The first time I saw her, my heart stopped. I mean, it really did stop, I died. Me? Who could believe that? I was sixteen and I was dead. Dead and gone, as Dad Person says, though I don’t remember anything of it; I mean, about being dead and gone, although they say some of that may come back. Like, how creepy is that? Anyway, what do they know?
But I remember the girl. How could I not? One look at her killed me. Heart attack? That’s what everybody said after the thing happened. Well, that’s what they said when the thing was over and I was back in, as Dad Person calls it, the land of the living. You, Kyle? A heart attack? At sixteen years old? And they’d stand gawking down at me in the hospital bed and me helpless and them just standing there with big eyes getting bigger and with open mouths sucking in air after they’d fired the question at me. Cardiac arrest, if you don’t mind, I told them. Heart attacks are for the old, like the over thirty, and are to do with arteries and blockages and fatty food and stuff, or maybe just age and usage. Cardiac arrests can happen to the young and aren’t much to do with anything other than bad luck and being born with a weakness in the heart, a hidden deadly weakness. And I’d throw in a touch of drama and shunt in the bed and stare up at them and they’d commiserate and console by sympathetic nods twisted through a shake of incredulity. Like, I was fit. Well, pretty fit. For sure, I was fitter than most. I played football all the time. No seriously, all the time; every day. And I ran in the cross-country. And I was good at that; I have two gold medals from the All-Ireland National Youth Championships. I cycled to school. I walked the dog with Dad Person. I played badminton with Girlish Boy and Boyish Girl, the two goofiest goofballs on the whole planet, so we could do sport together. We had tried tennis but Girlish Boy said we hit the ball too hard and so we settled on badminton. And I was good at that too, though not as good as Boyish Girl. She is really good. She hits fast and hard and takes no prisoners. I mean, I was the fittest of us all. Girlish Boy always said I had a fit body. But then, he would. But still, he wasn’t wrong; even I knew that. Boyish Girl said I was all right for a poser. A poser I wasn’t, but that was just her being nice. Even she got a shock with the whole thing. Even she cried, and that’s as rare as a snake in Clonakilty. I mean, a real snake and not a slime-ball, there’d be loads of them down there, they’re everywhere. I’d have cried myself, if I had been there. But I missed it. I was dead.
So how did it happen? I’m not sure. It just happened. It was an evening game in early August and I had a shot at goal and missed, it wasn’t one of my best, and I had run back to midfield and I was having a bit of a breather. She stood alone by the near sideline. The sun was falling low and her orange-yellow hair was on fire. It wasn’t really on fire, it just looked that way. The goalkeeper kicked the ball out and it dropped to the other side of the field and I let it go and held my place. For some reason I was tired. I turned to face her and she looked to me, like right into me. She had Arctic blue eyes. That is, I think she had Arctic blue eyes. And I think she had clear white skin and I think she had pale lips. And she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. And I don’t think that. I know it. But I’m not sure of the rest, not really. I mean, I’m sure the girl was there; I have checked with Girlish Boy who goes to all my football games and he thinks he might have seen her. But Dad Person says we need to be careful with Girlish Boy, that he might think that he saw her and even believe that to be because that’s what I want and so his thinking and memory will lean that way. Dad person says it’s not Girlish Boy’s fault; that such seeing and thinking can’t be helped and that it is a very human thing and that it comes from a pure place. For sure, no one knows who she is. No one had seen her before and no one has seen her since. I mean, she is one big mystery. But I am sure about her hair, that orange-yellow fire. Sunlight, that’s what she is. But the rest could be imagined, the skin, the eyes, the lips; for at that moment, I died.
They tell me it was a big drama. Some of the boys got sick with the fright of the whole thing. Girlish Boy was hysterical. The boys were good with him, they always are, they’ve got used to him and in their own way they are fond of him; but he says he will never forgive me for doing something like that, for putting him through that. As if I had anything to do with it. It’s a weird thing, but everyone knows more about it than me. I was lucky and that’s the real truth of it. I was lucky to survive. Dad Person says it was a miracle and that maybe God does exist, and if Dad Person can say that after what happened to Dear Departed Mother then that is something. I don’t know if it was a miracle, I’m not that ready to admit to a God or to forgive a God for Dear Departed Mother, but then I missed the whole thing and so I didn’t get the fright and conversion that Dad Person got. I think I was just lucky because the dad of a boy on the other team is a doctor; and, wait for this, he is a heart doctor, a cardiologist, and he was there. Like, how goofy is that? A doctor’s son was playing on the other team and he was there at the game. I mean, the dad was there. I mean that’s just freaky. Any way I think about it or measure the chances of that happening, I mean, he being a cardiac doctor and he being there, was a very lucky thing. And that man saved my life. In fact, if truth be told, that man gave me a new life.
It’s now day fourteen of this new life and I was here in the hospital for ten days before I even knew I was here, or anywhere. For me it was a not so good shot, a run back to midfield, a kick-out by the goalkeeper, seeing the girl with the orange-yellow hair, a kind of dizziness, seeing two of everything, and then the strange smell of the hospital. To me it was a series of events, just one odd procession. To everyone else it was chaos and shock and worry and will he pull through or not and how could a thing like this happen? But I missed that. Dad Person was with me all the time here in the hospital. There was nothing he could do about the passing of Dear Departed Mother, though I know he doesn’t always believe that, and, to be honest, there was nothing much he could do about me. But he was going to try. If death came to take me it was going to have to get past Dad Person and that was going to be some fight. Boyish Girl and Girlish Boy were here too, of course, and had to be told to go home, and had to be told often. There’s no getting away from those two and I think that if I had died they might have tried to jump in the grave with me. Boyish Girl would never admit that, of course, she’s all blowing and tut-tutting and dismissing any attention and concern as fuss. Girlish Boy has no problem admitting it.
That was four days ago, the waking up in hospital. I would have come around sooner naturally, like on my own steam; but they kept me down to give me the best chance to survive as myself. The risk in something like this is surviving with pieces broken or missing and waking up as somebody else altogether. That must be weird for all involved and I know I am lucky to come back as me. Not that I’m a splendid fellow and that it would be a shame to lose me or change me or anything like that; I don’t mean it that way. But I still know who I am and I remember the things that make me. There are some changes though; an attack like that leaves damage. But that, according to the doctors and nurses, is normal. Normal? I guess I will have to get used to a new normal.
But there is one change that is not normal. At least, I think it is not normal. Nobody has mentioned it; not the doctors and not the nurses and not the therapist. And I haven’t mentioned it to them. Well, I did tell one of the nurses about the weird stuff but she said it was nothing, that it was probably the drugs and the shock. And she said it would pass. But it hasn’t.
Day 15
Mr Daniel Bradley is beside my bed and listening. He is a tall, stooped, angular cardiologist with a bony face and a pointy nose. He stands with a leaning slant, with his left shoulder lower than his right. He could do with putting on a few kilos; a little flesh would hide some of the bones. Dr Mavis Davis is reading my charts. She is a mousey-blonde with chubby fingers and she moves with a bit of a plod. It is fifteen days since the big event and they tell me I’m doing well ‘considering’ and they ask if I have any questions.
‘Why is the sky blue?’ I ask.
‘Mr Bradley is a busy man, Kyle,’ Dr Davis rebukes with a sharp look and flicking her tongue off the top of her meaty mouth.
‘It isn’t blue at all, my young friend,’ the big bony face answers. ‘It is just a scattering of light. More than other colours, blue scatters across the air molecules because it has a shorter wavelength.’
‘Good man, Doctor Dan,’ I tell him. ‘So you’re not just a pretty face. But if that is so,’ I ask, pushing on now I have him on the ropes, ‘then why is the sun yellow?’
‘It’s just yellow because it’s yellow,’ Dr Mavis Davis snaps with a shake of her head. Her name isn’t really Mavis, that’s just my addition. Her real name is Dr Darcell Davis. Like what? Darcell? But, Mavis works better, so I go with that.
‘Well, Mavis,’ I ask her, ‘is it? Or is it actually white? Or what’s going on? Is it all codology or what?’
But she just shakes her head again and ushers Dr Dan from the room.
‘And it’s Mister Bradley and Doctor Davis,’ Mavis Davis says turning back. ‘You may be unwell, Kyle, but that is no excuse for insolence.’
I give her my best frightened-face look, grab the sheets and pull them to my chin. She gives another shake of that not so pretty head and stamps away off.
‘There she blows,’ I call after her.
Day 16
I have the dream again. I think it’s a dream. No, that’s not true, as I’m not sure if it is a dream. It’s hard to explain what I mean. Like, I know it is a dream as I was asleep and I remembered it when I woke up; but I’m not sure if the dream is made up of dream stuff, the way some dreams are, or if is made up of memory stuff, the way other dreams are. And, also, I don’t usually remember my dreams beyond the first minute after waking up. But this one I remember; and I remember it because I think it is true, like it really happened. And the dream is that I was dead. Hey, I know that I was dead, like really dead, like it did happen and that’s why I’m here in hospital. But in the dream I am dead and I know that I’m dead and yet I am aware of it and I’m still there, not there as in here in an Earthly alive kind of way, but there as in elsewhere, like that I still exist but different. And I think it might be real, I think the being dead part is coming back, but only in my sleep. Weird or what? But I’m saying nothing until I get it figured out.
Day 17
I can now walk. Not long treks or anything like that, no mountaineering or cross-continental escapades, but I can walk around the hospital. It’s a big deal, apparently; and I am being congratulated by the staff here. Who would have thought that I would win praise for a slow fifty metres saunter down a bleached corridor? But there’s one of the changes straight there. And I’m answering the questions correctly; again, apparently, that’s a thing worthy of great praise. Again, who would have believed that it would be such a big thing for me to know my name, and where I live, and who my family are, and where I go to school, and lots of simple stuff? The family question isn’t difficult in any case; it’s just me and Dad Person.
Day 19
Dr Dan and Mavis Davis are above me doing their thing. He is prompting and she is reading my charts.
‘Any questions?’ he asks, turning to me with that bony face.
I give Mavis Davis a quick smile before I ask. ‘Where does sound go Doctor Dan? Like, I mean, does it keep going on forever and ever and ever, travelling out into the infinite? Or does it falter and weaken and fall? Does gravity get a hold of it and pull it down? Gravity is a tricky thing. Is there some alien campfire out there where the gathered are puffing weed and having a singsong to Bowie’s Hunky Dory, or is sound hauled down to a silent buried nothing?’
‘Well, Kyle, science tells us sound doesn’t travel through space. And, anyway, sound waves attenuate, that is they weaken and diminish until they are nothing at all.’
‘Attenuate,’ I say to him. ‘That’s mad fancy. But are you sure?’
‘Yes. Well, that’s what they say. But who knows anything? So I’m going with a couple of kooks around that campfire,’ he says as Mavis Davis shuffles him out the door.
‘You’re the man, Doctor Dan,’ I call after him.
Day 20
Dad Person has gone home and I had to insist on that, and I have moved to a different ward. There are four beds in this room and two patients are already here. Both are old men. They heard about me, it seems, and they are delighted that I join them. And, I mean, really delighted, and they don’t hide their big smiles as I get wheeled in.
‘It’s great to get you here, young fellow,’ Old Grey next to me says, not bothering to mask his pleasure at my arrival. ‘It’s great to get you here.’
Old Bald across from me is nodding and smiling.
‘Thanks,’ I answer. ‘But I’d much rather be out kicking ball,’ and then I add a little spice to the admission, ‘and chasing women.’
‘And do you do that often?’ Old Grey asks.
‘Almost every day.’
‘Be-god,’ he says, ‘that’s a lot of women.’
And Old Bald across nods along.
‘Are we missing someone?’ I ask, pointing to the empty bed by the window.
‘Peadar’s bed,’ Old Grey says.
‘Has he gone home?’ I ask
‘You could say that,’ he says, he too looking across to the empty bed. ‘He’s dead.’
I say nothing.
‘We’re running two to one here,’ Old Grey continues. ‘I have been here some time and I’ve been keeping score, and one in three hasn’t made it.’
I look around, well, I don’t need to be Andrew Wiles to do the maths; and Old Bald across is watching me and he is nodding and, weirdly, he is smiling. Man, I think to myself, I have landed with two goofballs. Some things never change.
Girlish Boy and Boyish Girl arrive for the evening parley. Boyish Girl acknowledges the two other occupants with a faint flick of her head. Girlish Boy introduces himself to each, asking their names, shaking their hands, checking if they need for anything, pouring their water; everything except puffing their pillows and tucking them in.
‘You should be a nurse,’ I say to him.
‘I should, shouldn’t I?’ he answers with a roll of his shoulders. ‘How would I look in the uniform?’
‘Very pretty,’ I tell him, knowing that’s the most desirable answer and he adds a rocking to the rolling shoulders.
Boyish Girl lifts her eyes to the gods. ‘Jaysus,’ is all she says.
I look about the room and note the old men absorb every move and word of the arrivals.
‘That’s as interesting a two yolks as your likely to come across,’ Old Grey releases, again not finding it necessary to curb his opinion with sensitivity. ‘Where in the name of God did you gather those?’
‘I gathered them in school,’ I tell him. ‘I felt sorry for them.’ And both visitors roll their eyes.
Dad Person arrives.
‘I told you to stay at home,’ I tell him. ‘I’m fine now. Honest.’
‘I’ll only rest an hour,’ he says. ‘All right, Jack? All right, Jane?’ he asks the two amigos. He sometimes calls them that for no solid reason at all. He’s that kind of a dad.
‘Jack and Jane?’ Old Grey says. ‘This gets better by the minute.’
‘That’s not their real names,’ I tell him, and now he starts nodding and smiling, but with something of a question carried in that smile.
‘Jack and Jane,’ he repeats. ‘Which is which?’ And then he laughs, but laughs too quick, the laugh breaking into a choking cough.
‘Be careful there,’ I tell him. ‘I’d hate to lose you already. Mind you,’ and I give a thumbs up to Old Bald, ‘it would put us two in the clear.’ Old Bald returns the salute with a smile and a nodding head. Girlish Boy rises and gives my coughing neighbour a glass of water and the old man thanks him and settles down to listening.
‘Any word on Sunlight?’ I ask.
‘No word, Son,’ Dad Person answers, pulling his mouth tight and shaking his head. ‘No word at all.’
‘We might never find her,’ Boyish Girl says. ‘Whoever she is, she is gone.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Girlish Boy protests. ‘We’ll find her. We will. Whatever it takes. She can’t have disappeared into nowhere. She must be somewhere.’
‘I checked above in the barracks,’ Dad Person says. ‘But no joy. The guards say she could be anybody and at that time of year there’d be a lot passing through; tourists and that, and many stopping for a break on the way to somewhere else, many stop at the park for a picnic or a stretch of the legs. She may have stopped with her family and wandered over to the football field for a walk. She could have come from anywhere and be gone to anywhere, there’s just no way to know.’
‘Thanks, I tell him. ‘It was good of you to go to the police. They must have thought you were mad, with a story like that.’
‘I wasn’t the first to ask,’ he says, as he glances at Boyish Girl. ‘Someone else is bullying them to keep the search going. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?’
Only Dad Person would salute Boyish Girl as sweetheart. And only from him does she allow that kind of softness. But he has called her that from the start, from the day the three of us met and became friends, the day Dad became Dad Person.
Mr Person
It was a sunny day, I remember that. It was a bright day and in bright days all things are possible and the world travels easy. Dad Person had me well prepared, had built the thing up slowly over a long time, had put on a happy show though I know now that must have been hard for him, had been upbeat and encouraging about what he called the new adventure and so I went to my first day at school ready for great things. I remember I was the only child who didn’t walk through the gate holding a mother’s hand. Some of the other children and mothers knew each other and gathered in clusters in the school yard. Three children stood apart near the school door as if the unknown on the inside would be a relief from the awkwardness of the wait in the yard. It took a while for the school to get things together that morning, checking names to lists and all that, and so by the time we were called the three of us had, in the commonality of our lonely stand, formed a bond and so we entered together, sat together, and have been together ever since. Three goofballs we began. Three goofballs we remain. I wouldn’t, in the regular evaluation of such things, really qualify for that definition, I’m normal enough in most ways. The distinction was won only by association. Until now that is. Until the day I saw Sunlight. Until the day I fell to the ground and at sixteen years of age had a cardiac arrest and the thing being such an odd event that the whole place knows of it and will speak of it, so that I do now legitimately qualify as a fully certified goofball. Well, ill winds and silver linings and all that.
Sister Marie-Therese was our teacher that first year at school and she rewarded our learning with yellow stars that she stuck on a wall chart, and she issued fruit sweets from a round tin that she kept in her desk. We all got a star and a sweet on the first day just for showing up. I guess she wanted to start us on a positive curve; she was that kind of a nun, a good one. At the end of the first day she took my hand and held me back as the other boys and girls ran to their mothers who waited with anxious faces in the yard.
‘And you, Kyle?’ she asked, hunkering down and gently pushing my hair back on my four year old forehead. ‘What person is coming for you?’
She knew about Dear Departed Mother. Everyone did. In small places everyone knows everything.
I looked through the open door into the bright yard. And there he stood, tall, and with happy expectant eyes looking at me. I lifted my arm and pointed. ‘Dad Person,’ I told her. And he has been Dad Person since.
We have been in places over the years, restaurants and such like, where staff have heard me address him and they took to calling him Mr Person. Mr Person, like, how funny is that? And we never corrected them and we held on to the laughter until we got outside and then we let it go and spill and fall all over us. Mr Person, I love it.
Day 22
Mavis Davis and Dr Dan are hovering about me again. Tightened faces and pushed mouths read through my charts.
‘You are very ill,’ Dr Dan tells me. ‘Your heart may be damaged beyond . . . . Well, we need to look at options.’
Options? I thought I was doing great.
Mavis Davis shifts in her heavy stance. ‘Do you understand, Kyle?’
‘Tell me, Mavis,’ I ask. ‘Have you ever passed a field with cattle stood there, lost to their own thoughts, gazing out into the yonder as they chew the cud and the pulled grass? Well, I wonder. What do cows think of?’
‘Their thoughts are limited by their own perceptions,’ Dr Dan replies immediately, like real quick, no delay at all, very impressive. ‘They probably don’t think much beyond the search for fodder, and, in the case of a bull, mating.’
‘Thought limited by perception,’ I say, ‘that’s very good Doctor Dan. Very philosophical. Then let’s extrapolate on this. Have you ever seen an arsehole sleep? I mean a real arsehole, not a biological one; you guys would see loads of them in your business. No, I mean a badass, a twat, that type of an arsehole. Well, they look as good and innocent as anyone, when they’re asleep. But they aren’t. I mean, they’re not good and innocent. So I wonder. What do arseholes dream of? Do they dream of hope and fear and funny little things like the rest of us? Or do they dream of being arseholes and doing arsehole stuff?’
Dr Dan and Mavis Davis lean from foot to foot and glance at each other, but I don’t get an answer. Seems I dried them out on the cow business. Oh, well.
Day 23
I’ve stopped getting better. Even I know that. Like, I’m not getting worse or anything, well, I don’t think so, but I’m just not getting better. It’s like I’m stuck at this betterness.
Day 24
Dad Person has his worried face on as he listens to Dr Dan explain things. Mavis Davis has pulled the privacy-curtain around the consultation but I can feel Old Grey leaning over for a listen. Anyway, I will tell him everything later, so it’s no problem, he’s welcome to the news. The talk goes on some time and includes discussions on a move to Dublin or London and transplants and lists and such things. I don’t say much. When the wind blows out of the talk they look to me.
‘Any questions, Kyle?’ Mavis Davis asks, though not before she has a route cleared for an abrupt exit. She is already pushing the curtain back.
‘Tell me, Mavis,’ I ask. ‘Why is it that you are a doctor and the tall fellow here is a mister?’
‘It’s just a title of respect for surgical consultants, Kyle. Mister Bradley is still Doctor Bradley. There’s nothing in it.’
‘Well, it’s a bit arseways, if you ask me.’
‘Nobody’s asking you, Kyle.’
‘Yes you were. You definitely asked me, everybody heard. And, actually, Mavis, in the old days, doctors used not do their own surgery, like the cutting and chopping and tying and the bloody messy stuff. Instead they’d bring in a butcher or a slaughterer or someone skilled with a knife and stand and instruct during operations. And that cutter and chopper was called Mister whatever-his-name-was and, well, it has kind of stuck. So, it seems, you’re working for a butcher.’
Dr Dan’s slanted bony shoulders are rocking as Mavis Davis makes a noisy escape clucking her tongue.
‘He reads a lot of books,’ Dad Person offers.
Day 25
Dr Dan and Mavis Davis stand by my bed. It is morning.
‘How’s our footballer?’ Mr Bradley asks.
‘Tell me, Doctor Dan?’ I ask him. ‘Where does light go? Like, I mean, does it just keep going forever and ever and ever, travelling out into the infinite? Or does it falter and weaken and fall? Does gravity get a hold of it and pull it down? Gravity is a tricky thing.’
‘Light keeps on going,’ he tells me. ‘That’s how we see the stars.’
‘Is it?’ I ask him. ‘Are we sure? And, if so, is light a wave or a particle? Or both? If being both is possible? Or is it, in fact, neither?’
‘It’s a wave, isn’t it? An electro-magnetic wave.’
‘Is it?’ I ask him. ‘How would I know? But is it, perhaps, a charge moving from one entity to another, from one body or source to another, and we just see the journey as a wave. I have been thinking about it and I think it explains everything. I think it explains us. I think part of us is like a charged particle of light. We come from one big light and now we are here in this entity; and when we are finished in this entity or it is finished with us we go back to the one big light. And maybe, from there, we go again. Or, maybe, we never leave there, not really, that what is here is only a resonance of our actual real self, a kind of reflection. Maybe we are the light.’
‘Why do you think that, Kyle?’ he asks.
‘Just something I saw,’ I tell him.
They gather around in the evening visiting hours.
‘Any joy on Sunlight?’ I ask.
They shake their heads.
‘Jaysus, I tried every internet search engine and chat-room I can think of,’ Boyish Girl says. ‘Those chat-rooms are full of weirdoes.’
‘She’s been on that computer every night,’ Girlish Boy says. ‘She’s been asking people all around the world. I’ve no idea about that computer stuff.’
‘I’ve tried a bunch of questions into AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, and Northern Light,’ Boyish Girl continues. ‘Also tried the new Google one. But, we just don’t have anything to go on. I might have better luck in a newsgroup. But looking for a girl with white skin and red hair, in Ireland? Jaysus, it’s like going out on a wet day looking for a puddle.’
‘Thanks,’ I tell her. ‘You are doing great. And it’s orange-yellow hair, but don’t worry, we’ll find her.’ And I break into song, ‘I just can’t help believing.’ And finish with, ‘Uh huh huh.’ I give Dad Person a smile. Dad Person is a big Elvis fan. He has those old record things and he does the Uh huh huh voice when he has had a few pints of Harp. Apparently, Elvis used to say that a lot. I get no response to my rendition and imitation of the King. ‘And, hey,’ I continue, ‘better get your computing stuff done pronto. They’re going to explode or something at midnight on New Year’s Eve. And banks and businesses will fall, money will disappear into an abyss or something, and the world economy will collapse and there will be wars and it will be the finish of man. They say 1999 will be the end of the world. And they’re right. That Millennium Bug is going to kill us.’ I get blank faces. ‘Well, either that, or nothing at all is going to happen. It’s hard to know.’
Boyish Girl laughs. ‘Jaysus, it’s just an internal computer clock thing, Kyle, the Y2K problem. It will hardly be the end of the world.’
‘You can never be sure with these things,’ I tell her. ‘Computers and the internet, and now these mobile phones are taking over. Could it be a great conspiracy, a Trojan horse, a takeover by an alien evil empire? Who runs the internet? What’s this Gateway chap about? And who is this Nokia guy? Could he be a dark lord?’
Day 26
I have the dream again. Except this time it is daytime and I am wide awake and so I know that it is not a dream, but a memory. And I know now, how I know, what I know. Well, I think I do. And when visiting time comes I tell them about it. Old Grey and Old Bald are tuned in and don’t miss a word. Dr Dan and Mavis Davis are here too.
‘I felt as if I was light and floating. No, not floating, rising. Yes, that’s it, rising and that I had no weight. I still had a shape but not a body as such, just different. And there was something around me, like curtains, endless curtains. Maybe not curtains, but veils, kind of dark and kind of see-through. But there were gazillions of them, I think, it’s hard to be sure about any of it. And below me I could see the football pitch and a group gathered near the centre-field, then I could see Ireland like on one of those satellite pictures they show on the television weather forecasts, then I could see the Earth falling away and then there were other worlds, zillions of other stars and worlds with wonderful sparkly things and places with stars and planets of all colours, some planets dark, some planets even more beautiful than ours, some huge big fantastic things, some little planetoids or tiny round rock things. It was like I was in some sort of soft funnel or chute or conveyor. I don’t know. Then at the end of this chute there was a great gleaming light that was . . . well, it was as if it was calling to me. No, not calling, but waiting. And waiting with all the patience and kindness that is humanly possible. No not humanly, more than that, much more than that. And I think that is the one big light.’ And I look to Dr Dan.
He nods and then he asks, ‘And were you afraid, Kyle?’
‘No, not even a small bit,’ I tell him. ‘I was confused. But I felt safe, comfortable. It’s weird, but it was kind of natural, like I should be there, like I belonged there.’
‘What did it feel like?’ Dr Dan asks.
‘It felt the way it used to feel when I was small and Dad Person collected me from school and brought me home holding my hand. It felt the way it used to feel when he put the key in the lock and opened the door and we went in.’
‘You mean, it felt like going home?’ Dr Dan asks.
‘Yes, that’s it exactly. It felt like home.’
There is quiet in the room. Even Old Grey is short of a comment.
‘Jaysus, Kyle,’ Boyish Girl says, and everyone laughs.
‘You know, Kyle,’ Dr Dan says, ‘the medical profession has a view on such, apparently mystical, events. When the body suffers a failure or crisis the brain goes into a form of reflex self-protection. Inhibitory systems fail. Areas are shut down; this might explain you seeing dark veils. Energy and oxygen are concentrated into a core region of the brain provoking over stimulation of the visual nerves; this might explain the one gleaming light. Research suggests that certain areas of the brain burst into a final pulse of signals; this might explain why some people get a life review like a series of images, and this might explain your journey through those other worlds. And through the trauma the brain emits a blast of endorphins, neurotransmitters provoking a sense of pleasure, and so you would feel safe and comfortable.’ He pauses and looks around the gathered faces. ‘But, that’s only one view, that’s only the medics.’
‘Yeah, well, what do they know?’ I suggest. ‘They say Elvis is dead.’ And I give Dad Person a wink. Anyway, there was something else that I didn’t tell them.
Day 27
The worried faces of Dr Dan, Mavis Davis, and Dad Person are above me. Dr Dan gives the news. I listen and I don’t say much. Actually, I don’t say anything, I’m just too tired. They speak of my hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the thickening of the muscles in my heart, and what can be done, and what can’t. It isn’t good.
Day 28
Mavis Davis and Dr Dan sit by my bed. I’m feeling better.
‘We want to ask you about your resonance is me theory, Kyle,’ Dr Dan begins. ‘I see now where you get your one big light idea, but how did you come to the charged particle?’
‘Well it was after my visit to one big light that I was thinking about Mister Redmond.’
‘Who’s Mister Redmond?’ Mavis Davis asks.
‘Mister Redmond lives across the street from us. He and Missus Redmond have four children, and they are all girls. Mister Redmond was the neatest man ever. He had the neatest garden on the street. And he had the cleanest Toyota Corolla in Ireland. Every Saturday he cleaned and polished that car. It was like new. He always wore a shirt and tie and blazer. He only took his blazer off when he worked in his garden or cleaned his car, and even then he wore a buttoned cardigan. Mister Redmond refereed our football games from his garden gate. And in summer, during Wimbledon, we’d play tennis on the road and he would umpire, calling out the scores, Fifteen Love, Deuce, Advantage Kyle, and all that. And he would make the line and net calls, you know, Out, Net, Second Serve, all that umpire stuff, and that wasn’t easy as there was no net at all, only an imaginary one. Then, a couple of years ago he started to get unwell, you know, the old people’s thing. Last time I saw him he was in a highchair and his girls were feeding him. He didn’t know me. He didn’t know the girls. And I’ve wondered about that. Like, he was still there, and yet he wasn’t there. So where did Mister Redmond go?’
‘Aren’t you a bit young to be worrying about such things?’ Mavis Davis says.
‘When is the best age to start?’ I ask her.
She doesn’t answer.
‘Go on with your story, Kyle,’ Dr Dan says.
‘When I went to one big light, I didn’t have a body, well, not this body anyway. I’m not sure if I had a shape that could be explained or understood, not now, though I’m sure I understood when I was there, and I’m sure I remembered when I was there, and that’s a fierce curious thing as my brain was still on the football field. So what part of me travelled? And what part of Mister Redmond is missing? And is it the same part?’
‘And what do you think?’ Dr Dan asks, leaning forward.
‘No. It isn’t. It can’t be, if we think about it.’
‘Go on,’ says Dr Dan.
‘We all have a physical part, a body. And we all have a thinking part, a mind.’
‘You mean a consciousness,’ Dr Dan says.
‘Yes, a thinking part that is intentional and unintentional, like dreaming and stuff. And some believe that we have a spirit part, like a soul. But the spirit part and the thinking part get mixed up. People believe our spirit includes our thoughts and ideas and conscience. But it doesn’t. The spirit is a lot more than that, and yet a lot less in a crazy kind of way. I think our spirit part is our knowing part, I think we already know everything but that this light inside of us cannot interfere or interact in a Earthly way, so that we do not know what we know whilst in a human life, that we must learn anew for some reason, and that those are the rules and somehow we know that and we agreed to that. I think the human body is some kind of retainer and reducer, a carrier and a barrier. And that’s the way it has to be.’
‘I’m doing my best to stay with you, Kyle,’ says the tall doctor, ‘but . . . ‘
‘Okay,’ I continue, on a roll now and just letting the thoughts fall and working them out at the same time. ‘Some believe in a life after this and think that when we die our thinking part will go to some other place and carry memories and conscience and everything with it. But it doesn’t. Mister Redmond is proof of that. His thinking is broken and dying, like my body. Soon his thinking will be totally gone, but Mister Redmond’s physical body will still be there. And so will his spirit. That will only leave him when he dies. But then it will travel having all his knowing and memories and stuff. But if his knowing and memories are in his broken brain and lost, along with his thinking, how can that be? What’s going on?’
‘So what is going on, Kyle?’ Dr Dan asks.
‘Because the knowing part and the thinking part are different things. And his memories and stuff are not and never were in his brain, they were just accessed by it. And when his brain got damaged he lost the way in.’
‘But isn’t Mister Redmond’s memories and stuff damaged and already gone?’ asks the long fellow.
‘No Doc, I don’t think so. Mister Redmond’s thinking part is dying because his brain is dying. My physical part is dying because my heart is dying. The body is of the Earth and belongs to the Earth. It doesn’t leave it. When we die the body dies. And so too with the mind, the thinking part, the consciousness. The thinking part is of the Earth and belongs to the Earth. It doesn’t leave it. When we die the thinking part dies. I see this in the slow drain of Mister Redmond. His thinking part belongs to his brain. And his brain is dying. But his memories and stuff, his life, exist still in some sort of charge. What is lost here is the way in and the communication with it. The knowing part, too, is not of the Earth. It’s that charged particle, the resonance, from the one big light and it’s like a rhythm or energy or vibration or frequency that exists below the physical and thinking stuff. It influences us like the Atlantic Ocean influences Ireland. But it doesn’t do our walking or our thinking. That’s how arseholes and bad people exist; their frequency is fucked up. Those guys, literally, have a bad vibe. Or maybe they don’t have a spirit; perhaps, a life doesn’t need one. Who knows?’
I look to the two doctors and see two squinted faces and two tight mouths.
‘Dad Person, I continue, ‘loves playing these Elvis LPs on his record player. If I listen to these songs I hear the music and I hear a voice. But there is another sound. Underneath the music and the voice there is a static charge. I can hear it in the quiet parts. That’s because these sounds were not built on nothing. That’s because these songs were recorded in a studio with electricity and stuff. And that has a sound, the sound of the physical world. The songs are built over this sound. They are built on something that isn’t part of the song but isn’t an absolute silence either. We too are built like that. We are built on something that isn’t of our physical part and isn’t of our thinking part, but isn’t an absolute nothing or silence either. We are built on a particle of the one big light; we are built on the resonance of ourselves.’
‘But, Kyle,’ says Dr Dan, ‘you visited the one big light and you took your thinking part with you. And you took it back. So how does that work?’
‘Yes, I’ve thought about that,’ I reply. ‘And I think my thinking part didn’t go, but that it was my knowing part returning to the light. But I didn’t go into the light, and that’s the confusion. From that light, I think, there is no return. Not to the same person anyway. Maybe we return to another place. Who knows? And nobody can know because the returning knowing part doesn’t have the physical part or the thinking part of the original living person, what you call the . . . what is that word, I can never get that word out, some words do that, they refuse to work with you.’
‘The consciousness,’ says Dr Dan.
‘Yes that. That dies. And, hey, if you don’t believe, well, just go ask Mister Redmond.’
The usual gang visit in the evening. I’m so tired I can barely talk to them. The one big light and resonance is me discussion has tired me out. I don’t even have the energy to ask about Sunlight.
I doze for some hours and wake to a quiet room. It is the night and Old Grey and Old Bald are asleep. The hospital big chiefs are at home so I ask Julia, the ward nurse, to put on the late radio show, the one where they play the soft stuff, you know, the songs no one can admit to liking, but that, secretly, most everybody does. Everybody except Boyish Girl that is, she is Metallica and Pearl Jam all the way and there is no mush in her music. It’s metal or death with that one. But now it’s just me and Julia the nurse so we put on the radio, nice and gentle, and we really get into it and we give Chicago’s Hard to Say I’m Sorry a fair lashing. And we are just building the thing up to a big finish when I die.
And I’m in that somewhere else again. I recognise it. I know it. And I know I’ve always known it, the floating, no, not floating, rising, the no weight, the shape but not a body as such, just different, the curtains or veils, kind of dark and kind of see-through, And below me Ireland like on one of those satellite pictures, then the Earth falling away and then other worlds, zillions of them, then the great light. And I’m there, not in the light as such, or maybe I am, it’s hard to know. I’m in a garden, no, not a garden but in a beautiful green land of wild grasses and flowers and trees and a small silver river, it’s like Ireland on the most beautiful day ever. Someone approaches, a woman, but not Dear Departed Mother. And not the girl. No, it’s someone else I know. It’s Mavis Davis.
She is in normal clothes, that is Earthly clothes for civilian use and not hospital wear, and she looks different out of her regular medical gear, and she looks different out of her regular human form. ‘Hey, Mavis,’ I greet her. ‘You fooled me there for a moment. You almost look . . . ehh . . . something.’
‘What?’ she asks.
‘Human,’ I tell her.
‘Still a funny guy, Kyle,’ she says. ‘Did you miss me?’
‘Yes,’ I tell her. And, madly, it is true.
‘How can you be here?’ I ask her. ‘Are you dead too?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m still there, but here too. Isn’t it a crazy thing altogether. The whole show is fantastic, magical. It’s very tricky. Of course, the me there doesn’t know about the me here. That’s the way it as to be.’
‘Right,’ I say.
‘I brought a friend of yours,’ she says.
I go to say something clever, but can’t. My brain has frozen. Or wait, I don’t have a brain, that’s still in the hospital. She’s right. This is tricky.
Mavis touches me and tells me to relax. A girl stands by the river. It’s Sunlight. If I don’t die now of joy, then maybe, just maybe, I will live. But no, that can’t be, because I’m dead. But actually, I’m more alive than I have ever been. I mean, I’m Earthly dead, but that’s hardly anything at all. It’s very confusing.
She walks to me. ‘Hallo,’ she says. ‘I’m Birta. I have been thinking about you.’
Thinking about me? That’s so crazy. And what a crazy cool voice she has. I had wondered about her voice. And Birta? What kind of a name is that? But I like it. I like her. Well, more than like. Way more than like. I can’t speak. I can’t even think about speaking. I’m trying to think about speaking. I’m trying to think about thinking. But nothing is working. I probably look like a complete eejit. She touches me and I feel her. I mean I really feel her, like some wild fusion and buzz and connection and it is so good. If this was Earth they’d all think I was having a heart attack. But it isn’t and I should probably tell them that it isn’t a cardiac arrest, just a panic. But I can’t. I might have got the thinking back, but speaking still escapes me. And anyway, I don’t have a heart; that too is back in the hospital. This is mad stuff.
‘I’m Kyle,’ I say, it’s all I can manage.
‘Yes,’ Birta says, and laughs. ‘I know.’
For five Earthly minutes, maybe ten, we don’t speak. I can’t. But the silence could have stretched for a year, or a hundred years, without making any difference. Time here is a different thing. In fact, I’m pretty sure, it isn’t a thing at all. Then we get going and it all comes out in a burst and we don’t stop. She says she lived in Iceland. How cool is that? I tell her a secret, a fact that nobody knows. I tell her that Iceland was first discovered and peopled by the Irish; that we were there before the Vikings, and that we should rightfully claim it back now that things have settled down with the Norsemen. I tell her that’s where she probably gets her flaming hair and pale white skin.
‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘But then, all Icelanders have pale white skin, just like the Vikings.’
‘Okay,’ I tell her. ‘Fair enough. But I still claim the hair for Ireland.’ And she agrees to that.
‘But you were there with me,’ she says. ‘Don’t you remember?’
And now I do.
‘Time to go,’ Mavis Davis says.
‘What?’ I ask turning
And Mavis is walking away through the green and towards a low white cloud. ‘Time to go,’ she says.
Day 33
Yes, I died again. And, yes, I came back again. And when I wake from being dead, I find that I am in the Intensive Care Room and Mavis Davis is holding my hand. Things must be bad. I try to say something, but I can’t.
Day 34
I wake up to a crowd. I don’t know what time it is. I don’t know what day it is. But they are gathered about me. The best I can do is to give them a smile. Girlish Boy is sitting to my right and I can see he is trying not to cry. And Dad Person is sitting by the vital signs unit and I see how old he looks. Boyish Girl is standing at the back of the bed. She shakes her head at me. ‘I hear it was Chicago that did it,’ she says. ‘Jaysus, Kyle, but that shite would floor anybody.’
Mavis Davis walks into the room, the Earthly Mavis, that is.
‘You are my hero, Mavis Davis,’ I say. And she walks to the bed and leans over. ‘It’s a crazy thing altogether,’ I tell her. ‘The whole show is fantastic, magical. It’s very tricky.’
And Mavis leans closer. Yes, I meet the girl of my dreams and what happens? What happens is I get kissed by Mavis Davis.
Day 35
Dr Dan and Mavis Davis bring me the news. I will be transferred for a transplant operation as soon as a suitable donor heart is available. But I need to get better for the trip.
‘No bother,’ I say. ‘I’ll get busy with that.’ And Mavis Davis laughs. Whoohoo!! Someone phone the Pope. It’s a miracle.
Dr Dan asks about the one big light again. The man is obsessed by it. He wants to know why I didn’t go in to it.
‘Why, I don’t know,’ I tell him. In fact, I don’t really know that I wasn’t in it. So I tell him about the green land and the river and the beautiful girl. I say nothing about the other Mavis Davis. ‘Perhaps, it just wasn’t my time, not yet. I don’t know why.’ And then I look to them both and offer my open hands. ‘My life closed twice before its close, It yet remains to see, If Immortality unveil, A third event to me.’
‘Very good, Kyle,’ says Dr Dan. ‘Miss Dickenson, isn’t it?’
I give him a thumbs up and a nod. ‘Miss Emily her very self,’ I tell him. ‘She was a strange cookie.’
And I tell them there was someone there at the one big light on my first voyage. ‘No, maybe not a someone,’ I say, ‘not a someone with arms and legs and stuff, but someone. And, it’s crazy, but it was Dear Departed Mother. Not actually her, I mean not the body and the thinking parts; and not her in a recognisable human way, but, yet, still her; her energy and spirit and that almost silent wonder that was her. I think souls recognise each other. No, more than that; I think souls know each other. At least, I think so. But I’m not sure about any of it. It’s impossible to detail because I’m describing it through human reason; but that doesn’t explain it. It’s very different there.’
‘Your mother died from the same illness,’ Dr Dan says. Man, he’s good. ‘The drama and effort of your birth was too much for her own hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She gave me her heart. What more can a mother give?’
Day 36
I wake up to find Mavis Davis sitting beside me.
‘Hey, Mavis,’ I greet her.
She wants me to tell her again about the girl, to tell her about Sunlight. So I do.
‘Do you think she was a kind of angel?’ she asks.
‘No,’ I tell her. ‘I think she is a kind of friend. Do you remember what I told you about souls and recognition?’
And Mavis Davis nods and rises and makes to go.
‘Mavis,’ I ask her. ‘Where does love go? Like, I mean, does it just keep going on forever and ever and ever, travelling out into the infinite? Or does it falter and weaken and fall? Does gravity get a hold of it and pull it down? Gravity is a tricky thing.’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Do you?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ I tell her.
And she smiles. And she sits back down and takes my hand. ‘Go on,’ she says.
‘Well, I’ve never been with a girl,’ I tell her. ‘So what do I know? But here’s what I think. The physical-part love can last a bit, but only a bit. The thinking-part love will last longer, maybe a whole life. But the resonance and charged-particle-part love, the vibration or spirit or soul thing, that love will last eternity. In fact, it doesn’t begin here. It is already there.’
I’m suddenly tired and sleepy and drift off. And when I awake, Mavis Davis is gone but Doctor Dan is there. He smiles. ‘Hey, Doc,’ I greet him. He nods as he busies himself reading some chart stuff. I guess he wants to chat about the energy is me thing, but doesn’t want to ask and come across fixated or anything like that, he being a big important medical consultant and all that.
‘You know,’ I tell him, ‘it could be that we are waves and that I just see myself as a resonance and charged particle because it’s easier to reach for and hold. I mean, the whole duality thing of wave and particle is a pure puzzle. It would put anyone sideways. It could lead to a crisis. Like, not just who am I, but what am I? Isn’t that right, Doctor Dan? Or what do you think, yourself?’
In the afternoon I am alone with Dad Person. I tell him about Dear Departed Mother. I tell him that they will be together again, like they were before, like they are, like they always will be, because that’s how this light thing works.
Day 38
I have the maddest dream. I’m in the Intensive Care Room, in the dream, and a crowd has gathered. All are here except Mavis Davis who, all say, has been missing since our talk on the theory of love. Maybe that scared her off. Or maybe she’s away playing golf. Who knows? Except, of course, that I have seen her twice since then, so they are all wrong, but anyway, as this is only a dream, I go with it. Girlish Boy is beside me and he is fidgety and keeps grasping his hands the way he does when he watches me play football. They turn when we hear a noise from the corridor. The doors burst open. Everybody jumps up, and Old Grey and Old Bald are pushed through in wheelchairs. The big smiles of the two old fogies would brighten a wet day in Longford. And that’d be a miracle. Nurse Julia is next to enter. Something is happening here. But I’m afraid to guess. It’s not my birthday, is it? No, unless I’ve lost a few months. No, I know today’s date as Dad Person read the sports news to me earlier, so that’s not it. It could be something really big, like . . . . No, I’m afraid to even think that.
‘Hey, Doc,’ I say looking up to Doctor Dan who is standing beside me. ‘I’ve been contemplating matters and I think it’s a cord.’
‘You think what’s a cord, son?’ Mr Bradley of the bony face asks.
‘Light,’ I tell him. ‘You see, Doc, there’s a problem: a wave is not a thing, a wave is what a thing does. A wave must be carried by or through or along something. That’s the rule of nature. And the rule of nature is for everything, even for an electromagnetic wave. So how does light travel through space if nothing is there. All the geniuses tell us that it just does. But does it? I’m not sure about that. Either space must be something or light has its own carrier. And I think it’s a kind of cord. Did I mention the cord before? Like an attachment; a thread or a rope, like a helix perhaps. Something like that. I’m not sure. But that could work. Or the nothing must be something. That would work too. That might explain things.’
Dr Dan pulls a tight face and raises a finger but as he does so the door opens again and Mavis Davis steps in. She is in her regular clothes again too and that shouldn’t happen in a hospital. But, as I say, this is only a dream so I go with it.
‘You probably think this is just a dream,’ Dr Dan says, throwing a spatula in the works.
I ignore him and greet the new arrival, ‘Hey, Mavis. What have you been up to?’
‘Did you miss me?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I tell her. And again, madly, it is true.
‘I brought a friend of yours,’ she says.
I feel excitement bubble through the room. I hear Girlish Boy breathing and he looks ready to burst, the same way he looks when I score a goal and he wants to run on to the pitch.
I go to say something clever, but can’t. Again, my brain has frozen. And this time I do have a brain, even if it’s just a dream brain. Dr Dan touches my hand and tells me to relax. He looks to the vital signs monitor and then nods to Mavis who has a look around then goes back out before entering again pulling a cart with a big glass case on it. And in that glass case there is a heart, and the heart is beating away good even though there are no pipes or pumps or human support system connected to it.
‘Okay,’ Dr Dan says. ‘Let’s clear the room.’
‘What?’ And I must look panicked again.
He smiles to me. ‘Except for Kyle’s new heart, of course,’ he says.
The room empties. The nurses in the monitoring booth pretend to be busy. Nurse Julia takes a seat in the corner and reads a newspaper. They want to give us privacy, but I suppose they’re afraid I’ll die again with the excitement. Nurse Julia knows not to trust me with that stuff.
‘I’m Kyle,’ I say, it’s all I can manage.
‘Yes,’ the heart says, and laughs. ‘I know.’
Day 58
I am transferred to get a new heart. I lie hooked up to various apparatus and contraptions with Dad Person seated on my right. Boyish Girl and Girlish Boy sit on the end of my bed. And on my left is Birta. They don’t know she’s there, of course, but I do. Then Mavis Davis walks in. What is she doing here? She didn’t have to come all this way. Crazy woman. I shake my head and a finger at her. She comes over and touches my arm and checks the monitor and charts. Old habits, I guess. She looks to me, scrunches her face tight, and raises her hairy eyebrows. And then she smiles.
‘So, will you still be you, Kyle?’ she asks. ‘With another’s heart?’
I give a thumbs up.
‘And will you still love us?’ Mavis asks.
I give another thumbs up.
‘And that particle of light inside you?’ she asks. ‘Will it still be buzzing?’
‘Eternally,’ I tell her. And once more give the thumbs up.
‘Then, maybe, those crazy theories of yours are right,’ she says.
I nod. ‘Who knows, Mavis?’ I say. ‘Maybe they are. And maybe you know that. Maybe we all do.’
Behind Mavis, pinned to the wall, are two get-well cards, one each from Old Grey and Old Bald. The two old codgers made it. Perhaps, we’ll beat the odds. I hold Dad’s hand.
Day 65
I am alone with Birta.
‘Hey you, Icelander,’ I tell her. ‘I thought that the first seeing of you stopped my heart. That I couldn’t take the force of it. And it took crazy weird doctors and football-going cardiologists and resonance-from-big-light loving surgical consultants to fix me. But the heart was already gone, and you came for me.’
She smiles and says, ‘If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.’
I nod. How magic is that? For that is an Emily Dickenson line.
‘If I can ease one life the aching,’ Birta carries on. ‘Or cool one pain.’
‘Or help one fainting robin,’ I complete the verse for her. ‘Unto his nest again.’ And I have to reach and touch her and check that this is real, and that I have, unbeknownst, quietly slipped off home into the light.