37 Seconds - Classic

When Stephanie was pregnant, she had premonitions of her own dad. She told everyone her husband, her friends, her doctor, but no one believed her. Still, she knew that when she got to the delivery room, she was going to die. From snap justments underground layer, you're listening to Scoot, stay tuned. I remember picking up the phone before it even rang. Where are you? Tell me where you are. The phone went dead and I think that sometimes you just know. Maybe you know when your child needs you before they call out. Maybe you know not to make that left turn. Maybe maybe you feel like it's better if you wait for the next bus. You don't know how you know, but you know. From snap justments underground layer, my name is from Washington, know this. However you know, we believe you. Spook starts now. Stephanie Arnold was pregnant with her second child and she couldn't have been more excited. The pregnancy started off easy. Stephanie had no complaints until she reached her 20th week. Spooked. I was walking through Tribeca Park in the middle of winter with my daughter and a stroller and I was explaining how this fountain is so beautiful when it's flowing and then all of the sudden in my mind's eye, the fountain turned to blood and started gushing blood. And I grabbed onto the stroller. I felt the blood hemorrhaging my body like all the blood was rushing out. Stephanie stood in the park, clutching her daughter's stroller. She was doing a few months and this was not a good sign. So she rushed to the emergency room. And once she got there, she realized she wasn't actually hemorrhaging. There wasn't even any blood. The doctor said whatever she felt was just a false alarm. And I'm like it's not a false alarm, it's a warning. A warning because just the night before Stephanie was sitting at her desk when she got a vision. I saw my body flat dead on the operating table. I saw my body cut from sternum to pelvis and across the pelvic area, almost in a tee. Just cut wide open and dead. Stephanie was starting to feel like what happened at the fountain and her vision from the night before were somehow related. I had seen it all happening like flash before my eyes. Stephanie had recently found out that she had placenta-previa. But a doctor told her that the risk of death was pretty low. Still, the vision to her was more like a premonition. I'd be grocery shopping and I'd be in the aisle getting the flower because I was making bread that night and all of a sudden I would see this Sabbath dinner table and the mother's seat would be empty. The next day I'd be walking and I'd have a flash of my burial. Stephanie lay dead in a shiny, coffee-colored casket, wearing her husband Jonathan's Air Force dog tags. Right next to the casket, Jonathan stood crying with her daughters. In his arms was their newborn son, Jacob. There's flashes of life continuing without me. I was looking at a ticking time bomb that was going to go off the day I gave birth. I was in Starbucks getting, you know, hot chocolate or something. And the barista was like, was pregnant also in New York and she's like, she's like, how's the pregnancy going? I'm like, I'm going to die. So people would stop talking to me. I'd have ultrasounds. Babies fine. I'd have blood tests. I'd meet with the psychologist. I am trying to figure out what I need to do and who needs to be in that operating room in order to save my life. With only five weeks until her C-section, Stephanie had gone to every doctor she could think of. The only one left was the anesthesiologist. So I pick up the phone and I call and then I say, "Well, what happens in the event that my placenta previa turns into an accretia and I need a hysterectomy?" And she was startled by it, she was quiet. And she says, "You know, Ms. Arnold, you're in a teaching hospital and you're in very good hands and we're aware of your condition and I hope I made you feel better." And I sat there for a moment and I finally let out a sigh and I said, "It is what it is." I felt alone through the whole process, nobody was believing me during this time. And so it was up to me to do something and I just felt very, very alone. Stephanie's husband commuted from their home in Chicago to his office in New York. So most week nights, Stephanie was by herself. After she put the kids to bed, she would sit in the rocking chair in the living room on her laptop. I took to Facebook, I posted, "If anybody has my blood type, I'm going to need it." I wrote goodbye letters. Every time I started to write something to Jonathan, I would break down crime because I knew that whatever letters I would write would be something that he would be holding on for the rest of his life and continue to read. And I wasn't being poetic, I was scared. I tried to write letters to each one of my children, including my unborn child, and thought, "Where do I even start?" It's the pain of not being there to kiss a booboo better. It's the pain of not cooking a family dinner and having Thanksgiving around the table. One week before her C-section, Stephanie wakes up and walks downstairs to prepare breakfast for her youngest daughter. All of a sudden, a rush of blood comes out of me and lands on the kitchen floor. My daughter looks up and says, "Mommy, why are you being red?" "You know, I'm smiling and I said, you know, we're just going to have your brother today so you're going to get to meet him." Stephanie strapped her daughter in the car and drove herself to the hospital. As soon as she arrived, the nurses hooked her up to the monitors and told her to relax. But Stephanie knew that once the doctor's wheel turned to that operating room and delivered baby Jacob, she wouldn't come back out. I was focused on what the heck is going to happen in the next few hours is Jonathan going to get here on time. What are the last words I'm going to say? Just once say, as they're running out of breath, if you're being buried alive and that last bit of dirt is hitting your face, what are your last words going to be? Stephanie's doctor came in and told her, "It's time." So I start texting Jonathan and I said, "You know, you've made me the happiest woman in the world and please take care of this baby and be a great father like you are but not just to our two girls but to Jacob as well." And he still wasn't getting it, so he said, "Honey, where do I meet you?" And I said, "Athlora recovery, hopefully." And I closed the computer and, you know, Adina's there and I had a smile on my face. My doctor's like, you know, we'll be back with Mommy and your brother soon. And I kissed her a million times. As soon as the gurney turned the corner out of the room, I broke down crime because I knew I wasn't going to see Adina again. I get into the operating room. The noise on my head felt like it was just a pulsating of my heartbeat ringing in my head. Like, you know, bum, bum, bum, bum. I felt this bomb getting louder and louder and louder. The nurses strapped Stephanie's arms on the bed and put a curtain in front of her face. So, at that point, I was done. I mean, there's nowhere to run. There's nowhere to hide. I can't escape this. The doctors began the C-section and they delivered baby Jacob. Then, Stephanie started gagging. Seconds later, she flatlined. The doctors called the code blue. They scrambled to revive her, bringing in a crash cart with extra monitors and extra blood. The first one didn't work. And time was running out. Stephanie was losing blood fast. So, they brought in the second crash cart. She had been gone for 37 seconds. Finally, the monitor picked up a pulse and Stephanie came back to life. The doctors put her into a medically induced coma. And during that time, Stephanie's placenta-previa turned into an acrita, just like she saw in the visions. She started to hemorrhage and the doctors performed a hysterectomy. The sixth day of her coma, Stephanie finally woke up. Her body had swollen up to 200 pounds from the kidney failure. And the first thing she saw was her big swollen belly. When she was confused, she thought she was still pregnant. Now I'm terrified I haven't gone through it yet. Like, I was on pause. Then my husband, whispers in my ear, sweetheart, you know, no, you're not pregnant anymore. You gave birth six days ago. And that blew my mind. So when they transferred back to the maternity ward and they got me settled in, Jonathan with the head nurse at Wheel Jacob bin, like as a surprise. And I just broke down crying and I'm like, you need to get him out of here. Her husband, Jonathan, thought it would be healing to have the baby there. I could tell he was disappointed immediately. He went and he held Jacob and he put him on his chest. To be perfectly honest with you, I was scared of Jacob because of the fear that he was going to kill me. I thought I was going to die and stay dead. I'm alive now on the other side of it and it's not the bliss and the gratitude. I was afraid of being. I was afraid of any kind of emotions that would lead to another fear of foreboding. Stephanie visited therapists after therapists, but no one could explain how she got those premonitions or what happened in the 37 seconds that she died before she came back to life. A friend suggested hypnotherapy. Stephanie figured she'd try it. It was online and she could do it from the comfort of her own home. But when she told her husband, he was like, why would you ever want to do that? And I'm like, I want to go into the fire, rip the bandaid off, and then come out of it on the other side. Because what if I, you know, am crazy with my children? What if I get divorced with my husband? I didn't want the anger to grow into something else and then take its toll. The hypnotherapist told Stephanie that she could take her into deep meditative states. That would allow her to observe what happened in those 37 seconds when she flatlined in the OR. I had never been hypnotized before and I didn't know if it would work. I didn't know whether I'd remember anything or whether somebody was tampering with my mind. She decided she would videotape herself, while she was in her deep meditative states. There was something about the therapist's voice, so she's a Cuban Jew and this woman's voice sounded almost identical to my grandmother. We were just starting, she's like, do you think you're ready to go into the OR? And I said, well, let's try it. The next thing she knew, Stephanie was back in the OR, back to the moment when her heart was beating loudly in her ears. And I'm laying flat on the operating table and I'm alive and my arms are out and attached to the gurney I have a curtain in front of my face. I am completely catatonic. They were talking to me and saying things to me, are you cold, Mrs. Arnold, do you need a blanket? Your husband should be here soon. I wasn't acknowledging it. It was like a muted conversation, like it was just noise. The nurses put the soap on her belly and they wait. Stephanie begins to slip under. And then what I saw was spirit Stephanie perpendicular to my body. The only thing I could hear was the beat of the machine and the tapping of my finger on top of the machine. My heart's getting louder. The beat is getting louder and louder in my head. I am tapping. My spirit is tapping physically. On the monitor counting down slower and slower and slower until they were going to take the baby out of me. And the return spooked. The 37 seconds episode continues. Stay tuned. When we left Stephanie, she was deep in the middle of hypnotherapy and she was going back. Back, back to the moment she died on the operating table. Spooked. The only thing I could hear was the beat of the machine and the tapping. On the monitor counting down slower and slower until they were going to take the baby out of me. The doctors delivered Jacob. And the minute that that Jacob was removed and they were delivering the placenta. And Stephanie's body begins to seize and convulse. You hear the flatline beep and you see my spirits like shoot up like a shooting star. This bright white light shoot up. A nurse jumps on her chest, breaks her ribs and begins to give her CPR. My doctor kept saying this can't be happening. This can't be happening. I see my uncle Marvin. I see my grandmother. I see people that I know that had passed. So my uncle is standing right there. And if you look at it like there's three steps going up to whatever platform all these spirits were at. I was three steps below and as I'm walking in my uncle is standing there and you know he's saying you always knew what to do. You told the doctors what was going on. You need to go back. I physically feel that scalpel hitting my skin and I could feel the cutting and the incisions and hacking away at my stomach. And the feel of an umbilical cord being pulled from high above me down into my body. I can't breathe. Stephanie was in her living room clutching her stomach and at that moment the therapist voice came in. Okay, okay, we're going to come down. We're going to take you past this moment. We're going to go to the moment where you held Jacob for the first times in five, four, three, two, one. When I got done with that therapy session, I felt a sense of relief, just a lot of pain released from my chest. And Jonathan came upstairs and he said, you know, it was everything okay because he had heard me screaming and I said, "I need to take a look at this." And so I showed him about, I don't know, five seconds. He slammed down the computers and I want you to stop this therapy. It's hurting you. It's really, it's traumatic and you're retraumatizing yourself and I said, "I feel better." Like I feel a little more connected like I'm connecting the dots of what happened and he looks at me and he says, "How do you know any of what you just said was true?" It could be an episode of Grey's Anatomy in your head and I looked at him and I was really pissed but I looked at him and I said, you know, it's a fair point. So Stephanie called one of the anesthesiologists who was in the OR when she died on the table. She asked what it looked like when she went into cardiac arrest. And she said, you know, you, you, it wasn't like a, a normal cardiac arrest. It was like you were having a seizure and you were gagging. Stephanie pulls up the video of her hypnotherapy session. It's cute up to the part where she sees herself start to seize and convulse. I said, did it look anything like this? My chest was out and stopped breathing and I had to see sure. And she looked in horror and she said it looked exactly like that. Then the anesthesiologist told her that back when she was pregnant. You said something that would haunt me forever and she said you said it is what it is. Even though the anesthesiologists had told Stephanie not to worry, afterwards she flagged Stephanie's file for delivery day. She made sure to have an extra crash cart with blood and medical supplies just in case. And the only reason I am alive is because they had the blood and they had the crash cart available because she flagged the file. Stephanie felt she had enough validation and she didn't need to be afraid of the premonitions anymore. But the one person who still didn't seem convinced was her husband. After me trying to get him to talk several times and him saying, honey, I'm fine. I'm like, I know you're not. And he's like, I think you're just trying to get me to say something and be emotional about. But I'm okay, really? The crisis hasverted. Now let's move on. Let's move on with our lives. And I'm like, I'm like, no, I feel there's something else going on. And he's like, don't feel anything. It's what's happening. The reality is I'm fine. And so it was very frustrating for me. So I'm just like, you know, keeping myself busy. So one evening she was sitting at Jonathan's desk, tidying up when she found a small prayer book, a paperback version of the Torah. So it's just a little Bible and there were papers stuffed within it. So I open the prayer book and I see a folded piece of paper with numbers on it. And it's only numbers. It's mathematical equations. Stephanie's husband was an economist. And while she was in the coma and ICU, Jonathan was calculating how many amniotic fluid embolisms happened in a year and how many are fatal and what the chances of Stephanie surviving could be. And then there was another piece of paper. And then I opened the piece of paper and I started reading it. It was a letter written to Stephanie. So the letter red, my only love of my life. I am sitting here in the still of the night listening to the machines beep around you. You look like an angel which devastates me. What am I to do if you're gone? How will I ever reconcile this to our children, to myself? I should have listened to more. I should have been there if for nothing else but to hold your hand. I should have prayed for you. Rabbi told me this is a test of faith. If I was being tested, why isn't this happening directly to me? Why to you? What did all this mean? How did you know? I can't lose you. I would be a shell of a man if you die. Please don't die. I don't. And then he stopped mid-sens. So we came home later that day. I let him finish playing with the kids and put him to bed. He was upstairs and he was watching TV. I told him I found the letter and first he brushed it off and he was like, you know, what letter were you talking about? And I'm like the one in your prayer book. He was like, oh, he was watching television. His phone was next to him and I sent him a few texts. And I said, do you believe that I could see dead people? I was standing behind him. I had tried to have so many conversations and I think it was easier to have him answer in black and white without having a big emotional conversation just to ask straight questions to get a straight answer. Then to look into his eyes and have him answer me directly that way. And he responded with yes. And I said, the last question, do you believe me? The tears rolling down his face. He said yes. Big thanks. The Stephanie Arnold for sharing her story. Stephanie lives in Chicago with her husband and three children, including Baby Jacob. And finally, the Stephanie's book on our website, spookedpodcast.org. The spooked monster team includes Mark Listich and assessment, Adiza Egan, Eliza Smith, Jodie Colley and Jasmine Eglera. The spooked theme music was by our own Pat McEving Miller, a original soundtrack by Pat McEving Miller, Renzel Borrio and Leon Morimoto. There are more full episodes of spooked download or stream the show right now, where you got this one spookedpodcast.org. As we count down to all Hallows e, be afraid. And if you like stories with heart and soul, remember to check out the magical snap judgment podcast. And if you feel time and space closing in on you from all sides threatening to trap your very soul, I have the remedy, the antidote, the back door. Please remember and never forget to never, ever, never, never, never, never. Turn out the lights.