OTHER OTHERS

1.

January ninth, 1997 and a child is rushed on a gurney through the doors of a general hospital.

'What have we got?' the inquiry comes straight away.

'Nine-year-old boy, Stephen Coastal, on a road trip with his parents when his mother noticed he was struggling to breathe approximately twelve minutes ago' calls out an emergency responder who had brought the boy some of the distance to the hospital in an ambulance.

'Had the boy been eating? Has he swallowed anything?'

'Unknown, family had not been eating on the go. There were toys in the back of the vehicle, unknown if he ingested anything.'

Instructions are given and the boy is taken into theater where he first loses consciousness then flat lines. He sits up as if the lighting within the room aided him to do so having pulled at his chest just as if there is a rope attached to his chest and someone tugged on it. None of those who are attending to him react to his sitting up ... if anything they appear to continue on with their efforts to aid him as if he has not sat up at all.

This, as strange as it is, appears to be real for it would seem to appear to the boy that he has been separated from himself, separated from his own body.

There are five adults around him, none of whom he knows, two men three woman all acting as if they can only see the sleeping version of him lying down. There is also a young girl in the room. She is standing about ten feet away and the boy is the only one who seems to know that she is there, so he gets off the table leaving his sleeping self behind and moves towards the girl who is shining a bright yellow colour all over.

One of the women in the room, a nurse, at this point does notice something, a bright light or some sort of a shine levitating a few feet away from the table. She does not know what it is or how it could be right where it is.

'Hi' says the shining girl, 'my name is Cassandra ...'

'I'm Stephen ... why can't the grown-ups see us?'

'You are sleeping so they can only see what you leave behind, and you are with me for a visit. I haven't been born yet, so they cannot see me.'

'Really?' asks Stephen lost confused and surprised. 'If you are not born yet then how are you here?'

'I am here for you Stephen ... look' she says pointing over to where the action within the room is taking place.

Stephen turns and sees one of the ladies looking his way as if she were looking right through him without seeing him then he hears one of the other grown-up ladies call his name twice. He turns back to the girl to discover she is gone; she has vanished.

'We will visit again ...' Cassandra's voice travels through thin air.

'You're glowing ...' For Stephen there is just a glow now where the girl had been and that glow soon begins to fade.

'Stephen ... Stephen ... come back to us' the grown-up lady says.

No sooner have the words been spoken by the grown-up lady when Stephen begins to violently cough. He is suddenly back on the table he had come down off a moment or so ago ... he is no longer ... separated... and something indeed had been brought up. Stephen had been choking while the slimmest amount of air got through allowing him to survive as long as he had.

He spends most of the rest of this day sleeping before he gets to describe his experience to his mother and the conversation he does have with his mother is overheard by a nurse. The boy is so convinced of what he is telling that it translates as truth or as what he believes is truth and the nurse has heard this kind of story before. The way the boy tells of the girl, and of the lady looking at him or through him has the eve's dropping nurse spooked to say the least. A glowing girl who not only could not be seen by anyone else but also claims not to have been born yet, that is one heck of a tale.

Three days pass before Stephen and his parents are paid a visit by a certain Father Jason Alveron.

2.

At approximately half past nine on the morning of June nineteenth, 1986 a lady by the name Ann Marie Evans went into labour and by the time midday came around, her child was already one hour old. It was the smoothest, easiest birth anyone related to it had ever witnessed and by that time of midday on the June day in 1986, mum was ready to head home.

'And where do you think you are going?' asks a nurse who has arrived back to Ann Marie's ward having spied her being out of her bed and getting herself ready as if she were actually about to leave the facility.

'Home ...' she replies nonchalantly, 'they do say it is where the heart is.'

'Yes, they do, don't they? Well, fortunately the rest of you is here, you are only an hour over having given birth, so we are not prepared to let you go anywhere just yet.'

'You seen it yourself, the birth was as easy as pie ...'

'That, it may have been, still I would be a lot more comfortable if you would stay and rest for at least a few more hours. I would hate to hear of any harm coming your way for heading home so early when you easily could have had some rest here first.'

'My husband should be outside waiting for me; he has the car ready to go ...'

'Don't worry about that, you get yourself back into bed and I'll send for your husband.'

Reluctantly the new mother does what is asked of her and before long, her husband is at her side. With baby there too, no words are needed, welled eyes and the odd tear or three say it all.

***

July twelfth, 1994, eight-year-old Julie Evans is playing outside on her scooter close to home.

The itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.
Down came the rain
and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun
and dried up all the rain
and the itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the spout again ...

... she sings to herself as she scoots along.

'There's crazy Julie' says one of two approaching eight-year-old girls who want nothing but to jeer young Miss Evans.

'Yeah, playing all on her own again' says the other girl.

Julie's demeanour instantly changes, no longer upbeat she lowers her head and frowns then watches as the other two girls pass her by. The moment Julie takes her eye off of the other girls one of them moves back to her and pushes her over. Mum so happens to arrive at the front door to check up on her daughter right at the moment Julie is pushed over.

Ann Marie rushes to her daughter offering a disapproving look to those two other girls before they quickly move away. Julie's right knee is scrapped and bleeding.

'Ow ...'

'Julie honey ...'

'... It hurts.'

'C'mon inside and we'll take care of that.'

Julie takes her mother's hand and the two head inside together. Mum lifts Julie up onto a kitchen counter and moves to grab a wipe and plaster. As mum does that Julie places one finger on her scrape and wipes away the blood. When mum returns, she is instantly surprised to find that there is no scrape, there is no cut but there had been a drop or two's worth of blood.

Surprised as she is, mum does not know how to react. She takes a second or two to silently question herself and decides to leave things be, play the moment calmly and place a band aid on the not so injured knee.

'Now' mum says, 'all better ...' as if she fixed the wound though isn't that what mothers do? Only the wound really is fixed and ... all better. 'Why don't you go on over to the TV and I'll fix us some milk and cookies.'

'Okay, can I have warm milk?'

'You certainly can ...'

Julie's pleasant demeanour has returns and this is clearly obvious for she skips her way into the living room. To add to the cookies and milk mum has a rather large bar of milk chocolate. As large as the chunk of chocolate is and with it being a little on the hard side mum takes a knife to it to cut some small pieces from it.

'Aw crap' she calls out loud not realizing just how loud she is.

'What's wrong mummy?' asks Julies making her way back to the kitchen.

'Mummy has her own owie, I'm alright honey, just need a plaster of my own.'

Julie quickly moves up to her mother and touches the injured finger then skips right on back into the living room. Mum had definitely nicked herself though when she wipes her own few drops of blood away, she is once again more than surprised to see that there is no cut.

'What the hell?' she quietly asks herself.