I saw it coming. I tried to stop it but I was too slow. There was a flash of pain as it smashed into my face. Then I felt the trickle running down my lip, and I knew I was in trouble. The ball my sister had kicked had caught me square on my nose and now the blood was flowing. I have always had problems with nosebleeds and this was a bad time to get one. It was mid-summer in Stockton and the temperature was over a hundred with a forecast low in the nineties overnight. I ran into the house to find my mom. She laid me down in my bed and applied ice pack after ice pack through the night but the bleeding wouldn’t stop. I remember the feeling of the blood soaked pillowcase.

In the morning my parents took me to the hospital, where I was admitted and given transfusions. But I had lost too much blood. They couldn’t replace it fast enough to keep my vitals from crashing. I had slipped into unconsciousness in the car on way there and now I was slipping away. The doctors said they had done all they could and the priest was sent for.

At some point I became aware of my consciousness floating near the ceiling above the bed. I was looking down on my body laying in the bed. My mom was sitting in a chair next to the bed holding my hand. In her other hand she held a rosary that rested in her lap. We were alone in the room and the room was dark except for a shaft of light coming from the open door to the hallway. I don’t remember any sounds, but the visuals were quite clear and distinct.

I woke to find my mom sitting next to the bed holding my hand. Everything was exactly as I recalled from my out-of-body view. It was clear in my mind. My mom later told me that I had flat-lined once before but it was as an infant and  I have no memory of that time. But this time is as clear to me now as it was when it happened. I have read studies which dismiss near death out of body experiences as caused by trauma to the frontal lobe and I can’t deny that is possible. I mean they’re scientists and doctors who study this stuff all the time, but for me to visualize a room I had never been in down to the clothes my mom was wearing…I don’t know…you tell me.