- - ON OCCASION, TIME SEEMS TO STOP - -

- At 10:03 this morning, Friday December 21, Pearl moved her index finger again. And again the movement went unnoticed. The neurons in Pearl’s brain dispatched modest electrical impulses from one to another, and activated a pleasant dream.
- It was the day before Thanksgiving. Pearl and Doug were visiting her parent’s who lived about 8 miles north of Ramona, California.
- "Angel? Where are you?"
- "Over here Dad."
- "You should come over here, the berries are easier to reach."
- "I’m fine, Dad."
- "Doug? Where you at?"
- "He went back to the house with a full pot to give to Mom."
- Pearl flipped her finger at a bee to scare it off a blackberry, it stung her on the right breast.
- Robert Jenkins, the ICU nurse, didn’t see Pearl’s finger move. BJ was checking her pupils which didn’t dilate when he shined a light in her eyes. He turned away from her bed and recorded the negative response on her chart.
- Pearl’s heart stopped beating and her heart monitor screeched its nerve-jangling alarm.
- BJ looked toward the nurse’s station, a nurse and doctor were already running.
- In the bed next to Pearl, the screeching sound entered Doug’s ears. The faint beeps of his heart monitor sped up. His eyes were closed but his head raised about an inch off the hospital’s thin pillow.
- In Doug’s brain, the neurons dispatched their modest electrical impulses from one to another and activated, not a pleasant dream, but instead a nightmare re-play of the few seconds just before the car crash.
- "Oooo!" Pearl moaned!
- Doug looked at Pearl, "Another contraction?"
- "Yeah."
- "What’s the time, how far apart are they?" Doug looked back at the dark, wet, blacktop road, just in time to see, a white-tail deer jumped out of the woods and onto the shoulder of the road. It jumped again and landed in Doug’s lane of the road. It froze, its eyes reflecting the car’s high-beam headlights.
- Doug jammed on the brakes and whipped the steering wheel to the left. The tires skidded on the old wet blacktop.
- "Hold on, Pearl!"
- "Angel!", she yelled!
- Doug yanked the steering wheel to the right. The left-front wheel fell into a deep water-filled pothole.
- For Doug, time seemed to shift into NASCAR super slow-motion, car-crash re-play.
- The car rose upward like an Olympic swimmer launched from a diving-board. As the car turned gracefully in the air, Doug had time to estimate how the car would land. He reached for Pearl.
- The car slammed upside-down, onto the road’s muddy shoulder. Doug and Pearl’s seatbelts didn’t keep them from smashing their heads against the car’s roof.
- When the air bags deflated, Doug’s upside-down body, hung pressed against the steering wheel and the car’s horn.
- Doug’s nightmare re-play of the accident ended there, the following wasn’t in his memory.
- The car missed the deer, it un-froze, then crouched down, and leaped twice, and disappeared into the woods.
- A hundred feet south of the accident, the sound of a car’s horn entered Myrtle Bingham’s bedroom and into her good ear. She woke up just enough to roll over and put her good ear against the pillow. She farted. She rubbed her nose. She was hungry. She had to pee.
- She covered Daphne with the blanket, and got out of bed. She heard the car’s horn.
- Before going to the bathroom, she looked out the window and saw a car’s headlight pointing upward, she picked up her cell phone and headed toward the bathroom. While sitting on the john, she keyed in 911. Before the call was answered, she wondered who would answer if she keyed in john 3-16.
- Daphne, Myrtle’s overweight bulldog, got out of bed and followed Myrtle down the hallway. She sat in the doorway of the bathroom, cocked her head, and looked at Myrtle with a cell pressed against her ear.
- The ICU doctor listened for Pearl’s heartbeat, "No heartbeat! AED stat!"
- The nurse unwound the wires of the device, prepped the metal surfaces, and handed paddles to the doctor.
- The doctor placed the metal surfaces against Pearl’s chest.
- In Pearl’s dream, another bee buzzed out of the blackberry bushes and stung her left breast.
- BJ, and the doctor, and the nurse all snapped heads toward Pearl’s heart monitor when it stopped screeching and began its faint beeping, signaling each of Pearl’s strong, regular heartbeats.
- The ICU doctor lifted the paddles from Pearl’s chest, "Damn! That’s odd!"
- BJ muttered, "Huh. I’ve never seen that before."
- The nurse stared at the AED’s lighted display, "You didn’t zap her!"
- "No!", the doctor listened to Pearl’s strong, regular heartbeat. "She’s back! Damn! I’m good! I’m gonna ask for a raise."
- BJ and the nurse looked at each other and smiled, then said in unison, "Me too."
- The faint beeps from Doug’s heart monitor slowed back down, his head settled back onto the hospital’s thin pillow, and he lapsed back into a coma.
- At 10:03 this morning, Jasper entered the Sanonte police station. He told the receptionist who he was, showed her his Emergency Medical Services ID, and ask her if he could get the last name of the female that was in the car accident that happened early Wednesday morning, the 19th.
-
- That's the latest from Sanonte, or Sanity
- G, December 21, 2007