There was a man sitting in his room the next time Greg woke up.

"Hello," the man said.

Greg blinked twice, slowly. He was not completely himself. He wouldn't be for some time. "Hello," he said. "And who are you supposed to be?"

The man wore nothing that might make anyone mistake him for a doctor or nurse of any sort. In fact, if there was anything he could be mistaken for, it was perhaps a father from a sitcom. He wore roundish glasses over an equally round face with its well-trimmed beard. There was a button down shirt, neatly pressed, underneath a sweater vest. Perhaps it was because he seemed so perfectly normal that Greg did not feel alarmed that an intruder was in his hospital room. Greg's head lolled to one side to peer at the clock. In his hospital room--at half-past three in the morning.

The man crossed one leg over his knee. "I'm sorry we had to meet like this. I heard about your condition just this afternoon. I had to travel a bit to get here. And, well, you've been sleeping since I arrived. So...that's good."

Greg nodded. That seemed sensible. Even in his hazy, mildly drugged state. Especially in that state.

"Ah, but you asked who I am," the man said. "I'm Roger Turner. And as you might have figured out, I'm not a doctor."

"What condition?" Greg asked. That word seemed to come to him as something of concern. Seldom was "condition" the term if all was well. He wondered what else could possibly happen to him this week.

"Condition, situation," Roger rattled off. "I'm talking about what happened to you recently. You died."

Greg nodded. That much he knew. "On the operating table. Gone for three minutes. So they tell me."

Roger nodded. "Yes. And that's not exactly what I came to talk to you about." He took off his glasses and spent a good solid minute cleaning them on his vest before returning them to his face. "It's what came after."

Greg's mind, foggy as it was, wasn't processing this as well as he might have hoped. "They used the paddles. Those..." there was a name for those paddles, but it wasn't coming to him. "...you know, those paddles. Like they do on television."

But Roger was shaking his head. "Not after you came back. What happened while you were gone. While you were dead."

Greg said nothing. He wished he could find someplace else in the room to focus on besides Roger Turner, sitcom dad. Roger Turner was being decidedly unfunny at the present moment.

"It's all right," Roger said. "Tell me what happened."

"Nothing happened," Greg said, perhaps a little too quickly.

"Now," Roger said, "do you mean that in the way I think we both know you should?"

Greg finally managed to drop his gaze. To his white sheet covered stomach. And his legs. "Nothing. There was nothing."

Roger leaned forward. "Nothing at all?"

"No, it--" Greg felt his throat was very dry. He reached for the pitcher of water to his right and Roger was there to help him.

"It's okay," Roger said, pouring some water into a plastic cup and then helping Greg to drink it. "It's okay. Look, you're tired. I can come back--"

Greg reached out and gripped Roger's sleeve before he knew he was making the movement. "There was less than nothing," he said hoarsely. "There wasn't even nothing. If there had been nothing, I would...I would have been able to see it or something. But--"

"You weren't there," Roger finished for him.

"No," Greg said, settling back. "I wasn't there. In fact, there was less and less of me not there as the seconds went past. Only..."

"There were no seconds. Because you weren't there," Roger said. He patted Greg on the shoulder. "It's all right."

Roger picked up his chair and brought it to sit beside the bed. Once settled, he crossed his leg at the knee again. "I was an electrician before. I made a stupid mistake and wound up where you are now. Having been brought back from dying. And there was the same thing waiting for me on the other side. The fact...that there is no other side.

"Everything that they talk about...light, tunnel, rising sensation...none of it was there."

"So there's something...different about you and I, then," Greg offered.

Roger shook his head, "No, I'm afraid there isn't. I explored every single avenue I could come up with. And that led me to others. Like us. Even people who said that yes, they had seen the tunnel. And the light. When you get them alone, and they know you've been where they have--or haven't, as they case may be. They'll admit. Nothing there."

Roger stood up and cleaned his glasses again. "I even thought perhaps I was simply a bad Christian. After all, what is the most basic definition of Hell? It's the total absence of God. Being deprived of God. And since we are supposed to be made in His image, that would mean my entire Self was gone as well." He chuckled. "Then I talked to two priests and an archbishop."

The look on Greg's face could easily have been taken for dismay. Roger shook his head, "I'm sorry. I know it's not funny. But it doesn't pay to do much else other than laugh, honestly."

Roger sat back down again. "Some of the doctors here know. And when they have someone who goes and comes back, they call me. There are others like me, around the country. We're here to...well, let you know...that you shouldn't let it eat you up. Like we did." He shrugged a little. "You probably will anyway. It's a hard thing to come to grips with, that there's nothing else. In fact--honestly, I've talked with more than a few atheists who have had to struggle with it as well. Even though they knew with their rational minds there was nothing, somewhere, on some level, they knew just as strongly that they had to be wrong."

Greg sat, taking it all in. He wasn't sure how to feel: saddened? Relieved that he hadn't had some kind of dying nightmare on the table?

Roger reached into his pocket and placed a business card on the side table next to the pitcher of water. "I need to get going. It's a two hour drive back and there's work tomorrow. Here's my card. And I'm writing down a newsgroup on the back. You probably know how to access those things over the Internet--I had to get my son to set it up for me."

Greg looked up at this. "Does he know?"

Roger stopped writing and looked over at him over the top of his glasses. "No, of course not. I wouldn't burden him with this. Bring him up his whole life in the church and turn around and tell him I was mistaken? What sort of person would that make him into? What sort of person would that make me?"

Greg nodded. In his half-drugged, weary state, that made a semblance of sense.

"The newsgroup is for us. People like us. Just so we can stay in touch with others who have been through what we have." Roger put his pen away. "Feel free to use it. Feel free to call me. We have to stick together."

Roger made to leave. Greg had one other thing on his mind, though. "What if they ask?"

"Ask what happened?"

Greg nodded.

"Tell them nothing happened. Tell them you saw the tunnel. Tell them whatever you like. You can even tell them the truth but..." Roger put his hand on the door. "They won't believe you." Roger looked up and smiled. "That's why my wife left me. She couldn't believe. So trust me. I know." Roger nodded to the card. "Don't lose that."

Greg nodded again. "Thank you," he said.

Roger smiled once more and then left the room.

Greg reached over and found the button for his morphine. He didn't need it. But it seemed simpler just to sleep for the time being. He hit the button.

Just as he was about tlean back and relax and let go, he reached over and grabbed the card. He tucked it between both hands.

Maybe when he awoke it would be gone. And maybe this and the nothing beyond him would both be a dream.

Greg closed his eyes.