A Night's Dream

My wife and three kids load up my truck and began to head East on the freeway. I think we are headed somewhere fun to enjoy each other’s company. As I look ahead to change lanes, I noticed everyone is traveling extremely fast. I decide to switch lanes to move towards the right and avoid slowing down the rest of traffic. As I hit my turn signal, a silver Mustang comes flying from my right, cuts in front of me, my truck clips the back bumper and gets airborne. The silver mustang swerves into the left lane and straightens out the vehicle, accelerating on the gas, leaving skid marks and zooming out of sight. I watch this all happen through a shattered windshield as my truck is in flight. When we clipped the back bumper, my truck jumped. It could have been the height difference of the vehicles but through all of that and being airborne, my brain oddly observed and couldn’t comprehend how that could shatter the windshield.

The truck landed on all four tires and skipped down the road. I applied pressure to the brakes until we came to a complete stop in the middle of the freeway. I checked on my wife and the kids to see if they were okay. My thought was really still focused on this windshield. I looked to inspect from my position in the drivers seat and noticed a small hall where it looked like something went directly through the windshield on the drivers side. “That’s odd,” I thought to myself. My wife then yelled out, “You’re bleeding.” I looked down and realize in an instant what was going on. I had been shot.

I don’t know where it came from but a bullet went through my windshield and struck me center mass (I only know that term from the action movies I love to watch). Could it have been the purpose of the silver Mustang to swerve in front of me? I knew center mass was not a good place to be shot. I also knew I should be dead. I sat back in my seat trying to breathe. Before long, the highway patrol arrived but they took one look at my wound and figured I was a goner, so no reason to worry about me. As my wife is screaming for an ambulance, one patrolman steps inside the truck, sits in the seat and tries to figure out how I crashed and began to ask my wife questions about whether I was intoxicated or not.

I was furious and losing steam. I told everyone to get back in the truck and I peeled out, driving my family to the hospital. When we got to the hospital, no one seemed to take my wound serious either. The employees moved slow as molasses and though I showed my wound and began to bleed internally from the mouth, no one seemed to give a damn. I was put in the waiting room. Within a few minutes, I was called behind the double doors to ask about my affliction, why I was at the emergency room. I yelled, “I’ve been shot damn it, center mass.” Still, nothing. No frantic or quick response. Nothing! I knew my time was coming to an end. I turned to my boys and my eyes began to swell full of tears. IT was time to tell each one of my boys how much I loved them and praise their uniqueness. As I began to share my love with them I could feel my sould leaving my body. I began to cough up blood and the look on my children’s faces I will never forget.

Their super hero was fading right before their little eyes. I couldn’t allow that. I hugged each of them and went to find a nurse. I found one young lady who was reading a medical textbook. I grabbed her by the arm and desperately explpained that I had a damn bullet in my chest. I told her I needed her help. She dropped her book and said, “Follow me.”

At this point, my body was becoming extremely weak. It was difficult to walk and would stumble but I had to keep moving. She took me through a back corridor and we ended up outside in a courtyard, heading to some private buildings. I had never seen these buildings at the familiar hospital before. It almost looked like a secret environment where celebrities or politicians or officer, some people of deemed importance are treated. I was taken to a cottage and given an orange top and bottoms to put on. When we walked in the cottage there were two women, one on the floor and one in a bed, naked, and suffering horrible pain, balled up in the fetal position. One of the women yelled, “Hey, I was here first!”

The nurse took me to another room in the cottage where she left me to lie on the bed and wait for the doctor. I wondered if she just left me to die somewhere with a bit more grace and dignity instead of a hospital waiting room. I was slipping further out of existence. Finally, a young doctor in blue jeans and an orange shirt arrived to take a look. He nonchalantly took a peek at my chest, gave a shoulder shrug, and turned on the TV next to my bed.

I was emerging from furious to hostile but I had zero strength. I began to yell but words were muffled by mouthfuls of warm blood. The doctor simply looked at me and said, “Look, I can’t take it out without killing in. If we leave it in, it can kill you too. You’re lucky to even be alive right now with where you’re shot. So, enjoy whatever time you have left because you are already dead.”

At that moment, the light from my alarm clock brought me out of the dream world and into my physical reality. I sat up to say, “Thank you.” When I did, the pain in my chest damn near laid me back down. The center of my chest, center mass, was and still is in pain as I write this at 4:30 in the morning. It is a tightness that I have been trying to stretch since I put my feet to the ground.

Maybe near-death experiences in dreams don’t technically count but if it seems so authentic to my brain that it causes the physical sensation of pain in the area, I dreamt I was shot, then isn’t that real to me in the moment? Real to my brain during that dream? You can decide that yourself. What I do know is the profound impact it had on me.

Death can be lurking around any and every corner. We spend so much time complaining, recognizing the negative, and taking for granted the things that make our life whole and wholesome. I yell as a parent. I mess up as a husband. I get easily frustrated as a football coach. I judge others and judge self. All of that puts undue stress in my life when simply loving people, loving those who do and don’t love me back, finding the positive in the situation, and realizing my “problems” that bother me are just actions of others that I prescribe a negative emotion and allow that emotion to become the observed action. It’s not. My anger at another person for one thing or another is not an actual thing. It is an emotion I latched on to based on some action.

That all just seemed and felt like a waste of time after this dream. I have life to live, people to love, and things to enjoy. So, maybe my near death experience wasn’t “real,” but it was authentic enough to be a change agent in my waking hours of life.