In A Flash
by Smoky Trudeau Zeidel
Copyright Smoky Trudeau Zeidel
Published by Vanilla Heart Publishing on Smashwords
Smashwords
License Statement
This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other
people. If you would like to share this book with another person,
please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re
reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased
for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your
own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
IN A FLASH
by Smoky Trudeau Zeidel
There was nothing extraordinary about the day I died. The sky was overcast and smelled like rain, signaling an approaching summer storm. Just our luck, I thought gloomily, as my then-husband Bob and I shepherded my four-year-old son Steven out the door of our suburban Chicago apartment. We were heading to the store to buy supplies for a noontime picnic, but a storm would kill that idea.
The rain began to fall lightly as Bob and I walked from the apartment to our car. Opening our umbrellas, we picked up the pace and dashed toward the far end of the parking lot. Steven was unfazed by the drizzle, and ambled lazily behind us, kicking a rock.
We almost made it. As my husband reached for his keys, a streak of lightning ripped through the thick, humid air. Instead of striking the highest point in its path (which is what we are taught lightning will do), it snaked past two tall light posts and two-story apartment buildings to the best electrical conductor it could find: the metal-spoked umbrella in my hand.
Forty thousand amps of raw electrical power tore through my body and into Bob, who was still holding my hand. The force of the lightning was so great that we were literally catapulted out of our shoes and tossed twenty feet through the air like rag dolls. Hit by the wall of intense heat created by the blast, Steven tumbled over backward. Bob’s plastic key ring melted into his hand. I ended up face-down in a pool of blood, my pierced earrings blasted out of my earlobes like miniature missiles, my gold and opal necklace vaporized into my chest skin. To all outward appearances, we were dead.
At least, I am told this is what happened. Lightning wipes out your short term memory, so I have no recollection of any of this. It happened on a Tuesday, at 10:21 a.m. My last conscious memory is of the previous Friday, when I was putting up a wallpaper border in my kitchen.
The paramedics, summoned by quick-thinking witnesses, arrived within minutes and resuscitated both me and my husband. We were then airlifted to a nearby medical center, where the emergency room team stabilized Bob and confirmed that Steven wasn’t seriously hurt.
My condition, however, was “extremely critical,” to use the term the news media reported. Severe burns covered my chest, arms, hands, and feet. My right femoral artery collapsed, cutting off the blood supply to my leg. But my heart was the biggest concern. Swollen to nearly three times its normal size, it was pumping blood at only 10 percent of its normal rate.
As a steady drip of morphine flowed into my veins, blanketing me in a pain-free fog, I drifted in and out of consciousness. When I fully regained my senses on Friday morning—a full three days after the lightning—I had no recollection of what had happened. All I could think was that I had fallen off the ladder in my kitchen when I was putting up that wallpaper border.
“You were struck by lightning,” the doctors said. “Your heart was severely damaged. We’re evaluating you for a heart transplant.”
Lightning? A heart transplant? I was shocked, confused … but I wasn’t afraid. Roger Rabbit told me there was no need to be scared.
Roger Rabbit? Yes. Roger Rabbit. The cartoon character Roger Rabbit. The one with the funny lisp and the gorgeous human wife, Jessica.
Let me explain! Remember that morphine drip I was on? Morphine is a powerful narcotic, and narcotic pain relievers are notorious for causing hallucinations, especially in high doses. So it really isn’t too surprising that, upon awakening, I saw a cartoon rabbit hopping around my room, telling me not to listen to the doctors. “They don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said. “You’re going to be just fine.”
The rabbit was right about my not needing a heart transplant, thank heavens. But I was to require more surgery a few days later. It was ten days after being injured, and I had been removed from the ventilator and was being weaned from the morphine drip. I was brought the first solid (albeit soft) food I’d had since being injured.
I couldn’t chew it. My jaw hurt too much. “It’s just from being on the ventilator,” the nurse said. “Keep trying.”
But the pain was excruciating. I could not eat; it hurt to talk. Finally, I convinced the nurse something truly was wrong. An x-ray machine was quickly rolled into my room, and several x-rays were taken.
When the lighting hit me, I was thrown approximately twenty feet through the air, landing on my chin. The force of that landing had shattered my jaw into little pieces—an injury they had not discovered up until then because they were so busy trying to keep my heart going. I, in turn, had not felt any pain from the break because of the river of morphine running through my body. Someone could have dropped a house on me and I wouldn’t have felt it, I was so drugged. But I was being weaned from the morphine at this point, and was beginning to feel, and what I felt was pain.
Fractures have to be set quickly or they don’t heal right. My jaw had been fractured very badly, and the doctors felt they could not wait another minute to try to repair the damage. At ten o’clock that evening, I was rolled back into the operating room for more surgery.