Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics

Rape and miscarriage complications led to my three deaths over the course of three months. I was raped at home by a man who "came to visit." Pregnancy followed. I barely knew him and was more confused than horrified. My confusion was actually a state of disbelief, as I seemed unable to understand what happened and why. He disappeared. It took me twenty years to scream. When I did, I screamed for over fifteen minutes, until my voice was raw.

My first death was from the actual miscarriage. I was alone and barely made it to the bathroom; the fetus in the toilet, blood everywhere. Suddenly I found myself floating around the ceiling light fixture. I banged into it as if a moth drawn to a flame. Far below was the bloody toilet, sink, bathtub, my body—a mess lying there. My depth perception switched. I could not make any sense of the switch: I was floating around the ceiling, yet my body was lying in a heap on the floor. The more questions I had, the more strange blobs began to form in the air—like inkblots, fully dimensional—gray and strange and ugly. The more I thought, the more of them there were.

Instantly, as if released from an over-stretched rubber band, I snapped back into my body, entering through where the soft spot is on a baby's head, feeling myself squeezing back in as if I were larger outside my body than in, pulled in, back to my toes until I "fit." The shock of the scene left me unable to do anything but clean up the mess, return to my bed, prop up my legs with every pillow I could find, and go to sleep.

I lay in bed as if in a coma. I finally decided to see a doctor. I managed to get dressed, get in the car, and start it. I drove, and even though our family physician was hardly six or seven blocks away, it took me nearly a half hour to drive the distance.

When I finally arrived, I stumbled in the door. The nurse shrieked and ushered me into an exam room. When I told the doctor what happened, he laughed, saying, "All that pain for one night of sex, and no chance to enjoy it." I kept asking him, why do my legs hurt so much, especially the right leg? He gave me a shot in my right thigh and sent me home.

It took what seemed forever to drive back home. The bleeding stopped abruptly once I walked in the door. I headed straight for bed. My right thigh was wrapped in pain. Encircling my leg from just above the knee was a wide band of crimson skin, red hot, with a huge lump growing out the side. The lump [End Page E13] was killing me. I pounded it as if it were my enemy, but the lump, a hot burning volcano, won.

I died again. This time I floated gently out of my body, rising straight up through surges of pain that appeared as heat waves on a summer sidewalk. Past the pain waves, I floated up and continued until reaching the ceiling and bumping into the light fixture.

I hovered around the light bulb for what seemed many minutes, staring at my body below, searching for any sign of life. When I was satisfied that my body was really dead, I floated back up to the ceiling and danced around the light bulb. I was relieved at being freed from the heavy, burdensome weight of my body. I had worn it like someone wears a jacket or an old coat.

Soon enough, I began to ask questions. Isn't an angel of some kind supposed to meet me? Or loved ones previously dead come to help? The more I thought, the more blobs appeared in the air, like what happened two days before. Then I realized these blobs were coming from me. They were my thoughts—thoughts really are things. I lost myself in the joy of discovering I could...