The Voice in my Head

The nurse returned to check on me. I asked her if it would be possible for me to speak with the anesthesiologist who had been in the surgery with my husband. She said that she would check and let me know.

The concept of time had escaped me, but it must have been around fifteen minutes before a pretty middle-aged woman with red hair visible under her scrub cap pushed the curtains aside and stood beside my bed.

"Mrs. Burns, I'm Doctor Fender. I am sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," I said. "Were you my husband's anesthesiologist?"

"No, that was my partner, Doctor Yu. She is on leave while the circumstances of your husband's death are investigated. Are there any questions that I might answer for you?"

"Do you know what happened with Jace?"

"I was present at the surgical post-mortem briefing," Doctor Fender said. "I know as much, or as little as anyone right now. Everything was perfectly normal and your husband was tolerating the sedation drugs without complication when his heart just suddenly stopped beating without warning. You have to understand, we monitor the heart very carefully when administering sedation drugs. The heart is a critical indicator of physical response to the drugs being administered. If there are any issues with the body tolerating the drugs, the heart rate or rhythm is usually one of the first indicators. Your husband's heart never showed any signs of distress or intolerance. It just suddenly stopped, and we couldn't get it started again."

I nodded and said, "Dr. Wilton mentioned something about Jace's brain activity..."

"Yes, that is something that the pathologist wants to discuss with a neurologist."

"What could the significance of the brain activity be?" I asked.

"The purpose of general anesthesia is to remove the patient from a state of consciousness and place them safely into a state of unconsciousness. Consciousness has two parts, arousal and awareness. Arousal describes the degree to which an individual can interact with their environment. Awareness is the depth and content of an aroused state. In other words, the individual is cognizant of themselves and their surroundings. We monitor patients carefully to ensure that they are neither aroused nor aware during a surgical procedure. The physical sedation of your husband was undeniable, but the brain activity tends to indicate that his brain wasn't aroused, but it might have been aware to some degree. It was like he was asleep, but aware of being so. Something like that."

"Doctor, have you ever heard of someone having telepathic experiences while under general anesthesia?" I asked.

"Why do you ask?"

"After I dropped my husband off, and around the time that he would have been under general anesthesia, I heard his voice in my head. These weren't merely thoughts of him, I heard his voice as clearly as if he was in the car with me. We actually had a conversation about something that I was preparing to do which he didn't agree with. I dismissed it as my conscience impersonating my husband, but now I'm not certain that was the case. Have you ever heard of anything like that?"

Doctor Fender considered my question and said, "No, but there have been unsubstantiated reports of people in various stages of coma communicating telepathically with their loved ones. Most commonly, these reports have been attributed to retrocognition where the loved one remembers something about the comatose patient that they had forgotten. What you are describing is intuitive telepathy, where your husband, while under general anesthesia, transferred information from your mind to his and communicated with you about that information."

I nodded and said, "That is exactly what I believed happened. Is it possible?"

Doctor Fender answered, "I know of no reported instances where general anesthesia is concerned, but I have enough respect for the human mind to never discount anything related to its powers."

"Thank you," I said.

"Again, I'm terribly sorry for your loss," Doctor Fender said as she scooted around the curtain and disappeared.

I would never be able to prove it, but then, the only person who had to know the truth was me. I truly had been the cause of Jace's death and I now knew it. Somehow, someway, his mind had reached into mine and seen my pending betrayal. As he was being prepared to unselfishly donate life-saving bone marrow for a child he didn't know, the woman who had vowed to love, honor, and forsake all others was preparing to break every one of these. He knew it and it broke his heart so completely that it stopped beating.

I had taunted the voice in my head, telling it that Jace would never know, but he had known. Now I know that he had known and he couldn't tolerate what I was planning to do. Whether he willed his heart to stop or if that was a physiological reaction to the shock of my betrayal will not be answered during my mortal lifetime. The result was the same and I was responsible.

~~~

I know that a lot of people will think that I got off easy, but they would be wrong.

Jake lived mere minutes with knowledge of my betrayal, I have to live with it for the rest of my life. I face the guilt every second of every minute of every hour of every day. I have to look into the sad eyes of my twin daughters every time they think of their father, the man that they resemble so much and adored unconditionally with the knowledge that they are growing up without him due to my selfishness. Oh believe me, I am suffering more than you will ever know.

I did confess my suspected role in Jace's death to his parents, and while they were disappointed in my infidelity, they dismissed my belief that Jace had died because he had been aware of it and tried to talk me out of it through some telepathic intervention. I'm not certain whether they doubted me or they just wanted to maintain a relationship with me that would allow them to continue seeing their granddaughters.

I didn't have to get any lawyers involved before the insurance companies for the hospital, the surgeons, and the anesthesiologist all started throwing settlement offers at me. When all was said and done, along with Jace's life insurance through his work, the girls and I were set for life financially, including their college funds. The money still sits mostly in trust accounts except for that which I used to go back to school to get a doctorate in clinical neurologic therapy. I work exclusively studying patients in various stages of disordered consciousness and their responses to targeted telepathic communications. The controlled studies involving people who claim to have telepathic abilities have less than a ten percent success rate while the controlled studies involving members of the patient's family have achieved almost three times that. The studies will be published next month.

Understanding the ability of an unconscious person to communicate telepathically with another person came too late for me. I hope to save anyone else from the grief that not understanding caused me.

***

My best friend while growing up sustained a head injury while on duty as a police officer. He lived for seven years in a vegetative coma with no evident cognitive abilities, yet there were many times that his wife or children would insist that he had been speaking to them in their minds, telling them that he loved them and communicating about something related to his care or condition that concerned him. When they would visit and inquire about the concern, they would learn that something had changed in his care or situation without them being notified.

Whether you believe in telepathy or not, the ability for emotional stress or the experiencing of a shocking event such as the death of a loved one has been documented in several medical cases as the cause for a person's heart to stop. Sometimes referred to a "Broken Heart Syndrome", it occurs most frequently with women, but men are not immune from its affects.