(In September 1988, just a month has passed since my wife Ann, had been released from the hospital after going through a triple by-pass surgery. I returned to Wilford Hall USAF Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. I was under intensive care, recuperating from an operation that removed my prostate gland and my groin lymph nodes, because of a malignant tumor contained, I hoped, within my prostate gland. On the fourth night after the operation I had an inconsequential, dream - which included a vague, vision of the outskirts of what I think, Hell may be like.)

. . .

As I was awakening, forcing my eyes open and looking around, something about the condition of the bed I was in and of the room it was in, made me feel very uneasy. “This is not my house. So whose house is this? Where am I?” Another bed in the room was dusty and covered with cobwebs. The covers on it were fragile and gray with age. The bed I was in was covered with old crumbly, water stained cardboard boxes disassembled, lying flat on it. Some were piled on me. I slid out of the bed looking for my clothes and found them hanging from the back of a chair, soiled and moldy with dusty creases. “These clothes have been here for a while.” While putting them on, I looked more carefully around this strangely familiar room, like a place where I had been before, but I could not be sure. Looking towards the entry door of the room, voices were coming from somewhere near by inside the house.

Still buckling my belt, I walked out of the room down the short hall towards the voices and in doing so I came upon a door off the hall to the outside standing open. I looked out on to a large yard with several huge old trees with no leaves and long low hanging limbs, the ground under the limbs showing bare and dusty. No grass, no shrubs, just untrimmed limbs hanging low, some touching the bare earth. I noticed there were no shadows. “Maybe the sky was overcast.” The grayness of the light in the yard just increased my dismal feelings. Again, the scene looked so familiar. Have I been here before? An uneasy feeling crept up my spine and settled in my mind. A feeling like being left behind, or maybe, leaving somewhere against my will. I tried to grasp a meaning from all of this, but the more I tried, the more frightened I became of an answer. Walking on through the house I found the source of the voices in the kitchen. There in the kitchen, sitting at the table was Ernest. The sight of him was so pleasant I quickly felt a warm glow. Just seeing him sitting there cleared my mind of some of the misgivings I had been having. I felt like, like everything might now be alright.

Three unfamiliar men were sitting around the table with Ernest, finger piling the thick dust on the table. “Who are these three fellows?” The kitchen was cold with an unused musty smell, so much so that a feeling of impending finality pushed in around the edges of my mind again. Looking back at Ernest I realized how withdrawn and sad he was, like he didn't know what to say, think or do. I didn't want to ask him anything, but I felt compelled to. I said, "what's wrong Ernest? What has happened?" He didn't look up immediately, but finally he faced me. He said, "Rog, I'm dead. You are too." He took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. He continued, "I was killed in a car accident Rog". When he said that, I couldn't help but look at the others setting there. They didn't speak, but as I caught the eye of each man, the casting down of eyes, the nod of a head told me that the same had happened to all --all dead. All of us dead?

I turned and spoke to Ernest again. "What happened to me Ernest, was I in the same car?" He said, "no. You died in the hospital operating room. I talked to Ed and Kitt's boy, Mac, just before my accident. Mac knew Major Osteriker, the doctor who did your operation - removing the malignant tumor I believe Momma told me. Dr. Osteriker had told Ed and Mac that he was working in the upper groin cavity in a pool of blood and he nicked a main artery. Anyway you hemorrhaged. They had six units of blood available and even if they'd of had sixteen, it wouldn't of been enough. Dr. Ostericker said the nick was large and the flow was gushing, over flowing.

Anyway Roge, it was ages ago. We can't go back, but even if we could, it's too late. No one is there now…"

. . .

I awakened abruptly vividly realizing that I was coming out of a dark and compelling dream. Looking around at my surroundings, nothing was familiar. The whiteness of area around the bed I was in, the glare of bright lights on me, the tubes running from under my bed covers and pulling on me, the intense burning pain low in my stomach area. I could feel the hot wetness of blood spewing over my legs and the freedom of my bladder emptying.

Quickly it came to me, I knew where I was. I'm in the hospital and everything has gone wrong. I was struggling to get out of the pool of blood and urine I was creating, but I couldn't move. Am I strapped in this bed? Has my mentality become twisted? I burst into tears as the dismal scenes of my dream and the helplessness of my condition swept over me.

Suddenly the nurse appeared beside my bed. "Are you alright? Are you crying? Can you hear me?

Slowly the spin of my mind and my sobs of despair subsided. A cloak of dread that covered my head lifted just where I could peer at this nurse standing beside my bed. Only then could I control myself well enough to let her know what I had just experienced. She told me I had only been a sleep a very short while. She said, "at 10 o'clock when I looked in on you, you were awake and it's only 10:10 now".

I told her of the pool of blood I was in and that my catheter had slipped out of my bladder. She calmly said, "well let's take a look". She removed the covers and while looking, she said, "nothing is wrong. Your catheter is ok and no bleeding anywhere". I tried to look for myself but couldn't raise my head, so she pressed a button raising the head of my bed where I also could see that nothing was wrong.

My fear and deep distress was obvious. She walked over to a chair, picked it up and as she brought it to the side of my bed, she said, "can I sit with you for a while here beside your bed?”

. . .

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands; one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."