On The Other Side

Chapter 40 - A Miracle

GEORGE
—

This feeling is nothing new to me. I've experienced living through the death of someone I've loved before. Horrendous, heart-wrenching, soul-crushing death.

It was one month before I turned thirteen.

I had a cousin, Luke. He had a lot of medical issues. I was always at his house because he had no dad and his mother used to leave all hours of the night, regardless of his needs.

She would go through spurts where she could be the mother she needed to be. She'd get him to his doctor's visits for the medication he needed in order to convince the state she was a decent mother.

But then she'd call me and leave the majority of his everyday care up to me while she went out and partied or did whatever it was she did until the early hours of the morning.

The night Luke died, he was in my care. I can't remember all the details because I try not to think about that night too much, but I remember hearing him fall in his bedroom.

He had seizures frequently, and I knew he had more than likely just had a seizure, so I ran into his room to check on him.

When I opened the door, he was on the floor, his whole body jerking from the seizure. I dropped to my knees and held him as still as I could, but since he had turned ten, it became increasingly difficult for me to help him due to the fact that he was already bigger than me.

I did my best, holding his head until it was over.

It wasn't until the seizure had stopped completely that I noticed the blood. It was all over my hands and on my clothes. I started to panic when I saw the gash on the side of his head. Blood was everywhere.

When he had fallen from the seizure, he hit his head on the door hinge going down. They didn't have a phone in their home, and neither did I, so I was forced to leave him alone in the room while I ran to their neighbor's house and called 9-1-1.

By the time I returned, he was no longer breathing. I'm not sure he ever took another breath after the moment I left him.

I changed after that night.

—Without You With Me by Matt Hansen—

Before that moment, I held on to a little hope for my life. I had hoped that all my bad luck had been dispersed early on in my life and that things would only get easier.

But that night changed my way of thinking.

Luke could have fallen anywhere in that bedroom other than where he did. In fact, the doctor said the location of his injury was so unfortunate, he could have fallen a mere five centimeters to the left or right and he would have been fine.

Five centimeters. That's all that separated Luke from life.

I obsessed over that five centimeters for months. I obsessed over it because I knew that if he had fallen five centimeters to the left or right, his survival would have been referred to as a 'miracle.'

But what happened to Luke was the opposite of a miracle. It was a tragic accident.

A tragic accident that made me lose my belief in miracles altogether.

By the time I was thirteen, anything labeled as a 'miracle' pissed me the hell off.

Lots of people die from cancer. Where was their miracle? Did their friends not pray enough? Why didn't they get their miracle? Does God think less of their lives than those whose lives he spares?

No.

Sometimes cancer is cured...sometimes it isn't. Sometimes people hit their heads and die, most of the time they hit their heads and survive.

And anytime you hear of a person beating the odds...that's all they're doing. Beating the odds.

Because people never really think about how, in order to beat the odds, a lot of unfortunate deaths have to occur for that particular survival to be considered 'out of the norm.'

Maybe Luke's death hardened me to the idea of miracles, but in my mind, you either survive or you don't. The journey from first breath to death has nothing to do with miracles, how much you pray, coincidences, or divine intervention.

Sometimes a person's journey from first breath to death isn't always part of a master plan.

Sometimes the only thing that separates your final breath from your death is a mere five centimeters.

That's why, when the doctor walked into the waiting room to update me on Clay's condition, I had to sit down when he said, "If the bullet had made an impact just five centimeters to the left or right of where it did, Clay would have died instantly. Now all we can do is pray for a miracle."

I failed to tell the doctor that I don't believe in miracles.

Clay is either going to survive...or he's not.

—