Conundrum

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  The life-support machine spluttered into action, and the previously flat lines on Tim’s monitor now resembled the peaks and troughs of a heartbeat and other bodily functions once again. The doctors had jolted the life back into Tim with the defibrillator, as he lay with his shirt open on the bed in the cardiac unit of Ashford's William Harvey Hospital.

  It was Folkestone-born William Harvey who discovered the circulation of the blood, but it was Tim's thoughts that were circulating now, as he regained consciousness after a few days in Neverland. His best friend John, was sitting twitchily at the foot of the bed, while his worried parents sat in two plastic chairs to the left-hand-side. Tim tried to move but the pain was too great.

  “Stay still,” said Tim’s mother calmly, worried that the various tubes connected to her son would be pulled out.

  It was another couple of days before he was in a suitable frame of mind for the police to question him. Tim had no idea what he was going to say, so he concluded that to say as little as possible would be the best policy. He would say that he didn’t remember anything about stepping out of a moving vehicle - after all they would probably lock him up if he admitted to what was truly going through his head at the time.

  The police arrived.

  “Well, first of all I’d like to say what a remarkable piece of driving that was.”

  Oh no – he was going to be one of those sarcastic types!

  “Not only did you miss the lunatic standing in the road but you managed to steer your car straight into the motorway bridge.”

  Was this some kind of joke? Tim was the lunatic standing in the road!

  The officer’s female accomplice smiled at Tim and said, “You’ll be pleased to know that we have detained the fellow since your accident. He certainly won’t be taking a night-time stroll up the motorway again for some time.”

  The confusion seemed to multiply.

  The male officer took the baton of conversation once again; “His story was that he had passed the wreckage of your car, stopped and had tried to resuscitate you. The thing is, we rewound the tape in the roadside camera and could see that he’d been standing in the left hand lane of the road for several minutes beforehand. So what do you remember about the incident?”

  Tim knew what he had to do. Although he could recall nothing, he would describe the subliminal vision he’d had at John’s house that fateful evening as the statement of what he saw prior to the crash.

  “Yes, that’s definitely the man. I’m amazed you could describe him so accurately,” said the WPC.

  It was another couple of days before Tim really thought about the significance of this conversation. In another one of those TV programmes, he had heard various people talk about near-death experiences, where technically they had momentarily died, but were able to describe viewing themselves from outside the body and recount the things that were going on around them with amazing accuracy. His only conclusion could be that he really had had a vision warning him of somebody in the road, followed by some kind of out-of-body experience, perceived as stepping out of his car when he swerved to miss the madman, enabling him to observe the car ploughing into the bridge with himself still inside. He remembered nothing about sending reports back to other planets!

  “That’s crazy,” said John when presented with this idea.

  “No more crazy than you saying you can see events before they happen,” retorted Tim.

  “Blimey! You still remember that conversation?”

  “Of course. So if you believe I could have had a premonition, why is it so hard to believe that I had an out-of-body experience too?”

  “Because it’s absurd!” laughed John.

  “Now, when I get out of here I want things to be just as they were before, but I want you to introduce me to somebody. You won’t have to see her and I won’t tell you anything about what she says. You seem much happier these days and I don’t want something I’ve told you setting you back.”

  “Oh no,” said John fearing the worst, “You don’t mean…”

  “Yes, Ruth” interrupted Tim, “I hate what she did to you, but I have to see her.”

  “Why on earth would you want to meet up with somebody like that?” laughed John nervously, “I think those painkillers are affecting your mind.”

  “Well,” said Tim, pausing to make sure he put this in the best possible way, “I just want to make a few observations.”