Waiting to Live

It wouldn’t take knowing Jesse McNally long to know that his favourite adage was “que sera, sera”. Despite the fact that many—friends, family and even perfect strangers alike—told him that he should figure out his life and where he wanted to go with it, he continued his persistent shrug and went along with the day. Living in the moment was the way things worked for him.

So, unlike others who might wake up for the day and wonder where the day is going to take them, or what new meaning life might bring them, Jesse just woke up and went about his day. Wake up, shower, dress, eat, sleep and breathe. Can’t forget breathing, right? Without that, there’d be nothing.

He was currently onto the daily step of eating. This would be the second time around eating as lunch time brought the ‘no-longer-in-high-school-but-not-yet-in-post-secondary-school’ young man to the local coffee shop. It was only recently that this coffee shop started to offer more than just pastries. Of course, these new additions of soups and sandwiches were only to try and play ‘keep up with the big name chains’. They didn’t want to be left in the financial dust.

Jesse’s selection of the day proved to be no different than any other; beverage included an iced cappuccino while a plain bagel with cream cheese served just fine as edibles. At times, his choice would have been to stay there and eat, but the coffee shop happened to be packed. That much chatter and that many rustling newspapers would get on his nerves for whatever reason. It was just one of those things.

Therefore, after paying, he made his way through the glass doors and returned to the late autumn air. The redhead, with his hands full, awkwardly tried to pull his jacket closed with the hand that held the paper-bagged bagel. It was only after he almost dropped it that he gave up on his jacket, shrugging and taking a sip from his iced cap.

Walking down the street, he was constantly avoiding people. People talking on cell phones, people texting, people with children, people with pets, people with briefcases and so on and so forth. People with places to go and people to see. People lost in their own little worlds and not taking into consideration that they are causing others to have to dodge and swerve out of their pathway.

Despite his effort to avoid people, Jesse was continuously jarred around. Stepping out of the way of one person would lead to bumping into another. Several times he almost dropped his food and beverage. Already some of the iced cap had slopped out onto his hand. With a heavy sigh, Jesse decided it might be easier to try his hand at walking on the outside edge of the sidewalk. He’d considered walking closer to the buildings, but no way he was going to sandwich himself between the wall and a mass of people.

Pushing his way through the crowd, he finally managed to get to the edge. Of course, it wasn’t long until he was being jostled around there as well. Parked cars became new objects to avoid.

The sound of tires screaming and a car horn blaring around him as he stumbled in between a pair of parked cars and out into traffic after one such jostle. Instinctively, he cringed and shut his eyes, drawing his hands and arms up without second thought.

There were screams, but he felt no impact. Cautiously, he opened his eyes and relaxed his form, a crowd of people already formed around the front of the stopped car. As he saw the driver get out and not even spare him a glance of concern, he wondered if someone else had stepped in and even pushed him out of the way before the car had hit. He hadn’t felt anyone push him, but he hadn’t felt his food and beverage leave his hands either, and both of those were gone.

In fact, where had they gone?

Looking around, he caught sight of the paper bag that his bagel had been in. The bagel itself had rolled off to the edge of the sidewalk, where a bunch of birds were now hopping in for the attack. They were already ripping at the wrapping around the food item.

“Great,” Jesse mumbled, but didn’t bother with the birds, more curious if the other person was all right.

He gave his ‘excuse me’s and pushed his way through the people. No one seemed to want to move, but somehow he managed to get through. When he came to the center of the crowd he stopped in his tracks. It wasn’t another person laying there.

It was him.

He saw his own body laying there on the ground in front of the car. Taking a quick glance at the people around him, he saw that no one was paying attention to him. At least, not him as he was standing there. Rather him laying on the ground.

He approached his own body, still no one seeing him, and he crouched beside it. Close as he was now, he could see blood under and staining his naturally red hair. In its length, the bangs covered his eyes, draped across his tanned skin. The young man saw iced cappuccino all over his clothing and looking up, all over the hood of the car. The cracked plastic cup had rolled under the vehicle.

Jesse opened his mouth to speak to no one in particular, but found that no words would come out. He found himself reaching out to touch the form that looked like his own, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch it. Instead, his hand hung in the air for a moment before falling limply away.

‘Get up,’ he found himself thinking.

But how could his body get up when he was right there staring at it?

‘Not real…’ his mind spit out. It had to be an out-of-body experience or something. Had to be. “No,” he finally managed. “It’s real… I’m dead.”

In his core he knew this. In his core, no matter how much his brain—no, his mind, the brain was in the body—tried to convince him otherwise, he knew.

He pushed himself up, backing away from himself because he couldn’t stand to look at the body anymore. As he backed into the crowd and out of it, he noticed some shiver in response to his passing between them. He noticed some rub their arms or shoulders, though to them, nothing was there to touch them. He ignored the voices of pity that surrounded both him and his body. He had barely noticed them even before realizing he was dead.

It was only when he was standing outside the circle of people again that he looked around. Was there going to be some bright beam of light to come take him away? Some vortex to a hellish existence? Some agent of death? There wasn’t anything or anyone though. Only chattering voices, the sounds of cars, and everything else that filled the city with life.

‘Do ghosts really just wander forever?’ he wondered suddenly. But he didn’t see anyone else like him. No one coming to guide him along like in the movies. He was by himself.

He began to feel lightheaded, or rather like his entire body had become light. The physical world was no longer tangible beneath or around him and it was only from taking a gander at his feet that he could see he was still on the ground. He wasn’t floating around with a kind of wisp in place of feet; the image of his shoes was still on the concrete below him, but he couldn’t feel it.

Jesse even tried to stomp one foot, but there was no sense of impact.

“Strange, isn’t it?”

Jesse jumped in surprise at the sound of another voice. Had some guide finally come for him? There was no one he could see that looked to be speaking to him…

“Down here.”

He looked down, seeing only a little bird hop towards him as it swallowed the rest of his bagel.

“Don’t worry, you’re not going crazy,” the sparrow commented now, peering up at him while moving its head from side to side. A male voice came from the little body, rather than the typical chirrups of a bird. “For whatever reason, you big guys can always understand us after.”

An expression of shock and disbelief on his face, Jesse lowered himself to the ground, closer to the little brown, grey and black bird. He followed the bird’s gaze as it fell to the crowd.

“Happens all the time,” the bird was already looking back at the human, whose own gaze slowly returned to the animal. “Don’t worry, you’ll get over it.”

“What?” Jesse’s own baffled voice left him as he watched the bird continue to cock its cranium in different directions.

“I know, it doesn’t seem like it,” the sparrow continued, “but trust me. Happens all the time. All you have to do is wait now.”

“Wait? For what?” the young man asked. Part of him couldn’t believe that he was actually communicating—not speaking to, but actually having a conversation—with a bird. Yet, he didn’t find himself questioning his sanity.

“Don’t worry. It’ll begin again.”

Jesse was beginning to wonder if maybe he was communicating with the bird. Maybe it was just saying things that it knew would be responses to the questions. But, he wasn’t really answering any of the questions.

“Begin again?” Jesse tried, just to see what the bird would say.

“Happens all the time,” it repeated before suddenly taking wing and flying away as the crowd began to move.

Wailing sirens shattered the air, the vehicle which they were attached to coming to a halt before a handful of paramedics jumped out of it. Police soon joined, beginning to border off the area and take reports from witnesses and the driver.

Without really knowing why, Jesse found himself being drawn to the paramedics, who had picked up his body and placed it on a stretcher. The stretcher clicked into the upright position as he came to stand beside it and then promptly the men and women around it wheeled it off towards the ambulance. Jesse followed after, stepping up into the white box-on-wheels after them and sitting on the end of one of the benches. As the doors were closed, he caught sight of a police officer speaking to the hysterical driver of the car. That was the last he saw of the scene.

His attention turned to the paramedics, who were, despite the time in between the accident and their arrival, trying to revive his body. He watched as they placed an oxygen mask over his face after they cleaned the wounds the best they could. He watched as they gave him a shot of something that he assumed would maybe be adrenaline. He watched as they needlessly stuck an IV in his arm.

“It’s not going to work,” he spoke, but none of them heard him, their frantic voices talking amongst themselves.

Suddenly, they pulled out the defibrillators, clearing before they applied them to his bare chest. Despite the slightest feeling of a tug in his chest, Jesse didn’t feel himself being dragged back into his body. He wondered though, was this what the sparrow meant when he said it will begin again? Was he going to be revived?

Like with the pavement, he didn’t feel himself sitting on the seat and was immune to any of the jerky movements the vehicle made as it twisted and turned towards the hospital.

Arriving at said building, the doors burst open and the group was on the move again. He followed their running forms at a walk since he found he wasn’t having any trouble keeping up with them. Entering the hospital, he was surprised to find that the sterile scent of the hospital wasn’t around him, or at the very least, he couldn’t smell it.

His pursuit stopped once the paramedics passed by gawking patients and through the doors into the Emergency Room. It wasn’t that he couldn’t go any farther, but he didn’t feel the need to. In his core, he knew he wasn’t going to be revived.

Jesse’s phantom feet took him down the halls now, heading towards the main part of the hospital, rather than just hanging around in the ER waiting room. People in wheel chairs, with crutches, with IV lines and with stretchers and carts passed. Just the regular scene of a hospital. What he didn’t see were any others like him. He would have thought that of all places a hospital would be crawling with dead people, or spirits or whatever he currently was.

Regardless, he continued on, the ‘que sera, sera’ of his life still kicking along with him. He didn’t know where he was going or what was going to happen, but figured there was no sense in worrying about it. For some reason, the words of the sparrow reassured him. He didn’t need to worry.

Happened all the time.

He staggered suddenly. The sensation was like electricity through his ethereal body that caused him to lose his footing and veer into the nearest wall. He braced himself against the wall even though he couldn’t feel it and stared wide-eyed at the tiled floor and no longer paying attention to the people passing by.

When the sensation passed, he didn’t even know where he was anymore. Sight of the floor began to fade before him and he realized he was going blind. He felt he was falling suddenly as the feeling came back for a second round, but this time it didn’t dissipate so easily. Instead, it stayed, encasing him, but he didn’t feel uncomfortable with it. Rather, he felt safe; warm.

Images began to flash through his mind. Images of people and things he knew whipped by and vanished in a second. They were gone and forgotten as quickly as they had presented themselves. He had no recollection of them existing. He had no realization that there was something that had been wiped from his mind. A brief second later, things he’s experienced flashed and then were gone. All his senses, apart from feeling safe and warm, vanished. All gone.

Even the name Jesse McNally became something he didn’t recognize or know.

And then the world came crashing down around him.

Gravity; so heavy. Senses; so acute.

A plethora of smells, textures, tastes, sounds and sights. The world was new around him. Unfamiliar and strange. Loud. Unintelligible sounds booming around him. Even through closed eyes, everything was terribly bright—blinding almost.

There was another sound. Wailing. Crying. Screaming. His own vocal chords, lungs and diaphragm were the ones ripping out this sound.

The warmth and safety were gone.

“Congratulations. It’s a boy.”