The pain was gone. I was feeling nothing. Not even my own weight. My vision was hazy, My hearing was indistinct. It was as if the sounds were reaching my ears from across a great distance. I felt myself rising. I resisted, I tried to grab something to anchor myself but I just couldn’t get a grip. I rose and kept rising, all the while struggling to fall back.

I saw a woman lying on a bed below me, her hair tousled, her eyes rolled over, her mouth agape as if frozen mid-scream. The face was terrifying, not because it was grotesque or disfigured but because it was the face of terror. There was a faint hum of the ceiling fan, the distant buzz of the street sounds coming from the direction of the window and an eerie deafening silence. Silence which crushed me all around, which hurt me like no decibel had ever had. I could not make out of it was night or day, there was a hazy glow all around me, it seemed as if my vision extended only to a small sphere around me, I couldn’t see beyond. The woman on the bed was hovering on the edge of my vision.

I felt her face was familiar, I strained to remember. I did not want to leave her and yet something was pulling me away. I wanted to go to her, rouse her, hold on to her, but I could not go near her, I just seemed to be bouncing away in a  bubble; away from her. I pushed against the walls of the bubble which was moving away..

The woman just slipped from my vision; I strained to see her but beyond my bubble, I could see nothing. Then the walls began to close in on me and darkness enveloped me, it seemed, my bubble growing smaller and smaller was floating through various scenes.

I saw a baby, a little girl, an adolescent and other people in scenes as if from a movie. Everything was familiar and yet long forgotten. Faces and scenes merging into one another , as I hurtled down in my contracting bubble. I struggled to slow down, to break the bubble, to escape. I tried to call out, to reach out to the people I was travelling through, to stop before the bubble closed in on me. The darkness outside frightened me.

Somewhere in the distance, I saw a pinpoint of light, fast approaching. I seemed to be headed towards that light. It was blinding, growing in size every moment. It was dazzling and it frightened me more than the darkness. I turned around frantically in my bubble grasping at the transient faces. At last there was only one left, a face I knew had to grab, my only chance.

I lunged at it with all I had, gave out a terrifying silent scream and then all was dark.

-------------------------------------************************-------------------------------When I came around, I was in an unfamiliar room. It was a hospital. The nurse was writing down something, the doctor was talking to my husband. My husband looked beaten. A week’s growth of stubble on his face, clothes pulled on haphazardly and eyes which had been denied sleep for days.

They hadn’t seen me opening my eyes. The doctor was the first to notice and he let the others know with a gasp. My husband jerked his head towards my face and almost collapsed.

I closed my eyes. When I woke up next, my husband was by my side, neatly dressed, shaven and smiling apprehensively. I asked what happened, but I didn’t hear my voice. He seemed to understand and told me about my heart attack a week ago. 

I was alone, still asleep when my heart gave up beating. He was miles away, asleep in another time zone. He was jolted out of his dreamless sleep by my scream from across the country. He called the couple living in the apartment downstairs and raced to the airport.

Apparently, my husband had snatched me from the very jaws of death.