom is with her now. But if she’s awake, and you really want to.”
I borrowed a wheelchair from the nurses and pushed Danny to the elevator with the girls. When we got there Michelle’s mother was sitting quietly on one side of Aunt Polly’s bed with an open Bible in her lap. A nurse with brown bunned-up hair sat on the other side. Aunt Polly looked the same as I had seen before. It was hard to imagine how that toothpick body could support all the tubes and wires. We walked in and Michelle introduced Danny.
Mrs. Connelly said, “I’m so glad you’re recovering,” and she leaned down and hugged him. “Michelle has told us all about you. How are you feeling?” She was a prim looking, plumper version of Michelle. I always liked to notice how features carry over from parents to kids. Sometimes there aren’t any, like Danny looked nothing like his father or mother.
Danny said to her, “I’m much better, Mrs. Connelly. Thanks.” The nurse got up to leave us, but Danny turned to her and said, “Wait a minute. You were there in the operating room. You were one of the…you helped bring me back. Thank you.”
“You know?” Her eyes squinted. “You’re…welcome. But, honestly, I think it was more a miracle than anything we did.”
“I wouldn’t be here without you. Thank you.” Then he almost whispered. “I didn’t recognize you at first. You hair was so blonde then—of course, this brown is a good color too.”
Her face went askew, thoughtful, and she said, as if she and Danny were sharing secrets, “I like the brown better myself.” She patted his shoulder and with a small wave to Aunt Polly, and left us to the room, after casting one quick glance back at Danny.
Aunt Polly said weakly, “So you’re Michelle’s little friend? You’re the boy who was in the accident, and then a coma. But now you’re doing well.”
“Yes,” he said. For what seemed like a long time, he simply sat by her side. Her face was so gaunt her eyes bulged; it reminded me of those World War II prisoners from a documentary we’d watched in history class. Her eyes were those same dark holes.
Michelle sat next to her mother, Sally by her side. I leaned against the open doorway. Aunt Polly’s head lifted towards Danny. They became opposite profiles—one peering down bright and vivid, one looking up stony and gray. Occasionally her breathing went into fits, with sharp painful noises. Danny never budged. He stayed calm, waiting for each fit to subside. His gaze deepened—as if he was searching for something. They remained this way for a while, silent. “Can I ask?” Aunt Polly finally said. “Michelle said you died for a while.”
?
??Go ahead.”
“I’m frightened,” she whispered.
Danny said, “Yes.”
“I’m really dying, you know.”
“Yes.”
Her face was puzzled. She repeated, “And I’m frightened.”
“Yes.”
His voice was so matter-of-fact, I wondered why he wasn’t cutting poor Aunt Polly some slack. I also noticed Mrs. Connelly’s brows knitting, guessed she must have been thinking the same thing.
But then Aunt Polly’s whole expression changed. A faint smile surfaced and her eyes lost some of the sadness.
“Okay, then,” she said. And continued, “The cancer, they found it here.” She moved a hand to her stomach, took a deep breath. “That was three months ago. They got some of it out, but not all. And if you don’t get all of it, it spreads. Now it’s everywhere, and they say it’s too late. They can’t do anything anymore.”
Danny nodded.
She hesitated. “Can you tell me anything? Did you see…anything?”
“Sort of.”
She sighed. “I feel so alone. I have visitors, but no one to talk to, you know? And it wouldn’t matter anyway. How can any of them understand losing everything? To them—they’re just watching a sad movie. I’ll bet they’re even hearing sappy violin music in their heads.” It seemed like Aunt Polly and Danny had a bubble over them, and Michelle and Sally, Mrs. Connelly, and I were on the outside.
She said to Danny in a hushed voice, with a tiny head shake to Mrs. Connelly, “And she keeps reading me her Bible. Ugh! Like that will help somehow. Like happy words make a difference. And you know what, if she were lying here instead of me—Bible, no Bible, all of her faith—she’d be scared as hell.”
Mrs. Connelly startled. Aunt Polly didn’t seem to realize—or didn’t care—that we could hear every word.
“And it’s not that I don’t want to believe. Really deep down I want to believe something. I wish I could—but I used to really believe in Santa Claus. Look where that gets you…”
I exchanged a glance with Sally—her eyes went back and forth from me to Danny and Aunt Polly and back to me, as if to say, Are you seeing this?
“You have to believe, they say. Have faith. And I’m asking: Why? How? Because you’re telling me to, you’re giving me an order? I’m not a child. I don’t have time for…faith. I need something I can feel, touch. No more words… Danny, my reality is becoming as basic as it gets now: I…am…dying. I want truth. Forty-one, that’s all I am. That’s all I’ll get… And I’m fed up with the BS everyone is giving me.” She broke down crying.
Danny waited, while she eased down enough to sob the words, “Sorry.” She smiled. “So…what’s the verdict? Do we go to heaven? Anything like that? When this lousy body finally fails—am I more than that? Am I?”
And then Danny opened up: “Oh, you are much, much more. Bodies are—.” He raised his own arm a second like a foreign object in his gaze. “Bodies have nothing to do with who we are…even if it feels like that’s all we are. I’ll tell you: bodies are born; and bodies die.” He picked up a tissue from the bed, tossed it into the air, watched it float down out of sight over the bed. “Bodies are flimsy things. Things come and go. But you can sense deep down—I know you can—you’re not that thing called body. And you don’t…come and go. Not like that.” I was surprised when Aunt Polly’s eyes really brightened. Mrs. Connelly—who’d been looking very discouraged up to now—she began to smile herself.
Aunt Polly said, gesturing to her torso,“So when this thing goes…do I get to go to heaven?”
“Yes.”
She beamed.
“And, no.”
She frowned.
Carefully, testing the words as he spoke, he said, “There is a heaven. But it’s not a place, not like we think of places. You don’t go there on some golden stairway. You just…you wake up, and know that you’re already part of it.”
She said hopefully, “Can you describe it? What will I see?”
“You want a picture? Like it has these trees, and beautiful music, and it smells like strawberries and vanilla, and the landscape is filled with flowers and lollypops and swing sets, and everyone wears…” He chuckled. “That’s not the way it works. That’s the faith again promising you something…something you know isn’t quite real.”
“So I won’t see beautiful things?”
“You won’t have eyes to begin with. But you will have the heavenly sense—and that’s everything and much more, all at once. Seeing, hearing, touching—those are pathetic in comparison.” His eyes rolled back for a second, then he said in an electric voice, “You see, anything that can exist does exist, in Heaven. And anything that can’t exist—heaven has that too. And you will be part of that, knowing it. You’ll sense perfection. You’ll be perfection. And it’s beautiful. But, of course, it’s not describe-able.”
Aunt Polly got calm and I could see the thinking in her eyes. Then she said, “I’m still really scared.”
“You’re still hoping. Trying to see something to hold onto. That’s the trap. Another idea, another thought to help you escape. That’s just…entertainment. It blocks really knowing. You have to drop those thoughts now, all of them. If you can just do it for a second…if you really want the truth.”
She sighed. “Well, my thoughts definitely aren’t helping. They’re awful.”
“I’ll bet they are. Let’s let go of those awful thoughts for a minute, and feel a little bit of truth and a little bit of Heaven, right now. I know this for certain, Aunt Polly: Heaven is inside us, waiting, like a sleeping butterfly. And it wants you to wake it up, so it can fly.”
Mrs. Connelly placed her hand on the cover of her Bible, and half-asked, “The way you’re talking…doesn’t Jesus say that…the kingdom of Heaven is within?”
Aunt Polly rolled her eyes away from Mrs. Connelly to Danny, her expression saying, See what I mean?
Danny’s hand lifted as a friendly Shhh and he turned to Mrs. Connelly. “That’s perfect. He did say that, didn’t he? In those words, he told us: Look inside. Thank you, Mrs. Connelly.” He said to Aunt Polly with a playful glance. “Want a preview?”
“You can show me?”
“I can point. But it’s a place inside where you normally can’t look…not until you’re ready to pass clean through everything else, all fear, and all hope. Are you ready to let go?”
Aunt Polly’s body relaxed into a Yes, and Danny looked around to the rest of us. He didn’t need to say anything. “Let’s step out for a minute,” Michelle’s mother said. “We’ll leave you two alone for a while.”
As we left the room, Michelle’s mother told us she had to go to an appointment, but asked to us to have Danny stay as long as he could. “I’ve never seen her so calm before,” she said. “I think it was a good idea to bring him. He’s got something. I don’t know what exactly, but…” She paused for a second like she was trying to put her finger on what the something was, but nothing came, and she just said goodbye, casually handing Michelle a bunch of bills in case we wanted any snacks.
Michelle and Sally and I walked down the hall to find a vending machine and get some coffee. Sally said, “Something amazing is going on in there.”
Michelle was deep in thought. She whispered to herself, “A preview?” She must have been as confused as I was.
“Do you guys have any idea what those two are talking about?” I asked.
“Don’t you?” Sally said.
“It’s crazy talk.”
“No, Joe! Don’t you get it? Something really happened to him. Wherever we go when we die, he’s been there. Or seen it…or something.”
“Oh,” I put on a face like I understood. But it was beyond me. And to be honest, more than anything, I was anxious for Danny to get out, get healthy, maybe go back to the amusement park, fix the bike and —. No more crazy swerving through. Not right away.
Sally was watching me. “You’re hopeless, Joe. You should stop
being so dense and try to see that something special has happened to Danny.”
“Listen,” I said, “all I see is my little buddy getting back to normal after a bad accident. That’s all I care about and all I want to think about.” We bickered back and forth for a while, friendly bickering, but Sally had her point of view—that Danny had had some kind of vision or inspiration and we needed to understand it. And I had mine—very basic: everything was gonna return to status quo, Danny would stop staring at everything like it glowed in the dark, we’d go back to school, he’d get picked on again and I’d ram someone into a locker for it, so on and so forth, back to the way it was all supposed to be.
“Would you two shut up for a minute,” Michelle snapped. “Something is happening in there. I agree. Danny has changed somehow. I think we’ve all noticed that. And it’s a good thing, Joe. Can’t you see how he’s helping Polly.”
We all shut up then, and settled into pacing the halls, and sipped our coffees. Michelle wanted to give Danny and Aunt Polly the time to talk. But every time Michelle looked away, Sally nudged me in the ribs a few times to let me know she was right.
We gave it about an hour before finally returning. As we entered the corridor the nurse who’d been with Aunt Polly before stepped out of a room and looked at us as if she wanted to say something.
“What’s up?” I asked.
She said, hesitantly, “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I’ve been thinking about what he said to me back there. I’ve never met Danny—he’s not on my floor—except, for that evening in the operating room. And it’s true: I was blonde then—for two days. I colored it at home the day before. Made me look like a Q-Tip. Awful! So I washed it out a day later—the day after he died in the operating room. That was the only time he could have seen the blonde hair. Do you understand? The whole time he was unconscious or clinically dead. So how…? You hear about these NDE things, but…” She shook her head.
Michelle said, “Thanks… I’m glad you told us.”
“We’re not supposed to talk about these things. It’s one of those controversial topics.” Michelle and Sally nodded as if they understood, but I didn’t. NDE? If I’d heard it right. “Take care of your friend. I’m glad he’s doing so well,” she said. She walked away and Sally and Michelle looked at each other, but not at me.
“There’s an explanation,” I said. “Don’t get spooky about this. There is some easy explanation we just don’t know about. What’s N-D-E?”
Simultaneously Michelle said “Shut up!” and Sally, “Idiot!”
“Sorry, Joe,” Michelle apologized immediately. “Let’s all of us shut up about it for now.” She was visibly upset, so I shut up.
Outside the room again we heard Danny and Aunt Polly laughing. Michelle wanted to wait though, out of sight, because apparently Aunt Polly hadn’t laughed in a long time.
“So that’s how it is,” we heard Aunt Polly say. “Am I out of my mind?” She was giggling.
“You’re in a higher mind,” Danny said. “The mind that lives in heaven…your heavenly mind.”
“And everything’s been inside this whole time. I can feel everything’s being taken care of. I always thought everything was on the outside. Against me. Out of control. But inside and outside—it’s the same.” She chuckled.
“It’s obvious now, isn’t it. You just need to see it once.”
Sounding like she was talking to herself, Aunt Polly said, “It’s so quiet and beautiful, and floating—everything is floating…in peacefulness.”
“Yes.”
“And it shimmers! I can’t believe how it shimmers. Like the room is made of some beautiful, heavenly fire.”
Danny just chuckled.
Suddenly she said with a startled loudness, “My head! What happened to my head? It feels like it’s disappeared. Danny, isn’t it weird to see that way? Isn’t that strange? The little creature who lives in my head, my whole head—has vanished.”
Outside, we were all looking at each other with puzzled expressions. I was pointing to my own head and mouthing the words, “No head?” Sally and Michelle shrugged.
Aunt Polly said, “They’re out there listening, you know.”
“I know.”
“Come on in,” Aunt Polly raised her voice.
We entered slowly and Aunt Polly lay there, smiling.
Michelle said, “Aunt Polly, we heard you laugh. It sounded so nice. What shimmers?”
“All of it!” She gazed around the room like a vast glorious sight, the way you’d look at the Grand Canyon for the first time, I figured. A lot like Danny after he woke up from the coma. And you couldn’t miss it—her eyes had changed. They were no longer black prisoner-of-war eyes. They were shiny. “Oh my, kids. It’s all so simple. We’re so much bigger than the stuff that happens, even stuff like…dying.” Her eyes shifted back and forth trying to recall something. She stopped and whispered to Michelle, “Don’t complicate your life too much, darling. There’s no reason. It’s all much simpler than we think.”
Aunt Polly eased back into her pillow, softly laughing to herself.
Danny got up. I rushed him into the wheel chair, because I really wanted to get out of there.
Michelle said, “Are you going to be okay if we go now, Aunt Polly? Do you need Danny to stay longer?”
“That’s okay, Baby,” Aunt Polly said. “I know where he is.”
“Aunt Polly, Danny’s going home soon. You won’t exactly be able visit him.” Michelle sounded concerned.
“Oh, that’s not what I mean, girl. You kids go. I’ll be fine. I’ll go to sleep in a little while.”
“Well, he’ll promise to visit every day then. Right, Danny?”
Aunt Polly said, “Don’t push it, sweet heart. I feel much better now. Danny needs to do his own thing. Of course, if you want to visit now and then, Danny, that would be nice.” She winked at him and closed her eyes for sleep.
Sally joined me in wheeling Danny back to his room. She held one handle, and I held the other. Danny seemed a little drained to me—some of his own shimmer was gone—and we right away packed him into bed. His eyes were already beginning to sag, but before we left, I said, “Hey, what happened in there?”
He yawned like a sleepy cat, and said simply “She got a peek.”
“Of what?” Michelle wondered out loud.
But as he drifted off, I nudged the girls out the door, and I don’t think they even heard a faint voice from behind whisper, “My mind.”