Writers need to know a lot of weird shit. When you write horror, the shit you need to know is just naturally a bit weirder. So, in the spirit of mutual assistance, I offer the answer to the above question to my fellow horror hacks.
I know what you’re thinking. That’s nice, Dave, but how do know what it feels like when your heart stops? Isn’t that usually, like, fatal?
In point of fact, I have had my heart stopped several times, all for medical purposes and all under supervised conditions. I’ve actually lost count of the specific number of times. Most of these little vacations for my circulatory system took place during heart surgery, with machines picking up the slack. Obviously, I was unconscious for those.
I even had my heart stopped with the paddles once. At one time, I suffered from rapid heart arrhythmia. Stopping the heart and starting it again can trick it into beating normally, not unlike rebooting your computer. Sadly, I don’t remember what the shock itself feels like. The ER docs slipped me something which permanently erased about five minutes from my brain. I still remember how sore I felt afterward, like I’d been kicked and beaten, but without the bruising. If I’d had any gambling debts, I would have paid them.
The incident I have in mind occurred around the same time and for the same reasons. Instead of the paddles, which are actually fairly dangerous for someone with my surgical history, the ER docs used drugs this time.
My first sensation was actually one of profound relief. Rapid heart arrhythmia feels terrible, like your body is running at top speed for hours on end, even when you’re sitting, even while you sleep. Now the runner stopped, sat down on the ground, and took a few deep breaths. The rest was wonderful. I tried to take a few deep breaths myself. That was much more difficult than it should have been.
I don’t know if you are aware of your own heartbeat, but several weeks of rhythm trouble had taught me to be alert for changes. I waited, breathing shallowly, for the familiar pulse to start again. Nothing happened. The hollow silence in my chest went on and on. The world began to change.
My peripheral vision dimmed down to a hazy black tunnel as the blood left my head. The space immediately before me became a hot blur. A vast rushing sound filled my ears, like a high wind, like a subway train approaching at a furious speed, pushing the air before it.
“Try to breath normally,” the doctor said, and it sounded as though he was shouting at the bottom of a pool. I found myself shaking, hyperventilating, seriously panicked. The black at the edges of my vision spread inward, and I lost all sensation of my body.
Then my heart beat once. Then nothing. Again. Then nothing. Two beats, three beats, four, irregularly spaced and without pattern. Then it was like an engine caught.
My sight returned, washing back in pixilated smudges. When my vision cleared completely, I saw that the doctor was holding the defibrillator paddles. His face had gone white. My wife, who was present through all of this, claims that I laughed and muttered “Tunnel of light.”
From a treatment standpoint, the whole ordeal was a bust. My heart beat just as fast as before, once it restarted. Still, it’s given me plenty to think about over the years. Looking back, the weirdest part of the experience by far was the minute or so I sat there feeling fine and dandy. Death, in and of itself, didn’t really seem to hurt much. I can also see why many people give a religious significance to the physiological sensations of dying. Tunnel of light, indeed.
David Hurwitz
