You Had Me at Goodbye

A Near-Death Experience

She is standing staring at an empty blank space, it is dark—that is all she can think of because it is all she can see of. It seems like she is standing still at an end or a corner of a room. Lisa was on her third month into the clinical trial when they found out that her system could no longer compromise the medicine and her body had slowly rejected the treatment. It no longer affected her positively, so with Lisa's consent they changed her treatment plan to the traditional one; the chemotherapy worked for the first two sessions but the third one took a toll on her, her stats were dropping and her body seemed to be starting to give up on her. Yet Lisa was determined to get better whatever it took so she pushed Nikola to continue with the treatment plan.

She should be undergoing her fourth treatment today but instead, there she is now staring at an empty space and the last thing she can recall is an excruciating pain taking over her body then there she is, opening her eyes to deep dark space.

Wait—

Has she gone blind?

But if she does, then she must still feel the aches all over her body—she does not; her body is lighter and she cannot even remember how the pain feels much like crushing her body that she feels nothing is worth fighting for if it means she must go through that kind of hell.

Ah.

Is she in limbo?

Just as the thought appears in her mind suddenly at the corner of her eyes, a glimpse of light appears and when she turns her head in surprise, she finds herself staring at what she figures as an old recorded movie. But it is not quite because in the moving pictures she sees herself.

Is it her sleeping?

It is indeed her. Lisa looks at a mini her sleeping in her room back at her parents' house in Thailand. Speaking of her parents, she can see her mother and father kissing her temple in turn as well. Lisa watches the scene before her eyes trying to recall in which part of her life the scene took place; it was when she was seven and a few moments of Lisa's most treasured moment she kept locked in the deepest part of her memory, before they all moved to Bangkok. It was back at the time when her parents were still able to spend time with her, reading her bedtime stories and tucking her to bed.

It is one of her fondest memory.

One she has been keeping away for far too long she ends up forgetting it, but it comes oddly to her, reliving it in such a way feels weird to her. What does this all mean?

Then the silent space slowly sparks sounds that fade into her ear gradually and grow audibly—louder and louder. It sounds hectic, like how it is when someone is crashing in an ICU. Then there is a sound—a voice she is familiar with, it is one of her doctors', hits her ears.

'Status' dropping,' sounds so far away but it is clear as it comes.

Is she—

'Start intubation!'

—Dying?

Scientists say that there is a phenomenon called a near-death experience, where the person experiences flashbacks before their death; everything happens so fast like a fast-forwarded recap of their life. Is this it?

"Lalisa, is your mum coming tomorrow?"

Lisa throws her head back to where the voice suddenly appears, as soon as she does that, she is suddenly faced with her homeroom teacher back in grade school. It is blurry yet she can see clearly, it is from one of her memories; this time it is her memory of Mother's Day when her mum was supposed to attend but could not make it.

"Lisa?"

Her teacher asks again, startling her. It feels so real like she is seven again. So she answers, as a seven-year-old Lisa, telling her homeroom teacher that for the first time, her mum must bail on her. The face her teacher wears is so sympathetic, as if she is staring at a tiny helpless puppy. Lisa is about to speak again when suddenly a strong force startling her, it comes out of nowhere as if a black hole suddenly appears behind her and sucks her in mercilessly.