At summer camp I met a kid who’d been in a coma and could float around his hospital room. He ended up there because one day his uncle went crazy, grabbed a shotgun, shot him and his father, and then blew his head off in the living room.
He was out for several weeks but told me he spent the whole time floating around, watching everything. He could see his own body asleep in bed, his mother holding his hand and crying, and people coming to visit.
I didn’t believe him at first because at that age—fourteen, I think—people make stuff up just to seem important. But the more I asked, the more it all checked out.
He showed me a newspaper clipping—the story about his uncle shooting them. In the photo you could see their living room trashed, cops standing around. Happened in Cádiz, south of Spain I think.
But what made me doubt him was how he told the story. We’d be eating lunch and if someone asked him, he’d stop eating and stand up to act out the whole scene. How his uncle’s head exploded, blood everywhere on the wall, the body dropping dead. He told it with enthusiasm, like it was a movie, not something real. That seemed off. Seeing something like that should mess you up, but he showed no signs of it.
But I was obsessed with the floating itself. The camp only lasted two weeks so I had limited time. At night I’d lie there thinking, then in the morning while they had us milking cows and doing some crap, I’d ask him everything.
How did you float? Did you have to make any effort? “No,” he said. “I just floated and almost touched the ceiling. If I tried to go down I’d float back up like a balloon.” Were you hungry? Did you feel cold or hot? “No. Never even crossed my mind to eat and I felt the same temperature the whole time.” And clothes? Were you wearing jeans, shorts, the same clothes your body had on in the hospital? He paused on that one. “I didn’t look at my clothes and thinking about it, I don’t think I saw my hands or legs either.”
I asked him a thousand questions. What did you do all day? Did you have to sleep? He told me he was in a coma for about three weeks but it went by fast. Like three days or something. He didn’t sleep and to pass the time, especially at night, he’d move around on the ceiling. At first it was hard—he’d lose control and start spinning, really had to struggle to move—but then he got the hang of it. The trick was to think calmly about where you wanted to go and your body would do it. He also told me he once tried to go out into the hospital hallway but something elastic pulled him back. That really interested me.
Then one day his body started descending from the ceiling and merged with the body in the hospital bed. “It was automatic”, he said. When he woke up he told everyone he’d been floating and knew who came to visit. When they didn’t believe him, he gave them details—what clothes they wore and stuff. His mother had brought him gifts and put them in a drawer. He said, “Mom, give me the gifts in the second drawer.” His mother froze and called the doctor. The doctor said it happened sometimes with patients but there was no explanation. Because of the trauma, seeing his uncle die and all that, they thought it was better for him to get away. That’s why they sent him to camp.
I noticed he was different from the other kids. When they brought Nutella sandwiches for snack time, he wouldn’t run over all hysterical. He’d be last in line, didn’t care. When they made us sit in a group to explain some game, he’d sit alone on some steps, not really caring. I’d study him from a distance. Was he like this before or had the coma changed him? His father was dead, his mother couldn’t stop crying, his uncle had blown his head off. And on top of that he’d been floating and the doctor said there was no explanation, that it was better to stop thinking about it all and focus on having a good time.
After two weeks the camp ended. He left and I never saw him again. What I wonder is whether now, as an adult with his life and his job and everything—what has he chosen to believe? That the floating was bullshit because those things can’t happen in the world? Or that the body is separate from who we really are, that nobody knows anything, and there’s an unknown world that needs to be studied.
I’d like to ask him that question.
