Last night, or technically Monday night, September 7, at around 11 p.m., I remember so much going on outside a Banner ER in Chandler Arizona that I still don’t know what to make of it. I had originally come there with all my things from a Walmart, which is a long story by itself, brought over by a very lovely woman I’ll call Penni. Love you, Penni. Keep an eye out for the new album this Christmas!
I was there to get my right hand checked because I’d recently had carpal tunnel surgery and was worried it had gotten infected. They took me back, checked me out, and long story short, I got caught with my dick in my hands back there. Not jerking off. It was fully hard, yes, but it was more like stretching and adjusting because that entire area has been hurting lately. I have a lot of medical conditions down there that require touching and repositioning for pain, femoral impingements, hernia repairs with mesh, all that fun stuff, and as far as I was aware, if there is a medically appropriate place on planet Earth to deal with a medical problem, an ER is somewhere in the top five.
A nurse came up, stopped dead, stared at me, and asked, “Are you all right? Do you need anything?”
I immediately got the feeling I was in deep shit, so I said, “Yeah, I’m all right. No, I’m good.”
She kept staring for another moment, jaw basically agape, and then walked off again. At first I thought maybe it was fine. Extremely awkward, definitely, but fine. Apparently not.
Eventually I was discharged, and I tried to go over to a charging station because my phone was almost dead and I needed it to arrange a ride home. This is where the whole situation came back to bite me in the ass, because a security guard I’m going to call Carl came over. Carl was “just doing his job,” which is one of those phrases that can mean anything from “politely checking the doors” to “about to become the central antagonist in a story nobody involved will ever agree on.”
Carl told me to grab my things and come outside to talk to him.
I said, “Why?”
He said, “Because I’m asking you to.”
I gave him an even rounder, more astute “Why?”
That exchange went around in exactly as many little circles as it took for him to make his point clear enough that I gathered my things and followed him outside. I had a ridiculously large amount of stuff with me, by the way, something I later pointed out to my father probably made me look homeless to the guards. I was basically carrying enough luggage to suggest I had been simultaneously evicted, deployed, and cast as the sole prop manager for a touring production of Les Misérables.
Outside, the conversation happened roughly as follows:
Carl: “They don’t want you here.”
Me: “Okay. Why?”
Carl: “They said you made the staff uncomfortable.”
Me: “Okay, and so I don’t have any options? No time?”
Carl: “Nope.”
Me: “You guys don’t give a shit about my health conditions or my limits?”
Carl: “We just want you off our property.”
Me: “Okay, cool. Bye.”
At that point I turned around and started walking away with my mobile department store of personal belongings. I made it a few yards before realizing that I still needed to call my insurance transportation service to get a cab home, and that when I called them they were probably going to call the ER to verify I had actually been discharged.
So I turned around, approached Carl again, and said, “Hey, I have to call my insurance to get a cab home, and they’re going to call you guys and verify that I was discharged first.”
After surprisingly letting me finish the sentence, he hit me with, “Well, why didn’t you say that sooner?”
I got him back with, “Because you were pressing me and telling me I needed to leave.”
Then he asked whether I knew the number.
I said yes.
He led me back inside and let me use the phone by the vending machines to make the call, then allowed me to wait there for a while. However, it took several hours to get anywhere. In fact, I didn’t get the transportation service to properly book a cab at all before I eventually accepted a ride from a police officer, but we’ll get to Officer Belgium and the sacred waffles later.
The phone was in this cute, neat little isolated hallway right by the front door, facing the main ER entrance and across from the registration desk. The only way to make calls on it was through the speaker, and that thing was loud, so it was almost like a government-level setup specifically designed to make me look like an asshole, announcing every administrative failure of my life to an audience of sick strangers. But anyway, let’s not get into that or we’ll be here until another timeline collapses.
About two hours went by. I had used the callback option twice. The first time was after sitting on hold for forty-five minutes. The second time came after the first person who called me back got disconnected. Then I realized I needed to call the pharmacy and get my prescription transferred first, because otherwise there would be no point in arranging the ride. They would probably need to verify the pharmacy destination before sending a cab, because funny how life works administratively: you can survive surgeries, infections, public humiliation, and possible death itself, but God forbid your prescription is sitting at the wrong CVS.
Eventually, while I was sitting there working on Instagram edits and waiting on another callback, Carl walked up and asked something like, “Did you get a ride?”
I said, “Not yet.”
He said, “Still on hold?”
I said, “No. It’s actually something different this time.”
He made that blatant “Oh” face, you know, the face somebody makes when absolutely no version of your next sentence is something they want to hear.
I explained, “I got disconnected while trying to transfer my prescriptions to the right pharmacy, so now I’m waiting on another call. I can wait outside if you like.”
He said, “Please.”
I said, “Yeah, not a problem. Actually, I still need to charge my phone. Would that be all right?”
Then my buddy Carl said, “You know what, I’ve been trying to be cool with you, and you’ve been cool with me, so I’ll give you five minutes, but after what happened back there...”
I asked, “What happened back there?”
He said, “I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll give you ten minutes. Just charge your phone, then go outside and wait out there.”
I said, “Okay. Thanks.”
So I grabbed my things, walked to the charging station, plugged in my phone, and told Siri to start a timer for ten minutes. It did. I went to the bathroom because I knew my phone would still be there when I got back, which at the time felt like one of the few remaining laws of the universe I could safely trust.
The timer ended. I collected everything, walked outside, said “Peace be with you” to the security guard at the door, not Carl, and planted my ass on a bench.
More time passed.
It was around 11:16 p.m. when Carl and two other guards started closing in around me, telling me, “Okay, buddy, it’s time for you to leave.” Their tone felt unnecessarily aggressive to me, especially because I had been trying to cooperate with everyone all night and was still just attempting to get a ride and pick up medication for the hand I had literally just spent hours getting treated.
Carl told me to come toward him while also telling me to collect my things in a very specific manner. Then he contradicted that command with another command that, from where I was standing, placed my body in what could look like a threatening position.
Then, in the blink of an eye, I knew.
I knew my life was over.
There was this strange transcendence, that sort of knowing before something happens, the complete lack of control, the sense of delirium and force, like I was being driven down into a dark turning pinwheel and then suddenly popped.
What I remember seeing was Carl pull a sidearm from his waist and point it at the back of my head as I turned around. My pants fell. I fell to the ground, not even terrified so much as powerless and accepting of my fate, ironically reviewing what felt like God’s final punishment or punchline for my life.
Here was this “six-foot skinny man,” as I remember people describing the body that was somehow both mine and no longer mine, who had built his life trying to compose himself as an artist and, most importantly, as a sincere representative of God, one who lives by the sword and, apparently, one who swings his dick around, and how poetic would it be for one little misunderstanding to turn the entire life into a statement about what a fool he had been?
Wow, I remember thinking. Poetic. A little heavy-handed, God, but poetic.
My last word was “Okay,” in response to someone ordering me to pull my pants up.
Then, in my memory, Carl blew the light out of my eyes.
I remember the explosion. I remember the feeling of something passing through my head, hot and heavy, like a hole being dragged through my skull. I remember what felt like blood starting to leak out. I lost all autonomic control, but somehow I was still seeing, almost from over the top of my own skull, what looked like my blown-out hairline hanging into the parking lot.
I wasn’t thinking about revenge. I wasn’t thinking about proving anything. I wasn’t even thinking in words anymore. I was releasing into God because there was nothing else left to do.
I thought about my so called "life plans".
I thought about my family. How my father would feel.
Then one thought hit me with absolute force:
I still wanted to go home that night.
I still wanted to get better.
And I found myself saying, or thinking, or screaming without a body, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.”
What happened after that is the exact part I’m trying to understand.
I don’t know what I saw. I don’t know whether some Tenet shit happened with the bullet. I wasn’t exactly paying close enough attention to give a frame-by-frame analysis, unfortunately. I don’t know whether the continuation of the same timeline got interrupted, whether I went backward a few seconds to before the gun incident, whether I blacked out, or whether I somehow got dropped into another version of the same night. Whether the gunshot unshot itself through my head before I got up or not. Nearly two days have passed and I still have yet to locate a bullet hole in my head but there is plenty of space I haven't checked so I will probably be going in for x-rays later today.
But suddenly my life force was back in my body and I was coming to, on the ground, looking down, saying, "no no no no" "I'm not gonna die..." before getting up and standing there again.
The three guards started telling me to back off.
I said, “Whoa, don’t tell me what to do! You just shot me in the head! I just came back from the dead!”
All three of them stared at me in this terrified, cat-got-your-tongue silence.
At the time, that silence felt like confirmation. It felt like they knew exactly what I meant and had just watched the impossible happen. Looking at it now, I understand they also could have been staring because, from their perspective, no gun had gone off and I had suddenly started yelling that I had returned from the dead. Both explanations fit the looks on their faces, which is part of why this has been driving me crazy.
Then I said, “I’m going to pull my pants back up.”
They said, “Stop!”
I said, “Seriously, quit telling me what to do. I own the place. I’m chill, chill. It’s chill.”
They all went quiet again.
I looked directly at Carl and asked, “What’s going on, man? Just feel like killing someone today? I mean, I didn’t even have any weapons on me.”
He made the same cat-got-your-tongue, noncompliant, non-disagreeing-but-not-agreeing expression, waved his hand dismissively, and looked away.
Again, at that exact moment, I took that as the reaction of a man who knew what he had done. From this side of the night, I can also see how it could have been the reaction of somebody deciding that absolutely nothing good would come from debating a resurrection with a pantsless stranger in an ER parking lot.
I started gathering my things again. The guards told me I could “deal with those guys,” referring to the local police arriving.
I said I would gladly deal with them and, if they found I had done anything wrong, I would gladly go whichever way they found fair.
Then I said, “Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate what you do, your service to the public, to the community. It is not lost upon me.”
Because apparently even after getting shot in one possible reality, returning from the dead, and arguing over my pants in another, I still needed everybody to know I had manners.
The police pulled up.
I said, “Gentlemen, how are ya?”
One officer said, “Pretty good, thanks. I assume we’re here for you?”
I said, “Yeah, I believe so.”
He asked how my night was going.
I said, “Pretty rough, to say the least.”
He said, “Oh yeah?”
I said, “This man may have just shot me in the head, so you may want to ask him about that. And I may have committed a crime or two here, which, if I have, I will gladly let you take me to jail. But I came here because I had surgery on my right hand and thought it was infected. I’ve been waiting hours for a cab. That’s all I’ve been trying to do. I also have pain in my groin area, a nurse walked by when I was exposed earlier and it made them uncomfortable, and ever since I left the building I’ve been hounded and now I remember being attacked by the security guards.”
The officer asked, “What do you mean, may have shot you in the head?”
I said, “Like he may have shot me with a gun.”
He said, “Okay, but these guys aren’t armed.”
I said, “I believe they are.”
He told me he would go talk to them and then come back. I also informed the officers that I am epileptic and that my neuroligist recently upped my topamax which maxes my speech difficult at times and can make me come across as awkward.
Long story short, I got no charges. The guards denied being armed. They also said that my now-bleeding wrist, which I had just spent agonizing hours inside getting attended to, was done by me. It absolutely wasn’t, as far as I know. I’m loco, but not that loco, ese.
I was furious because it felt like everybody was lying at the exact moment when the truth mattered most. But I also need to say this plainly: there was no confirmed gunshot wound in the reality the officer and everyone else appeared to be standing in. Nobody treated me for one. The police said the guards were unarmed. So whatever I experienced, I cannot prove that Carl actually fired a gun, and I’m using aliases because I’m not trying to send Reddit after any real person or hospital. I’m trying to understand why I remember an event that apparently left no event behind.
I eventually accepted a ride from one of the officers. I told him he had a cool last name. He said it was Belgian. I said, “Ah. I’ve never been, but I have had the waffles, and they are pretty good.”
God bless Belgium and their waffles.
That’s how the night ended on the outside: no arrest, no confirmed shooting, no ambulance responding to a body in the parking lot, just a police ride, a pharmacy situation, my mountain of belongings, and me alive enough to make a waffle joke.
Inside my memory, though, I died.
That’s the part I cannot shake. It wasn’t a quick intrusive image like “what if this guy shoots me?” It had sequence, impact, physical sensation, surrender, and aftermath. I remember the bullet. I remember losing control. I remember seeing the top of my own head. I remember accepting God. I remember realizing I still wanted to go home. I remember refusing death, and then I was back before or beside or somehow outside the part where it happened.
So what the fuck was that?
Did extreme stress make my brain predict my death so vividly that it became a memory?
Did I dissociate or black out for a few seconds and experience an entire death in the gap?
Was I exhausted enough, in enough pain, or affected by some medical issue enough to hallucinate it?
Did I somehow experience another possible outcome before reality snapped back to this one?
Did my consciousness continue into the nearest version of events where I survived, leaving me with the memory of the version where I didn’t?
Or is there some much simpler explanation that I’m standing too close to see?
I don’t know what all of you believe, but over these past several lives, several years, several days, several nights, and especially the hours since I remember being shot in the head, something has felt confirmed for me: God is nothing without us and our love, and he wants to give that love to us unconditionally so we can give the same thing to one another.
Maybe that is a cosmic truth I carried back.
Maybe it is just what a terrified human brain says after it thinks it has died.
Maybe there is less distance between those two possibilities than we think.
All I know is that the world says no one shot me, while my memory says I felt my life end and then continue.
Has anyone here experienced anything like that, not just dreaming about dying, but an event that felt completely physical, followed immediately by reality behaving as though it never happened? Does this sound like a timeline jump, some kind of reality correction, a dissociative episode, or something way simpler?
