90 Minutes in Heaven_ A True Story of Death & Life - Don Piper [15]
They took me into a room where a doctor was waiting for me. It’s strange, but the only thing I recall about the doctor who examined me was that he was bald. He spent quite a while checking me over. “Mr. Piper, we’re going to do everything we can to save you,” he must have said three times. “You’re hurt bad, seriously hurt, but we’ll do all we can.” Despite his words, I later learned that he didn’t expect me to survive. But he did everything he could to give me hope and urge me to fight to stay alive. Several people moved around me. They were obviously trying to save my life, but I still felt no pain. It was like living in some kind of twilight state where I could feel nothing and remained only vaguely aware of what went on around me.
“We have your wife on the phone,” someone said. They patched her through on the telephone to the emergency room. A nurse laid the phone beside my ear, and I remember talking to Eva, but I can’t recall one word either of us said.
Eva remembers the entire conversation. According to her, the only thing I said was, “I’m so sorry this happened.”
“It’s okay, Don. It’s not your fault.”
Over and over I kept saying, “I’m so sorry. I just wanted to come home. Please bring me home.” In some kind of childlike way, I suppose I felt that if I couldn’t be in my heavenly home, I wanted to be back in my earthly one.
I was alert enough to know that they wanted to transport me on a Life Flight helicopter to Hermann Hospital Trauma Center in Houston. But they decided that the weather was too bad and the cloud ceiling too low, so their helicopter couldn’t take off.
My condition was deteriorating rapidly, and they didn’t know if I was going to survive the afternoon. Despite that, the medical team made a significant decision: They decided to put me back inside an ambulance for the eighty-mile trip to Houston. They didn’t have the facilities to take care of me. Hermann Hospital was the only place for me if I was to have any chance to survive.
They brought around a new ambulance. It’s amazing that as injured as I was—and they still thought I could “expire” at any second—I became aware of little things such as the fresh odors of a new vehicle, especially the fresh paint.
“You’re our first patient,” the attendant said as we drove away.
“What?”
“You’re the first person to ever ride in this ambulance,” he said. “We’re going to take you to Houston. We’ll get you there as fast as we can.”
“How fast do I go?” the driver asked the attendant who sat next to me.
“As fast as you can.”
“How fast is that?” the driver asked again.
“Put the pedal to the metal! We’ve got to get there—now !”
Before we started the trip, I still had felt no pain. I was in and out of consciousness. I felt weightless, as if my mind had no connection with my body. However, about ten minutes down the road, a slight throbbing began. At first, I became aware of a tiny pain in my left arm. Then my left leg throbbed. My head started to ache. Within minutes I hurt in so many places, I couldn’t localize any of it. My entire body groaned in agony and screamed for relief. The full force of the trauma invaded my body. It felt as if every part of my body had been wounded, punched, or beaten. I couldn’t think of a single spot that didn’t scream out in pain. I think I cried out but I’m not sure. Every beat of my heart felt like sledgehammers pounding every inch of my body.
“You’ve got to do something! Please!” I finally pleaded. That much I remember. “Medicine—just something to—”
“I’ve given you all I can.”
“You’ve given me all you can?” His words didn’t make sense. If they’d given me medication, why was I feeling so much pain? “Please—”
“I can’t let you go unconscious,” the attendant said. “You have to remain awake.”
“Please—just something to—”
I couldn’t understand why I had to remain awake. If they’d just knock me out, the pain would go away. “Please,” I begged again.