by Jay Kerner
This week is the 2nd anniversary of the day my wife and I died.
She had been having headaches for a week or so in the evenings, but they would go away through the day at work. Our room upstairs was always the warmest in the house so we kept a window open an inch or two most of the time. The night it got us, the temperature had dropped to single digits, and I shut the window before bed.
Around 3 am I was awakened by my wife’s snoring. She’s usually a fairly quiet sleeper so I gave her a nudge to get her to roll over. Nothing. Little harder nudge, still nothing. Something’s wrong! I shook her. Still nothing.
At that point I tried to climb out of bed to turn on the light, and it seemed like I melted to the floor. I remember lying there convinced that somehow my bones had been stolen. But gosh, doesn’t it feel fabulous laying here on the floor. Why haven’t I been sleeping here all along? Wait, wasn’t I supposed to do something? Oh well, it will wait until I take a nap on this wonderfully, comfortable floor.
I don’t know how long I slept, but I came awake with a start, and remembered that, oh yeah, something’s wrong! The phone was on the other side of the bed but I couldn’t remember how to stand up, so I crawled along to where I could reach the cord, and pulled it to the floor. I couldn’t focus for squat. My wife was unconscious but for some reason I continued to talk to her. I kept asking her how to spell 911.
Somehow I made the connection but couldn’t figure out how to hold the phone to my ear, so I just yelled. I told them I think my wife and I were both having heart attacks. Thanks to caller ID, help was quickly on the way.
From that point I just laid there and watched things happen. I heard the ambulances coming down the drive and saw the reflection of the flashing lights across the ceiling. I could no longer talk but could hear just fine. The first fireman through the door downstairs yelled “Masks on everybody, I’ve got CO!”
The next voice I heard was apparently using some kind of digital monitor, because he said “Oh shit, I’ve got 680 in the kitchen, there won’t be anyone alive in this house!”
So there I was lying on the floor listening as the emergency workers go through the house trying to find us. I tried to yell at them to tell them where we were, but I couldn’t make my tongue work. That was when I figured out we were dead.
It was strangely relaxing, like oh well, nothing I can do about it now! Might as well lie back and watch the show. I started thinking about the kids, and was bummed that they were going to have to deal with all our crap. Then, “Oh no, they’re going to find my porn magazines!” Too bad, can’t be helped. You know all things considered, this wasn’t a bad way to go. Completely painless, and hey just look at my corpse will ya!
Then, I swear I started looking for the white tunnel. I watch movies, I read the Enquirer. I know how it’s supposed to work. But there was nothing like that. Before long the firemen and EMT’s found us, and I heard somebody say, “Hey, this one’s still breathing!” I was sure I was still dead, but remember having mixed emotions. My first thought was “Great, my wife made it!” After that it was “Oh fine, now I’m gonna be dead all by myself. She’s going to collect all the life insurance and run off with the pool boy.” We didn’t have a pool at the time but whatever.
While they were carrying her out on a stretcher, somebody checked me out and said, “What do you know, this one’s breathing too.” Damn it! Cancel the funeral I guess. In a matter of minutes they had me in the back of an ambulance next to my wife. The blast of freezing air on our skin and in our lungs brought us both around a little. I grabbed her hand and held it all the way to the hospital.
They put us in separate exam rooms at the hospital, but as I regained more use of my vocal abilities, I bitched, hollered and screamed until they put us in together. After a couple of hours they had determined that for reasons unknown, even though we both came in with blood saturation of carbon monoxide much higher than what is supposed to be the fatal level, we were not only alive, but there didn’t seem to be any brain damage. I knew my wife would be ok, when she suggested they test me again. They told us they would have to admit us, pump us full of straight oxygen and monitor our blood every hour until the levels reached a certain minimal number. They put us in separate hospital rooms, but once again I was such a pain in the butt that they gave in and moved both beds in side by side.
The next 12 hours were a blast except for the hourly blood draws. Family and friends showed up as word got around. It was weird because by that time we were feeling pretty good, but everybody came in crying and upset. We sat around in bed, mainly ate Jell-o and watched daytime television like John and Yoko, until they finally let us leave the following evening. .
I dropped my wife at her mother’s for the night as I went home to find the culprit. The gas had been shut off in the meantime so there was no immediate threat. When I opened the door to the furnace room, I didn’t see it at first, but I stood on a chair and followed the flue from the furnace and hot water heater with a flash light. There it was, plain as day. The vent pipe that carries the poison exhaust gasses out of the house had vibrated loose leaving a big gap at the top. What really made me mad is that we had the system professionally installed only 6 years earlier. A closer inspection showed that on that particular joint, the installer neglected to put in the sheet metal screw that insures an accident like this never happens.
I took care of the problem and had the whole system inspected by two different companies before my wife would step through the door, and naturally we bought the best Carbon Monoxide detector money can buy.
A whole lot of people have told us that “It wasn’t your time yet. God must have a plan for you.” Well, that’s fine but I sure wish he’d tell me what it is so I could get on with it. If there’s a plan, he’s keeping it to himself so far.
So in the meantime I’ll just do the most obvious thing I can think of, and tell everyone reading this to go buy a Carbon Monoxide alarm. You don’t have to buy the most expensive one with digital readout. The cheap one with nothing more than a loud obnoxious alarm will do the job just as well. You can get one for less than $20. (Makes a great gift idea.)
In the first thirty days after the incident we were understandably a little pushy about it, but a lot of friends and relatives purchased units. We’ve backed off since then, but in the two years since the accident, two different people have called to thank me, after alarms that we pestered them to buy, alerted them to a dangerous situation. I feel pretty good about that.
So now what you get is the annual reminder. And there you have it; my last words on the subject…at least until next January.