Chapter 1

"End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it… White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise."― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

I was four years old when I attended my grandfather's funeral. I didn't truly understand what was happening at that time. My four-year-old brain didn't know what death meant. I was told death was the end by my grieving relatives when I asked, but I didn't understand what the end had meant either. All I thought was, "Why is everyone so sad?" I still remember when I saw my grandfather's body lying in the open coffin during the funeral. He looked so serene and peaceful. I thought he surely must have been sleeping. I had run over to his coffin mid-service to grab onto his hand.

"Wàizǔfù[1]," I had said while clutching his cold stiff hand with childish curiosity, "wake up. You taught me to be respectful to others, so why are you sleeping right now? It's rude to sleep while others are talking."

At my little outburst, Mom had burst into tears and resorted hugging the life out of my dear baby cousin, who was sitting on her lap, for comfort before becoming inconsolable for the rest of the day. It was Dad who was tasked with the difficult job of pulling me away from the coffin so the funeral could continue. At first, I struggled like a wildcat, clawing at Dad's face and even biting his arm as he pulled me away, but I gradually grew still in Dad's arms. I had shrieked, kicked, and yelled at Dad, yet my grandfather never stirred. At that point, I had come to realize something was very wrong. My grandfather always had superb hearing. He was always the type of person who could hear me dropping a penny on the kitchen floor despite the fact he was napping on the recliner in the living room.

All I could remember after Dad placed me back in my seat was a strange haze. I didn't understand what was going on and I still didn't understand what "dead" meant, but I did come to understand was my grandfather was gone. It was such a sad concept, a foreign concept. In my grief-fueled denial, I told myself that this wouldn't be the last time I saw my grandfather. Death had meant that my grandfather was gone, but people that left had to come back, right? There had to be something after death. After all, people who leave still needed to come back.

Obviously, as time passed and I grew older, I came understand what death truly meant. However, it was just too heartbreaking to believe that death was the end, especially when I became a trauma surgeon as an adult. As part of my job, I saw horrific injuries such as crush injuries caused by collapsing buildings, traumatic amputations from automobile accidents, collapsed lungs from gunshots, just to name a few. While many brought into the emergency with these types of injuries did survive to live a full life, just as many people suffering from these same traumatic injuries did not. At times, I felt like I was the Grim Reaper[2]. I'd walk into trauma bay and watch someone die because his or her wounds were too severe. I mean, just how did things turn out that way? One moment someone is getting into his car to go to work and the next moment...that same person, who thought that he was just going to have a normal day, is flatlining in front of me in the emergency room after being pulled from a car wreck. Everything changing in the blink of an eye. Just one more person being added to the morgue. It was too cruel without justification. So, like in an inconsolable child, I repeated in my mind to myself that almost childish belief that there was more after death even though I knew Death like a close friend.

But despite clinging on to such a belief, deep inside I also knew I didn't truly believe there was something after death. It was just something I repeated to myself like a mantra day after day to make myself feel better after being exposed to death over and over again. So, I believe my shock was justified when my thoughts never ceased after I died myself.

I remember the night I faded from the world. The bright crescent moon glowed in the night sky. The ground smelled of wet earth from the most recent downpour and the puddles that covered the streets like a wet blanket sparkled as they reflected the few stars that peeked out from behind the dark clouds. It was a beautiful night, now that I think about it, but I didn't care at that moment. I was exhausted. There was nothing I wanted to do more than sleep at that moment.

Just before death, when I was finishing my twenty-four-hour shift, there was an explosion at a local high school just two or so miles away from the hospital. There was a faulty gas line and some kids that thought it would be cool to ditch class to smoke behind the cafeteria. The result was horrendous. For hours, the ambulances could be heard as students, teachers, and staff members were rushed into the emergency room. As for that twenty-four-hour shift, it became a forty-eight-hour shift that consisted dealing with abdominal hemorrhage and perforation, burns, crush injuries, pulmonary barotrauma[3], and other nasty blast injuries along with the soul-shredding cries of parents.

On the drive home after that long shift, the car in front of me rolled to a slow stop at an intersection just as the traffic light turned red. I stepped on my brakes to bring my car to a slow stop too before I reached for my cup of warm coffee. My eyes flickered briefly to my car's digital clock. It was 2:34 in the morning, so I probably shouldn't have been drinking coffee since I did need to sleep when I got home. It was when I was putting my coffee back into my cup holder there was a ghastly impact. There was a flash as I felt myself being jerked forward accompanied by the sound of crunching metal, then the world grew eerily silent before everything faded into darkness.

I don't know how long I had been unconscious, but I know it couldn't have been long. As I came to, I could see through the shattered glass, a fuzzy figure of a person stumbling out of the twisted metal pile in front of me. As my vision cleared, I could see that the anonymous figure was a young woman. She was shocked and shaken, but uninjured. Then I could hear her yelling at some mysterious figure to "get the hell back here" before she screamed in terror when she peered at me and started fumbling with her cell phone.

"H-Help!" I could hear her quiver against her phone, but I couldn't understand why she sounded so horrified. She was fine, wasn't she? "T-There was a d-drunk d-driver! H-He slammed into the c-car behind m-me and s-sandwiched a-another car between m-mine and his. T-There's a w-woman trapped in the s-sandwiched c-car! T-There's b-blood everywhere!" She then paused to listen to the person on the other side. "N-No, the d-drunk driver is no longer h-here. He got out of his c-car and r-ran. Please, you need to s-send h-help now!"

Everything then faded into darkness again before blinking back into focus. I could no longer see the woman on her phone anymore. Instead, I could see several men uniform scattered about as they tried to cut away at the surrounding metal. At first, I couldn't understand what happened, why there was a man with a helmet next to me telling me that "everything will be okay" and why everything as hazy. Then I somehow registered that something was wrong when I looked down and saw the red coating my clothing and the massive shard of metal sticking out of my body where my liver and a kidney were supposed to be. I tried wiggling but soon discovered that couldn't remove myself from the driver's seat. It was like I had been pinned in place.

I remember incoherent thoughts, "My jacket's white, not red. Oh…that's bad. That doesn't belong there…"

Then I felt something shift as another piece of car was removed before everything just started to feel wet, and then the cold moved in to consume me. The last thing I remembered from that night was the cold and a man yelling.

The cold swallowed me, freezing me before a magical glow of warmth appeared and slowly seeped into me. Where I was now was dark and cramped, but the warmth and the gentle rhythmic thumping made this strange space feel like home. I was safe. Over an unknown amount time, the space I was trapped in grew smaller and I soon discovered the walls of my enclosure were alive as they moved and contracted. It was quite an unusual, but strangely enough, it didn't bother me. Then in an unannounced instant, I could feel myself being expelled from my safe haven. Squeezed and forcefully pushed through a small narrow pass, the blinding white light was a welcome sight.

I gulped and gasped as my hungry lungs cried for air the moment I was out. I couldn't breathe! And then a miracle happened as my chest inflated and oxygen rushed into my lungs.

Yet again, everything was blurry like the night I died, but the panic that had surrounded me when I passed was absent. What happened? Was my four-year-old self correct in believing that there was something after death? An afterlife? If there was an afterlife, then it must have been unpleasant. The first thing that came to my mind after leaving the warmth was that I needed a shower. I felt wet and sticky all over my body, and the unusual slime that covered me also smelled strange too. Not an unpleasant scent, but unfamiliar and new. As the thought of bathing passed, the next thought that came to pass through my mind was the recognition that someone was holding me.

Again I was confused. It felt like a pair of giant hands were cradling me carefully, but that couldn't be true. I was thirty-one, an adult. There shouldn't have been anyone large enough around to hold me like an infant. So it was rather understandable when I froze when the giant face of an Asian middle-aged woman invaded my field of sight.

"It isn't crying." a feminine weary voice chimed in from nearby while sounding strangely relieved and even hopeful, confusing me even more. "Is the baby a stillborn?"

At first, all I could think was "ouch". A newborn child couldn't have possibly done anything warrant so much hatred, so why did the mother sound so hopeful when asking if her child was stillborn? What type of person wanted her newborn to be stillborn? Normally most new mothers would break down into tears of joy after childbirth, but this woman…

Then it suddenly hit me. The person who spoke did not sound like a woman. She sounded like a terrified child. She was scared.

This was an unwanted pregnancy and the mother was a teenage girl.

Something had happened and this girl was now dealing with the consequences. But I still found myself furious with the new mother despite her situation. I believed that even if the baby was the result of an unwanted pregnancy that did not give the girl the excuse to hope for a stillborn. If she didn't want to raise the child, then that was fine. This was why newborns could be given up for adoption and still have a chance at a good life.

"No, despite being born too early and too small, your baby girl looks completely healthy." the giant holding me answered the girl while observing me. She held me out to offer to the young girl, who was also strangely a giant, sitting up on a futon. "Would you like to hold your new baby?"

"No!" the girl shrieked in absolute terror as she backed away as much as she could. "I don't want to hold that—that thing!" Then as soon as the repulsion appeared, it disappeared as the girl dissolved into a sob so heart-wrenching that my chest tightened in pain and pity. "Please…Haha-ue[4]…don't make me hold it… Please…please don't… I can't… I can't do this…"

Suddenly everything was clear. Why everything was so enormous and the sensations I felt before being pushed into the bright light. The infant that they were talking about was me. This was wrong! I didn't belong here. I am a thirty-one-year-old woman, not…not this baby. This wasn't me. This wasn't my body. I could feel my throat closing up, cutting off that vital oxygen this body so desperately craved.

"Stop that!" the middle-aged woman, who was most likely the girl's mother, admonished with no sympathy. "This baby may be a product of rape, but she is also as much as you as she is of that man. You are her haha-ue and you should behave as such."

I wanted to scream, cry, and thrash around. I wasn't that baby, that product of rape. This isn't my body! This isn't my life! But yet, in the back of my mind, I could hear silent whispers echoing in my panic-ridden head. This is my body now. This is my life now.

Everything was wrong!

Instead of crying and screeching like a normal newborn would, I did the logical thing an adult would do. I fainted in the arms of my new "grandmother".

[1] Chinese for maternal grandfather.

[2] Death, also known as the Grim Reaper, is a common element in culture and history. As a personified force it has been imagined in many different ways. The popular depiction of Death as a skeletal figure carrying a large scythe and clothed in a black cloak with a hood first arose in 14th century England, while the title "the Grim Reaper" is first attested in 1847.

[3] Lung pressure damage in scuba divers is usually caused by breath-holding on ascent. The compressed gas in the lungs expands as the ambient pressure decreases causing the lungs to over-expand and rupture unless the diver breathes out. The lungs do not sense pain when over-expanded giving the diver little warning to prevent the injury. This does not affect breath-hold skin divers as they bring a lungful of air with them from the surface, which merely re-expands safely to near its original volume on ascent. The problem only arises if a breath of compressed gas is taken at depth, which will then expand on ascent to more than the lung volume. Pulmonary barotrauma may also be caused by explosive decompression of a pressurized aircraft.

[4] Words for family members have two different forms in Japanese. When referring to one's own family members while speaking to a non-family-member, neutral, descriptive nouns are used, such as haha (母) for "mother" and ani (兄) for "older brother". When addressing one's own family members or addressing or referring to someone else's family members, honorific forms are used. Using the suffix -san, as is most common, "mother" becomes okaa-san (お母さん) and "older brother" becomes onii-san (お兄さん). The honorifics -chan and -sama may also be used instead of -san, to express a higher level of closeness or reverence, respectively.

The general rule is that a younger family member (e.g., a young brother) addresses an older family member (e.g., a big brother) using an honorific form, while the older family member calls the younger one only by name.

The honorific forms are:
· Otou-san (お父さん): father. The descriptive noun is chichi (父).
· Oji-san (叔父さん／小父さん／伯父さん): uncle, or also "middle-aged gentleman".
· Ojii-san (お祖父さん／御爺さん／お爺さん／御祖父さん): grandfather, or also "male senior-citizen".
· Okaa-san (お母さん): mother. The descriptive noun is haha (母?).
· Oba-san (伯母さん／小母さん／叔母さん): aunt, or also "middle-aged lady".
· Obaa-san (お祖母さん／御祖母さん／御婆さん／お婆さん): grandmother, or also "female senior-citizen".
· Onii-san (お兄さん): big brother, or also "a young gentleman". The descriptive noun is ani (兄).
· Onee-san (お姉さん): big sister, or also "a young lady". The descriptive noun is ane (姉).

The initial O- (お) in these nouns is itself an honorific prefix. In more casual situations the speaker may omit this prefix but will keep the suffix.
· Nii-chan (兄ちゃん) or Niisan (兄さん): when a young sibling addresses his or her own "big brother".
· Nee-chan (姉ちゃん) or Nēsan (姉さん): when a young sibling addresses his or her own "big sister".
· Kaa-san (母さん): when a man addresses his own "wife" (the "mother" of their children).
· Baa-chan (祖母ちゃん): when grandchildren address their "grandma".
· Tou-san: when a woman addresses her own "husband" (the "father" of their children)