37 Seconds
Dedication
To my children, Valentina, Adina, and Jacob.
Thank you for loving me with the purest, strongest, and
most sensitive of hearts. Everything I do, I do for you.
To the love of my life. I will never forget the pain
we endured or the strength it took to get to the other side.
I love you, sweetheart, in this lifetime and the next.
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Copyright
About the Publisher
The first time is a charm: Jonathan and I during our first pregnancy together, which now strikes us as amazingly uneventful.
LORI ALLEN PHOTOGRAPHY
Prologue
I’VE ALWAYS KNOWN YOU TO BE A FIGHTER.” It was a pep talk just like the ones he had given me many times before. “I’ve always known you to survive,” my Uncle Marvin said, trying to comfort me. I started to sob uncontrollably. And then I realized he was trying to distract me from turning around. Suddenly, a sharp pain shot down my throat and my stomach felt like it was being ripped open. I turned around and watched in horror as a scalpel dug deep into the sternum of someone on an operating table, slicing all the way down the center of the person’s stomach. When one of the doctors moved to the side, I saw that the someone was me.
“Can I come out?” I gasped. I wanted out of hypnosis. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“I’m going to count . . . one, two, three, four, five. Take another deep breath, you’re coming back. It’s all okay,” Linda, my therapist, softly said. Tears were streaming down my face.
Did I just see what I thought I saw? Was I actually witnessing doctors trying to bring me back to life? I was in shock. For months people had been asking me what I could remember about the moment I died on the operating table, but I couldn’t remember a thing. Now, during a regression therapy session, I was watching and feeling every painful detail. Did it really happen that way? Was I looking through a window into the past? Or was this a recalled episode of Grey’s Anatomy left in my subconscious? I couldn’t get my head around it.
Eight months before, I died after giving birth to our son, Jacob. I flatlined for 37 seconds. What happened to me was medically unpredictable, but my doctors will tell you that I survived because I predicted it. I had experienced detailed premonitions for months beforehand that I would die the same day my son was born, and many—including my doctors—believe those visions saved my life.
A few months after Jacob’s birth—after I had recovered from not just childbirth but trauma and death—I realized I needed help processing the entire experience. The realization that I had seen my own death ahead of time was too much to handle on my own. My doctors couldn’t give me any direction, religious leaders were sure that G-d (which is how many of us in the Jewish community spell the term in order not to inadvertently take the name in vain) had played a hand in it, and my husband was happy that I was alive but, as a left-brain thinker, couldn’t even begin to fathom how I could have seen my own death. I needed more help than my doctors and rabbis could offer. So, I turned to regression therapy.
No one prepared me for the pain I was about to endure by going back into the past or for what I was about to see.
And if it was possible to go back into the past, then was it possible that I actually had a conversation with my uncle? After all, he had been dead for more than 20 years.
I would soon discover, as amazing as this is going to sound, that the details I saw by looking into the past were as accurate as my premonitions had been. These experiences ultimately opened up doors to a world I never knew existed and certainly never thought I would someday see. This is my story, as it happened to me and through the eyes of everyone else who witnessed it.
Chapter 1
SHE READS STAINS. Coffee stains at the bottom of a very strong cup of Turkish coffee. I hate coffee, but I guess my curiosity got the best of me, so when I was 19 years old I went to see this psychic and drink from the cup. I wanted to see what the future would bring. Was it a boatload of riches, a handsome man, or a job that made me a great success? I never expected to hear what she told me. She said I would “die at an early age.” I know, right? They never tell you bad news, but there it was. No wealth. No man. No, I was going to die at an early age.
Of course, back then I passed off that prediction as maybe just a psychic’s ploy to get more money out of me by forcing me to ask how and when. I didn’t bite. Maybe I should have.
I started thinking about that reading as I was recovering from dying.
Twenty-two years after the coffee lady allegedly saw those fatal stains, I died at the age of 41 for 37 seconds. Did the psychic really see something back then, or was it just coincidence? I’ll never know. But I have come to believe that I can’t discount the possibility of being able to see into the future, because months before I was to give birth to our second child, I had visions that I was going to die. They were scary and detailed. At the time I couldn’t have told you why or how these visions happened, but they would ultimately save my life. In the aftermath, as I relived my death—only this time as an observer—I came to understand who had sent me those warnings.
It was May 30, 2013, one week shy of my scheduled C-section, and I woke up with a craving for a cigarette. I don’t smoke. Never have. But throughout my pregnancy, I had craved them constantly. It was weird. I certainly wasn’t going to pick up a smoke, but I had found myself purposely walking close to smokers just to get a whiff. Strange, I know.
I shook off the craving and headed to the kitchen to start the day. I was giving my daughter, Adina, breakfast, and I felt off. All of a sudden I felt a strange cramp, looked into my underwear, and saw blood. It wasn’t a few droplets but a full rush of blood that quickly soaked my nightgown and puddled at my feet. Adina stood there staring at me with fear in her eyes. The mommy in me went into high gear—as I tried to clean up. The only thing I could think to do was to keep smiling, be positive, and tell her she was going to meet her brother today. I didn’t want her to be scared, even if I was.
The truth is, I was terrified. I wasn’t in pain, just in shock. And from the look on my daughter’s face, she felt the same way. So I put a smile on my face and got excited, and she was distracted enough not to focus on the fact that I was, in her words, “peeing red.”
I calmly called Tessie to come upstairs. She was Adina’s night nurse when she was born. Tessie was also a close family friend, and she had told my husband that she wouldn’t leave me alone while he was out of town, given the pregnancy complications I was having. I am so grateful she was there that morning.
I knew I needed help right away, so I prepared to head to the hospital. As we got Adina strapped into the car, a million things were going through my mind.
I had to call my husband, Jonathan, who was in a meeting in New York. I could have walked to the hospital located directly behind our house in Chicago to get immediate medical attention, but I wanted to be with my doctors, who knew my medical history. So I knew I had to drive. Tessie went to get into the driver’s seat, but I snapped at her and told her to get out of the way. I knew she would be nervous and wouldn’t know where to go. Giving her directi
ons and telling her to run yellow lights would only make her panic, so I told her to get into the backseat. I was still bleeding, but I figured I could get to the hospital in 15 minutes flat. I felt I had enough time. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the smartest move I’ve ever made, and yes, I know what could have happened. Still, I’d had many fears and premonitions leading up to that day, but dying in a car accident wasn’t one of them.
I started to pray. I remember my family rabbi teaching me at an early age that the Shema prayer means many things, but that its main purpose is to protect. Jews are supposed to say this prayer every morning and every evening so that its power will help to protect their souls. I desperately needed that now. And I was certain that if no one else could help me, my Jewish faith and G-d could. So I prayed.
I was in control and driving as calmly as I could. The blood was contained, for the moment, with a pad. I called my husband and told him he needed to get on a plane to Chicago because we were having our baby that day. I called my father to tell him I was on my way to the hospital, but I didn’t share my fears with my parents, as it would have done nothing but scare them. I had this sinking feeling that I was a ticking time bomb. For the sake of my daughter, I compartmentalized my fear and soldiered on.
In the short time it took that May day to rush to Prentice Women’s Hospital at Northwestern Medical Center in Chicago, I realized that this moment was the culmination of all my hopes and fears: my hope to expand my family with the man I so deeply loved, and my fear that I wouldn’t make it through the delivery. It was more than just a normal fear. I knew I was going to die.
For the first five months, my pregnancy had been physically perfect—the complete opposite of what I had experienced with our first child, Adina. This time there was no morning sickness, no acid reflux or leg cramps. Nothing.
I spent much of my second trimester getting our home in Chicago ready for sale so that we could move to New York. My husband, Jonathan, had accepted a position with the New York Attorney General’s Office as its chief economist. It was a dream job for him. He’d wanted to go into government service for as long as I’d known him. But it was a decision we didn’t take lightly, since we were planning to expand our family and let go of the roots we had planted in the Windy City. Flying between Chicago and New York was becoming a weekly ritual for us. I made sure to have obstetricians lined up in both cities, just to play it safe.
It was February 7, and I had just flown back to New York in time for the all-important 20-week ultrasound. This is the screening where they look at the spine and all of the organs and can see more clearly if there are any serious complications with the baby. I was thinking about my easy pregnancy when the radiologist poked his head in after the test and said, very bluntly, “You have a complete placenta previa. I’ll be right back,” then rushed out of the room to take a call.
What? What!?! What does that mean? Is the baby in danger? Am I in danger? I turned to Jonathan and said, very determinedly, “I have a rare blood type, and I don’t know what a complete placenta previa is, but I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Jonathan said, calmly and rationally. “Let’s learn about it and take the appropriate precautions.”
When the radiologist came back in, he said, “It’s nothing to worry about. As the uterus grows it might move out of place. You don’t have to restrict your activity. It’s no big deal.”
That was it. Nothing more. Jonathan was relieved, but I was already dialing my OB/GYN in Chicago, Dr. Julie Levitt, as I was walking out the door. Her response? “Absolutely you need to restrict your activity. I just had a previa that had to stay on hospital bed rest for 72 days before giving birth at 35 weeks.” It is a big deal, I told myself.
After getting our family fed and settled in the apartment that cold February night, I started Googling “complete placenta previa.” It’s a condition where the placenta “lies on the bottom of the uterus blocking the cervix.” My heart started racing. I read on. “It can cause bleeding. And possible complications. And requires a C-section.”
Chills ran down my spine. Complications?! I’d already had a C-section when Adina was born, and the likelihood of having a previa after one C-section was less than 5 percent. Still, my head was reeling. I read screen after screen about all the complications, wanting to take in as much as I could. Then, as if I were watching a movie on my computer screen, I saw a flash and my future unfolded.
I saw myself on the operating table. I saw the doctors working feverishly on me. I saw Jonathan holding our newborn Jacob, who was fine. But I was not. I saw my mouth open and my body heavily placed on the operating table like a slab of meat. I was dead.
What was that?! I shook my head in disbelief. What did I just see? I had no idea where those images came from. I started panicking. I had to catch my breath. How could I see something like that? Why would I see something like that? Was I so freaked out that I was causing my mind to imagine the worst-case scenario?
I ran into the bedroom and told Jonathan about it. Once again, he tried to calm me down, saying, “That is the absolute worst-case scenario. There’s no need to panic. Nothing’s going to happen.”
But I knew this wasn’t just my imagination. I had a visceral reaction to what I saw. My hands were freezing cold down to my fingertips. My body felt extremely heavy. This wasn’t normal pregnancy anxiety. I already had given birth once before, and this feeling was nothing like the jitters of my first delivery. I wasn’t sure why I was seeing it, but I immediately felt that the “vision” was real. I was convinced that I would not survive the birth of my boy.
Chapter 2
THE DAY AFTER THAT FIRST VISION, I had another one. This time I was pushing Adina in the stroller across a park in Tribeca on the way to her school. I was still shaken from what I’d seen the night before, which I was playing over and over in my mind, trying to figure out what the heck it was. I was concerned about “seeing” this mini-movie, but more concerned about what I saw. I had never hallucinated, suffered a nervous breakdown, or imagined things that weren’t real.
I kept telling myself to calm down and take deep breaths. Adina was excited to get to class, and her small voice and tiny smile helped to bring me back from my thoughts.
As I walked through the brisk air I saw the empty fountains and imagined how pretty they would be once the water was turned back on in the spring. I could almost picture the flow of the water, the fountains spraying in every direction. That’s when the next vision struck. All of a sudden that water flow I was imagining turned into blood. But I wasn’t looking at a fountain—I was seeing inside myself as blood started to ooze and pool and hemorrhage. I saw blood coming out of my veins and pouring out over my uterus and running down the insides of my legs. And I not only saw it—I felt it.
As quickly as the vision came into my mind’s eye, it was gone. I held on to the stroller for balance, to keep myself from falling down. The sounds of traffic snapped me out of it. What the hell was that? It had looked real, and worse than that, it had felt real. Am I going crazy? Is this what a nervous breakdown looks like?
Adina and I quickly arrived at the mom-and-tot class. I went through the motions, but I wasn’t mentally there, and as soon as we got out of class I called Jonathan. This time he seemed a little more concerned about what I was telling him. Once again, he tried to console me without really understanding. But how could he? I didn’t really understand what was going on. I did know, however, that whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
I did everything in my power to keep my fear at bay and do my normal routine.
A few days later, I was doing the weekly grocery shopping, not paying much attention to what I needed as I wandered aimlessly down each aisle. I turned the corner to head into the baked goods section, and I saw the next one clear as day. It was another mini-movie, and this one rocked me to my core. I saw my funeral.
I was inside a shiny, coffee-colored casket and wearing Jonathan’s Air Force dog tags. He was w
earing a religious shroud as he kneeled next to the coffin and cried. There was a white awning over the burial site, which sat on a small hill overlooking hundreds of headstones and water.
The next image was Jonathan saying a prayer. It’s called the Eshet Chayil, or the “Woman of Valor” prayer from Proverbs 31, and he says it to me every Friday night. It’s his way of blessing me for taking care of the family and also letting me know how he feels about being married to me. I watched our family starting to make challah, the kids kneading the dough as they put more flour on the floor than in the bowl. Trying to keep his composure, Jonathan was wiping the tears away from his eyes so the children couldn’t see how terribly sad he was. It was clear that he was being protective of them, praying for their joy and peace and trying as best he could to prevent them from feeling the pain that would eventually surface from my absence.
Once again, I wasn’t imagining it—I was seeing it.
What was happening to me? Was I going crazy? Or were these visions as real as they felt?
UNTIL THEN, I had always been very calm and collected. I had to be that way to work in the television industry. Over the years I had produced television programs and music videos with stars like Sarah Jessica Parker and Julio Iglesias, and the crazy, fast-paced world of production would have eaten me up if I hadn’t been in control.
Throughout my youth and as a young adult, I was driven to get ahead and was married to my career. Relationships always came second to my work, and having a family was never a consideration. It wasn’t as if I didn’t date or believe in love. I took a brief detour in my twenties and got married for all the wrong reasons. It didn’t last, and from that point on I never looked into the future any further than my next deadline. I was convinced that marriage wasn’t for me. But that all changed the day I met Jonathan Arnold.
I was living in Los Angeles, and a mutual friend suggested that I meet “this economist who is really great.” I didn’t even know what an economist actually did, let alone whether I would have anything in common with him. Jonathan lived in Chicago but was in LA frequently to visit his daughter, Valentina. He called me on one of his trips to LA, and what transpired over the next 45 minutes was a phone call unlike anything either of us had ever experienced. We discussed religion, past relationships, politics, and even where we saw ourselves in five to ten years.