George took the same path every morning to school, but this morning, everything was different. A sudden, bright, golden door appeared before his eyes, inviting him to another world. He stepped through the door just as the wailing sirens of an ambulance drew closer. But George didn’t listen to the sirens, too captivated by the sight around him—marble pathways, clouds enveloping the area, and a winged figure holding a scythe.
Meanwhile, George’s body was rushed to the hospital, his mother clutching his cold hand with tears streaming down her face. Her voice, barely above a whisper, pleaded, “Don’t leave me, Georgie. Don’t leave me.” Moments earlier, George had been hit by a car. Now his lifeless body lay still as nurses administered defibrillator shocks, desperate to bring him back.
In the other world, George wandered the marble pathway, following the winged figure. Distant, muffled sounds of the shocks echoed faintly in his ears, but he remained oblivious, mesmerized by his surroundings. Flowers bloomed along the path he walked. Then, the winged figure vanished, and before him appeared two golden and pearl-white gates. Behind a podium in front of the gates stood a tall, bearded man.
Back in the hospital, the doctors declared George dead as the monitor emitted a continuous flatline beep. His mother, devastated, sat in silence, staring out the window at the sky. George’s body was taken to the morgue in a large white van, her whispered words lingering in the air: “Heaven.”
George, still unaware of what had happened, stood before the gates. The hum of the hospital’s motor and the flatline beep faintly resonated in his ears, but he paid no mind. He looked up at the bearded man with curiosity and asked, “Where am I?”
The man’s deep voice resonated with an otherworldly tone, but beneath it, George could hear his mother’s voice as though it carried through him. The answer he gave was the same as the word his mother had whispered through her tears: “Heaven.”