Science Is Sacrifice

What happens after we die? Do our souls float from our bodies to join a greater being in the sky? Or do our brains just release a flood of feel-good chemicals to ease the pain and fear, creating one blissful dream that seems to last forever? Since the dawn of human intelligence, so many brilliant minds have tried to find the answer, and not one has succeeded. Sarah Proctor hoped to be the first. Beyond hope, she knew that she would be the first. After decades of hard work and ridicule from her colleagues, she would be the first to definitively understand what happened to the mind after the body completely shut down. She would be the first to properly define and categorize the soul.

The going had been…rough, to say the least. Especially in the beginning. Few foundations were willing to hand out grants for this subject. It was practically non-scientific, so many professionals in the field decreed. It bordered on the religious, the fantastical, the impossible. Fools, all of them. One thing that science had proven time and time again was that there was no such thing as “impossible.” Answers did not come to those who were deterred by limits when no such limits existed. 

Sarah had started small. She had built her doctorate thesis on what articles on the matter existed--most of which stated that life after death was nonexistent--alongside the testimonies of those who had had near death experiences. NDE’s had become the backbone of her studies after that, and when she was not teaching biology at the local community college, she was scouring the worldwide web for any new cases. Those she reached out to were usually willing to talk, in the name of scientific discovery. Others flat out told her to fuck off, or demanded money for their stories, the latter of which was, in fact, the best way to weed out the liars. Persistence sometimes won out. Other times, it had brought Sarah threats of cease and desist orders.

Small prices to pay in the name of science.

Now, at last, Sarah hoped to take things one step further. This new series of trials would finally earn her the respect of the community. She dreamed of the grants she would receive as she wrote out the contracts and nondisclosure agreements with an obsessive thoroughness. The paperwork needed to be airtight. There could be no mistakes when dealing with human test subjects. Even if they were scooped up from the very dregs of society. Sarah could only pay a little, but sometimes, all a person needed was enough money to get their next fix. Sometimes, all a person needed was a roof over their head and a few meals for the duration of an experiment. Or a job reference. Sometimes, people were willing to risk their lives for the little things.

Compulsively glancing at the AED on the table, as if to reassure herself that it was indeed still there, Sarah crossed one leg over the other and sipped her coffee. The drug cocktail had been administered, and--she glanced at her chart--Alexander was quite unconscious. The heart monitor’s--it was best not to ask how she acquired that piece of medical equipment--slow beeping filled the room, the sounds growing farther and farther apart until… One long, droning beeeeep. Sarah glanced at her watch, jotted down the time, and set the timer for five minutes. The brain began to truly feel the effects of oxygen deprivation after three. The most severe damage began to set in by nine. Five minutes was a happy medium. Dispassionately, she watched the man’s limp body. He was still as a corpse. Why, he practically was a corpse. 

What are you seeing? She fiddled with her pen and glanced at the AED again. It had been successful for her first subject. Philip, who had walked off with an unsteady gait and two hundred dollars. The second one, Lacey, had been carried to a nearby alleyway with the help of Sarah’s ever-supportive husband, Jackson. One of the few benefits of living in the city, in terms of her research, at least, was that stumbling upon an overdose victim was nothing out of the ordinary. Sarah had not heard from Lacey after the ambulance had taken her away. If she had not made it, then her memory would live on in Sarah’s research. Science involved sacrifice, and Lacey had been a willing participant. 

The timer rang, and Sarah leaped into action. The AED was turned on, the pads placed on Alexander’s chest, and the shock administered. Nothing. Not entirely unexpected, and she texted Jackson to come downstairs before beginning compressions. Her husband preferred not to involve himself in the experiments themselves, but he never left her alone with her subjects. Not when they were from such…sketchy backgrounds. His protectiveness was as appreciated as his support for her mission. The basement door opened, and Jackson waddled downstairs. “AED or compressions?” Sarah asked conversationally, only a little breathless. 

“Move over. You’re not reaching the proper depth,” was his gruff reply. Once a firefighter, always a firefighter. Sarah conceded her spot by Alexander’s side, and together they worked the “patient.” Compressions. Breaths. Shock. Compressions. Breaths. Shock. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Twenty. Sarah locked eyes with her husband across the cot, and she knew instantly that they would be taking a drive around the block. “Call it.” Jackson was already turning off the AED as he spoke. Sarah left the cot to jot down her notes, eyes prickling with frustration. One out of three successful trials did not a proper study make. She would need to adjust the drug dosage next time. Or perhaps begin resuscitation earlier. Which would put her at risk of not giving the subject enough time in the beyond.

It would be a long night, even after they dropped off the body. They chose to call anonymously from a payphone down the block this time. It would not do to draw attention to the study. Not yet.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Beeeeeep. Sarah was vaguely aware of the long, droning noise. She was vaguely aware of what it meant, but the warm fuzz of her brain made “flatline” a very non-frightening word. It was barely a word at all as she floated along towards a brightness that rivaled the sun. Pleasure and peace overtook her mind, stronger than she had ever experienced before. She would have been content to float forever, but something was calling to her in this dark space. That light, a pinprick up ahead, and she could do nothing but watch it grow larger and larger. Brighter and brighter, until she was blinded. The force of that light should have burned. It should have hurt  her eyes. A question scrabbled for purchase in her mind. Do I still have eyes? She could not bring herself to care. 

Nothing mattered but that light.

There were voices, too distant to be identified, let alone understood. Yet, she saw without seeing. Jackson was hovering over…was that her body on the cot? A memory. His doubtful expression as he had hooked her up to the heart monitor and the IV bag. The first show of doubt he had ever given her. Concern. Her trials had not been going well at all. It was growing difficult to find subjects. Science was sacrifice. It was her turn to make that sacrifice. The light called again, and Sarah looked away from the duo in medic uniforms that was rushing down the basement steps. She stopped hearing Jackson’s explanation for why his wife was overdosed and attached to a heart monitor. The light was consuming everything. The light held all her answers. 

Warmth. An embrace both solid and not. Invisible arms wrapped around her, pulling her in, and Sarah gladly succumbed. She saw her father’s face, beaming at her… She saw her mother young again. She saw her younger brother, Timothy, just as he had been before the train had struck him at the age of ten, and she would have wept, except there was no reason to weep. They were together. She and everyone that she had ever lost. 

Sudden clarity. I must write this down. Sarah tried to turn back to the basement, tried to retreat from the light. Her study… She was going to change the world. She had found what she had been searching for her entire life. “I have to go.” Her voice was both shout and whisper, but their words drowned it out. She still could not make out what they were saying, as if they were speaking a foreign language. But she understood. Stay. She belonged to them, now. She belonged to the light.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sarah Loraine Proctor died on September 17th, 2022, at the age of fifty-seven. She was found in an alley several blocks from her home. Her distraught husband, when questioned, admitted to her well-hidden drug problem and her obsessive quest to “find God” through overdoses. The documentation of her final experiment, the product of a lifetime of work and sacrifice, would never see the light of day.