In the hospital, I lay half-dead. Now, life for me was everything. I had a decent life. But now I lie in a bed that isn’t mine, and I have forgotten who I am. Nothing, and I mean nothing, matters at this point. Then I flat-lined.

  Everything was so vivid. When I watched as my life flashed before my eyes in a cinematic motion, the first echo of my life was the smell of cut grass and the summer heat. I don’t know when this was. My father was out on the lawn trimming our shrubs, and I was sitting on a blanket? No, this isn’t right. No, this is not my life. I started to pick up the stuffed lion I called Leo. He wasn’t around anymore, so why? Why is this supposed to mean something?

   As the remembrance of my life played on, I watched myself go through the school doors for the first time. And I watched my last time walking out. I watched myself fall in love and fall out of it. I watched my career flourish, and I watched it die. I watched myself get married. I watched my husband die from cancer. I watched myself struggle to thrive without him. These memories were my life.

  The last final memory that played out was me driving down the road while it was storming. I was driving faster than I should have. It was his anniversary; Jack is dead. I was alone. I was drowning in despair because of my grief. One moment I was driving on the road, and the next I was rolling down the hill. I prayed that if I were going to die at that moment, I would meet him again somehow. I had nothing else to live for, and I was ok with dying. The impact came and again and again, and each time I bled more. Then I hit my head so hard everything went black.

  My life on this Earth has ended, and I don’t know what it was worth. Was I truly happy or fighting to survive? No, I was never truly happy. What was there to be happy about? Yes, I had a loving family and a good job that I partially didn’t care for. But I never became an artist who lived out their dreams. I never got to have my little cottage in the outskirts of Florence, Italy. I never got to see Jack, and I started a family. I regret wading through life with my spirit chained down. I regret not spending more time with him before the disease took his life.

  Maybe my life was something, although it might never be in history books or even in someone’s memories. I was a living thing with maybe the smallest purpose imaginable, but I was alive. And being alive is at least something. Being dead meant nothing. And somehow, they are everything at the same time. If I could paint what it is like to be alive and dead at the same time, I would paint a girl on a road to light and darkness. 

  How? My hearing is restored? Someone is shouting?

 “Get her to the OR stat! She needs heart surgery to keep her stable, as well as an induced coma!” someone in the room was saying. 

  No, I don’t want to live without Jack! God, if you are out there, please, please don’t let me live through this! Then it all went black.

  That noise, what is it? Beep…Beep…Beep. Why is the world so bright? I fluttered my eyes open. The room was a plain hospital room, and the flowers by my bedside were wilted. Who visited me? I was covered in heart monitors and tubes. 

  “Ughhh, Doctor! Someone! I am awake in this miserable bed!” I groaned. Uh, why is no one responding? I started to rip the sticky tape from my heart monitors. Before I finished, someone walked into the room. I looked up, and a man in a doctor’s coat stood in the doorway.

  “Huh, you’re awake. You are a lucky son of a gun. So, how is it to be alive again?” he vocalized. I just stared. Honestly, why and how am I alive?

  “Just as wonderful as being dead. Although it’s different this time, I think I left something with the dead.” I professed. He smiled. 

  “Let’s get you out of those monitors and help you find your husband,” he mentioned.

  “Oh, yeah…I think these are chains more than monitors.” I exclaimed. Uh…ok, why is it so peaceful here? I don’t hear anyone else but me and the doctor.

  I started to take off the rest of my heart monitors as well as the finger one. The doctor walked toward me. Before he pulled anything off of me, he smiled and started to speak.

  “I am going to pull out the IV and oxygen tube. It’s going to hurt,” he explained. Then he moved his hands to my arm and gently pulled on the tape of the IV and then took off the IV itself. A sharp pain came from my arm. 

  Then he reached for the oxygen tube and added, “On the count of three, I will pull the oxygen tube. One, Two, Three”

  In one sharp motion, the oxygen tube ripped out. A burning sensation took over my nose and throat. Oh my gosh, that hurt. Now, I was free from the chains that tied me to the bed, so I slid to the edge of the bed. And before I registered it, I was standing, but I wasn’t standing on the dirty hospital floor that I saw before. It was a pure white surface that glowed with some star-like light to it. I looked up from the floor to realize that everything was cloaked in the same substance. But in the distance, I saw a man. He was dressed in pure silver and white dress pants and a shirt. His hair was dirty-blonde with magnificent icy blue eyes and a regal face. 

  “Welcome home, Indigo. I have been waiting for you,” Jack greeted. At that moment, I had become many shades of Indigo.