Crash Chapter 8

"Once on a Wild Afternoon"

Third Person POV

'Good luck Randy' Mark and Brad say, one after the other.

'We'll be waiting for you' Tim says to his middle son.

'We love you Randy. Everything will turn out alright' Jill says, walking along side the moving hospital bed.

Randy's POV

I hope mom's right about everything turning out alright. If she isn't and the surgery fails, then I hope someone calls Dr. Kevorkian for me.

But for now I just need to think positive. I just need to pray that this surgery works.

The nurse back in the pre-op room said something that really surprised me. She said that just in case I'm conscious, they're going to put me under general anesthesia, rather than just some really strong pain medicine.

I'm already starting to feel a little loopy from something that they put in my IV to relax me. (Not sure if it's Xanax or Prozac or what, but it sure makes you feel like you just don't give a shit.

Now I'm back in the OR, and the nurses and doctors are getting ready to move me over to the operating table.

Sometime Later

Randy's POV

I'm going to assume the surgery was a success. I'm able to move my arms and legs and I'm able to sit up.

Oh, here comes mom and dad now with Mark, Lauren, and Brad right behind them.

'Hey, mom, dad! The surgery worked, I can move now!' I say excitedly.

They don't respond, but mom just starts crying when she looks my direction. Dad just hugs her really tightly and sheds a few tears himself. Lauren is crying as well. Mark looks depressed, and Brad just looks like he doesn't know what to do.

I try shouting at them, but still no response.

Then a man walks over to me. He's maybe in his mid-forties and has black hair. He looks strangely familiar.

'Could you keep it down? It's not like they can hear you anyways Randy' the man says. How does he know my name?

'Who are you?' I ask.

'Michael Taylor' the man says with a smile.

'But...the...the only Michael Taylor that I know is...dead' I stutter.

'Yes, that would be me' he says.

'But then that would mean that I'm dead. Which means that the...what happened? The surgery didn't work. I thought the surgery would work! How did I die?' I ask, shouting once again.

'I always knew you had a great set of lungs Randy' another man's voice says. I turn around to see mom's father standing there. This is too weird.

'Hi Fred, how are you?' Michael, grandpa Taylor I suppose I should say, asks grandpa Patterson.

'Oh, alright I suppose. I thought when I died I'd get some peace and quiet but ever since Lillian died, she's always bugging me about traveling here and traveling there. So what if I don't want to go yet? We have the rest of eternity to travel' grandpa says.

'Well at least you're able to be with the woman you married. I haven't been able to have a normal conversation with Lucille since the Johnson administration' grandpa #2 says.

'Could we?' I ask, imitating dad.

'Thank you. Now, what is going on here? I've figured out so far that I'm dead. How did I die is the next question I guess' I say.

'Well it's simple Randy. You just go back in time to the last event you remember. Then you can witness what happened' grandpa numbers 1 and 2 explain.

'And how would I go about doing that?' I ask.

'Well it's simple Randy' they say again. Everything must be simple when you're dead. 'Just think of nothing other than that date, time, and place, and walk through a wall. This also works for the future'.

I concentrate really hard on the date of Tuesday October 3, 2006. I start thinking about being wheeled back to the operating room at Detroit Memorial.

Then I walk through the wall and...

There I am, in the large pre-op room that I last saw mom, dad, Lauren, Brad, and Mark in.

'We love you Randy. Everything will be alright' I see and hear mom say to me. Well, the other me.

I hurry up and follow the gurney back to the chilly OR. (Yes, I may be dead, but I can still feel heat and lack there of).

I stand and watch the surgery for about an hour and a half until something interesting happens. Someone cuts something that they shouldn't have, and I start bleeding.

'Well we have two options. One, stop the bleeding and hope that we can repair the damage or two, we can continue with the operation first, and then try to stop the bleeding later, since it isn't bleeding very much' one doctor says.

'I say we go with option one' the head surgeon says.

'You want option one' another person/spirit/ghost/being says to me.

'Yeah, but how does that help me? I can't tell them what to do. I'm a ghost, remember?' I say to the stranger.

'Watch and learn' she says to me.

She goes running directly into the body of the top surgeon there after muttering some sort of incantation.

'On second thought, let's stop the bleeding, then resume the operation' the (posessed?) surgeon says.

Once again, the spirit rejoins me.

'Now this is all hunky dory and peachy keen, but what's going to happen to me now that I'm alive? I can't just stay an empty shell' I say.

'Kid, you'd better be glad you're not going to be a spirit yet. You still have a lot to learn' she says, then wanders off.

'Thank you' I yell as she walks through one of the walls. It's a half sarcastic, half serious thank you.

The rest of the surgery passes uneventfully.

At the end, the heart monitor starts its shrill beep. Before I have a chance to see what's going on, a force sucks me through one of the OR's walls. After that, I'm surrounded entirely by blackness, and it almost feels like I'm being sucked into a vacuum or something. I free fall for an unmeasurable amount of time. It could've been ten seconds, of ten millenia as far as I know.

'Randy...Randy...Wake up Randy. The surgery is over. It was a success' I can hear an oh so familiar voice say. Who is it?

'The doctors said you woke up for a moment in recovery, but you weren't lucid at all' the voice says. Mom! It's mom's voice!

A/N: So, that was a bit of a twist, huh? I had one of my friends read this, and I really had him going for a minute. Like I would actually end the story this early in to it.

First off, I need to thank Lee Sinins for kind fo giving me the idea for Randy's dream.

Secondly, I know Randy may seem a little OOC at the beginning of the chapter when he says that the Prozac/Xanax/whatever makes him feel like he just doesn't give a shit. I tried to write that using "damn", but it just didn't have the same power to it. I guess maybe I should've put in a warning, but oh well.

Please R&R.

Thanks for reading.

-Yours truly, Randy Taylor