With CPR and drugs, the emergency room team revived my cousin Serge. Once a pulse was established, they applied shock paddles to restore an even rhythm. That morning Serge had thought he was coming down with the flu, his chest was congested. Finally around noon, he decided to leave his art gallery in the hands of his staff and walk the eight blocks to the Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu, crossing over the Pont Saint-Michel. On arrival, he collapsed at the admittance desk. Surgeons inserted stents in his blocked arteries and he was discharged two days later.
“I was just regaining consciousness after the surgery when a woman appeared at my bedside,” he told me on the phone. “She asked if I had seen a white light while I was dying. I think she wanted my impressions while they were still fresh and unembellished.” In fact, Serge had been awestruck by the white light. He observed it as if standing behind himself. The light had a bluish tinge at its edge, that is, at the edge of his field of vision. The woman listened attentively to his description.
“Don’t you think it’s remarkable?” he asked me. “Of course,” I said, “your timing couldn’t have been luckier. What if you hadn’t taken yourself to the hospital?” “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s remarkable that there’s a person whose job is to collect data about the white light?”
A few weeks later, while I was in Paris on business, Serge said his health was fine but he wanted to speak with the woman, to know more about what he had experienced. He asked me to attend as witness. We walked to the hospital along the same route he took while nearing death.
“Oh, we know virtually nothing about the white light,” she replied tersely to his question. “And we don’t inquire for that purpose. When someone flat-lines and then returns to life, we ask about the white light — because it seems when the patient, excited and amazed, tells the story of seeing it, this speeds recovery.”