I'm Still Here

Ch. 5

"What's going on?" I said frantically. "How can I be here and there at the same time?" I looked behind me at my body laying in the hospital bed.

"Am I dead? Oh god, I hope I'm not dead. But I don't understand what's going on? Am I having an out of body experience? Or is this some elaborate practical joke and my body is just an illusion?" I blurted out any question that came to mind.

"I'm going to need you to calm down. It's hard to understand you when you're speaking so fast and so high pitched," the girl put a hand up to her ear like it was paining her to listen to me.

How was I supposed to calm down? I am looking down at myself sleeping in a hospital bed.

"First off, you're not dead so you can relax. You're in a coma," she gestured to my sleeping form behind me.

"So this is some sort of out of body experience?" I said slowly, trying to make sense of what was going on.

"Something like that."

I looked over at Grant who was still sitting in the chair next to my bed. His head wasn't in his hands anymore. He had leaned back and started to slouch to get comfortable in the hospital chair.

"And he can't hear any of this?"

"Nope."

"So what is this? Is this some sort of pre-dying thing?"

"Pre-dying?"

"Well I'm in a coma and having some sort of out of body experience and the only person who can see or hear me is you," my hand went up to point at her momentarily, "and you're all dressed in a white dress so I'm assuming you're like an angel or something coming to prepare me to move on. You know, go towards the light."

"Oh, I can see how you would think that," she looked down at her dress. "I am an angel, but that doesn't mean you're going to die."

I breathed a sigh of relief. "So I'm not going to die?"

"I didn't say that."

My brows furrowed in confusion. "I don't understand."

"You might die. You might not," she shrugged. "It's not my call. Right now you're in what I like to call the in-between stage. You're not 100% going to die, but you're not totally with the land of the living either. I'm here to guide you and pretty much supervise you until we know where you're going."

"So...you're like my angel babysitter?"

"I guess you could say that."

"What do you mean you're here to guide me?"

"Help you navigate this in-between time. Help you and the big guy upstairs decide what to do next."

"Wouldn't everyone want to live?"

"Sometimes they think they do at first and then they learn things about their lives that makes them either not want to go back or makes them realize they've already lived a very fulfilling life and they're ready to move on. Or maybe they know if they live there will be a lot of suffering. It all depends. Everyone is different. Sometimes they think they want to die and then they realize they have a lot to look forward to still in life or a lot of unfinished business."

"Unfinished business? Hey, are the movies right and people with unfinished business become ghosts that torment the living?"

I was going a little off topic, but I'd always wondered if that was true and this girl seemed like someone who would actually know the answer.

"Don't get me started on all the ghost shit. That's not my domain and I hate ghosts."

"Oh...okay..."