When I was technically dead (drowning in Atlantic Ocean), I was pulled out of the water and somehow woke up in an ambulance with a beautiful lifeguard who had been the one who saved me/started the resuscitation process and had volunteered to come to the hospital with me, as well as an old EMT and a rookie EMT who was only a year or two older than me and had the same name as me. Anyways, the nearest hospital was about 30 minutes away and they thought that I might have had a broken neck of some kind so they had me strapped to the board and everything. Anyways, I have severe anxiety and an incredible need to be in control of my body and have every part of me with a full range of motion or I have a really bad panic attack. When I asked to have the straps taken off, they said they weren't allowed to, and that I was going to be hooked up to, if memory serves correctly (I ended up having a concussion so my memory is quite a bit foggy about the whole day), a morphine drip. The driver was going about 90 mph on an incredibly bumpy highway and the old EMT had the rookie try and hook me up. He missed three times, once getting me right next to my heart because we hit a huge bump, before the old EMT decided that my poor body had taken enough of a beating.
So here I am, strapped to a board, 30 minutes into the ride, and I realized that we weren't stopping at the hospital we were originally going to go to. I asked, and apparently they switched to the better hospital an hour away. And they still couldn't unstrap me. And the panic attack happened. I thrashed about wildly, but they still couldn't remove the straps. I cried my eyes out, screaming for help. The lifeguard put her hand on my face and told me everything was gonna be alright, and kissed me. Nothing too long, but a nice little kiss that I greatly appreciated.
So we get to the hospital, and they finally unstrapped me. Since I had been concussed, having panic attacks, and only able to see the roof of the ambulance, I had never realized that I was buck ass nude. Gone was the bathing suit. My shirt was nowhere to be found. And I was buck ass nude. The rooms were all full, the hospital had misplaced hundreds of new gowns and didn't have one to give me, and the gurney that I was using had to be used for someone else. So here I am, with a concussion and a bruised neck, sitting buck ass nude on the cold tile floor of the ER waiting room. Three hours, it took for me to be seen by a doctor, only to be told by a doctor that I have a concussion and a bruised neck.
My cousin lived about 15 minutes from the hospital, so I called him and told him to bring a pair of underwear and some jeans, drive me back to where I was staying, and not to ask questions. I was like 16 at the time. Arguably the single worst day of my life. Dead and resuscitated into the cruel, roller coaster from hell that my life is all in the same day. A ton of other worse shit has happened since then, but the second chance I've been given has somehow been worse than the first round. I didn't ask to be killed that day. But looking back, after all I've been through in the several years it's been since that happened, was it really a gift?