Proof of Heaven

into it. The only time my eyes opened was when the doctors checked for
pupil dilation in reaction to light (one of the simplest but most effective
ways to check for brainstem function), or when Holley or Bond, against
the doctors’ repeated instructions, had insisted on doing so and
encountered two eyes staring dead and unmoored, askew like those of a
broken doll.
But now, as Sylvia and Bond stared into my slack face, resolutely
refusing to accept what they had just heard from the doctor, something
happened.
My eyes opened.
Sylvia shrieked. She would later tell me that the next biggest shock,
almost as shocking as my eyes opening, was the way they immediately
began to look around. Up, down, here, there . . . They reminded her not of
an adult emerging from a seven-day coma, but of an infant—someone
newly born to the world, looking around at it, taking it in for the first
time.
In a way, she was right.
Sylvia recovered from her initial flat-out shock and realized that I was
agitated by something. She ran out of the room to where Holley was still
standing at the big picture window, talking to Eben IV.
“Holley . . . Holley!” Sylvia shouted. “He’s awake. Awake! Tell Eben
his dad is coming back.”
Holley stared at Sylvia. “Eben,” she said into the phone, “I have to call
you back. He’s . . . your father is coming back . . . to life.”
Holley walked, then ran into the ICU, with Dr. Wade right behind her.
Sure enough, I was thrashing around on the bed. Not mechanically, but
because I was conscious, and something was clearly bothering me. Dr.
Wade immediately understood what it was: the breathing tube that was
still in my throat. The tube I no longer needed, because my brain, along
with the rest of my body, had just kicked back to life. He reached over,
cut the securing tape, and carefully extracted it.
I choked a little, gasped down my first fully unaided lungful of air in
seven days, and spoke the first words I’d spoken in a week as well:
“Thank you.”