By the time he was five and a half, Colm had experienced various versions of this first encounter with death. There was the time on the subway platform, when his mother, carrying their groceries in a large burlap bag, was making polite conversation with a stranger. Colm began to notice the all-too-familiar sensation—the prodrome, he heard his doctors call it. “It’s when you know it’s about to happen, Colm. A prodrome is your warning sign to get down to the ground as soon as you can.” But there was little time for thinking, noticing, let alone getting down. When he felt this way, he would forget what the doctors told him to do, because his mind would go blank.
The first thing to go was his hearing. He could see his mother’s soft lips moving and the chalkiness of her fading lipstick, but he could not hear what she was saying. He squeezed the robot he held in his hand and held it up to get his mother’s attention. But then his vision went, and he knew by the small tightening feeling in his chest, the rapid fire of his heart, and the empty feeling in his brain that it would all be over soon. And then, without further warning, Colm entered a state of black nothing.
Cathleen dropped her groceries and called out for someone for help. Even though this was the fourth time he had died on her, she was not any more composed than the first time. Each time Colm collapsed, all the fear that someday he would not awaken returned and pierced her heart.
On the subway platform, Colm lay absolutely still. Everyone on the platform (witnesses for whom Cathleen secretly thanked God) watched as Cathleen felt for his pulse and asked the stranger with whom she had been speaking to begin chest compressions while she breathed into Colm’s mouth. Meanwhile, without oxygen, Colm’s brain slowly began to shut down. As each minute passed, images of his mother’s face, his yellow Tonka trunk on the floor of his bedroom, the sandcastle he had built at Coney Island in June with his uncle, and nonsense dreams of cities built out of layered cakes and Legos slowly began to disappear. With his heart no longer beating on its own, he entered a realm of complete and utter darkness. And then he was gone.
By the time the medics arrived, Cathleen had lost her initial composure and was out of her mind. Screaming and crying and yelling for all the world to hear for Colm to wake up.
“Dammit. Dammit. Dammit,” she shouted.
She wanted to shake him. One of the police officers who had arrived with the medics wrapped his arms around her from behind and pulled her off Colm. She fought with him to let her go to her son’s side. Two medics worked to squeeze air into Colm’s lungs, while another pulled out portable shock paddles and injected atropine into Colm’s bloodstream. After two shocks, Colm’s heart started beating again on its own. His eyes opened wide and he slowly turned his head, found his mama’s eyes, and began his all too familiar empty, soulless stare.
Cathleen knew she had lost a little bit more of him that day on the platform. But it didn’t matter. She would take whatever part of him was left.
By this, the fourth time Colm had died, Cathleen had built up a steel reserve—not in the face of Colm’s collapses, but in the face of the doctors who failed to provide a logical medical explanation for Colm’s condition, and who quickly considered the possibility that she was harming her own son. She could see it in their eyes, but before they openly accused her of any wrongdoing, they sent Colm to hospitals all over, some out of state, for tests. EEGs for seizures. Scans for tumors. CT scans and MRIs for malformations, ECGs for coronary heart defects. EKGs, EP, and heart studies for abnormal rhythm patterns. Every test came back with no clear indication of a heart condition. For a while the doctors diagnosed Colm with nothing more than syncope—a vasovagal disorder—in which his blood pressure dropped with changes in temperature, pain, and other autonomic reflexes. No blood could get to his brain, and he simply fainted. But typically those who faint regain a heartbeat as soon as they fall into the supine position, and blood can make its way back through the heart to the brain.
The blood never flowed for Colm, though. Everything in his body simply stopped.
Nonetheless, Colm had been released from the hospital three previous times in five years with the same diagnosis: syncope. His mother had been given her own diagnosis: hysteria. However, this time, with so many witnesses on that subway platform who saw him collapse and saw that his heart did not begin beating for several minutes, no one ever could say again that it was just a fainting disorder.