The Death Appendix

Dan’s appendix had burst.

It happened as Dan chomped down on his very first bite of dinner. He would’ve been upset about the ill-timing had the pain not been so intense it drowned out all his other thoughts and cares. It drowned out the sound of his wife’s voice too, as she continued to talk to him about her day at work from the other side of the table, still completely oblivious of what was going on inside his body. Unable to speak, Dan looked around the room and thought that the color had also drained from his vision. He looked up at the ceiling fan light and stared into the bulb until the brightness burned pulsing spots into his retinas.

For some strange reason of the mind, Dan kept thinking about the light bulb as he stared up from the hospital gurney. He was now being wheeled under colder, tubular fluorescent lights, mounted behind thin reflective grills sunk into the paneled ceilings. Thinking about light bulbs comforted Dan, as it kept his focus off the failed organ leaking its toxic fluid inside his vulnerable guts.

Dan remembered the look on his wife’s face before the doctors took him away. One minute she was taking him for granted at the dinner table. The next, she looked like a frightened kid, scared to death she might lose her husband, and never see him again. All while comforting him to the last minute. She reminded him of the light bulbs. Warm and cold versions of the same idea.

Dan was scared to die. More than anything. He had been afraid of death his whole life, and who wasn't? He would realize in the aftermath that it was a lucky break the whole incident had been unexpected. The pain itself was a blessed distraction to help mute out the fear. Dan felt very cold. A shiver rattled his body.

The rest happened quickly. It seemed like only 5 or 10 seconds before the surgeons put the clear plastic mask over his nose. With practiced confidence the lead doctor instructed Dan to take five deep breaths…

Dan’s eyes fluttered open. He had time-traveled. The trip was instantaneous.

It was hours later when Dan woke up from the anesthesia. He was alone. His gurney was parked up against a wall somewhere where there were hardly any people. More cold fluorescent lights above him. He groggily looked to the I.V. connected to his arm. As he shifted, trying to sit up Dan could feel the stitches tied tightly to his abdomen. How the hell did it happen so fast? Could it really be over, so simple and quick?

***

A week later Dan was back to work.

As he drove in on his first morning back he thought about the time traveling. Dan decided he had to call a spade a spade. There was no better way to describe the experience. His body might have been all those minutes older, but as far as his mind was concerned it ceased to exist entirely during the procedure. In between the surgery and waking up Dan didn’t dream. Of course, Dan had many nights throughout his life where he couldn’t recall dreaming but this was definitively different. He didn’t even have that faint presence of himself that he could now more clearly discern was still there, even when he slept on those dreamless nights. He had tasted real death, he concluded.

It seemed no different than what Dan’s place in the universe must have been like all the eons prior to his birth, leading up to his present life on Earth.

And so, Dan was no longer afraid of death. In fact, he now was looking forward to a more prolonged break from things, whenever it should come. For he remembered that death truly was a break, from which he even believed he might emerge once again, refreshed.

Of course, the process by which Dan would eventually revisit death was another thing entirely – the endless possibilities still scared the living piss out of him.

Such is life, he thought to himself as his mind drifted off to sleep.