“Why am I here?” Corrine asked. 

Fourteen years ago, after years of medical interventions and frustrations, Corrine conceived. Throughout the pregnancy she suffered ominous premonitions. “Something’s going to happen,” she told her mother and doctor.

When eight months pregnant, Corrine’s unrelenting feelings landed her in the psychiatric ward. Her doctor assured her the feelings were unfounded anxieties, but two weeks later, something happened.

The other driver suffered a heart attack and fell unconscious before his vehicle struck Corrine’s. The impact broke her femur and pelvis and trapped her under the displaced engine and steering wheel. Despite the intracranial hemorrhage later seen on a scan, she remained awake and alert.

An off-duty paramedic heard the crash and came out of his home. He broke her back window, climbed inside, stabilized her neck, and comforted her. She suffered a collapsed lung and several episodes of asystole (heart stoppage). That’s probably when she left her body.

Corrine experienced the sublime peace and love so many describe when they die and come back. She met her deceased grandmother who embraced her and told her she could stay if she wished or return to mortality. As a social worker caring for the disabled and brain-injured, she knew there were souls she would yet help, and she chose to come back.

Corrine heard rescuers discuss an on-site leg amputation to extricate her from the vehicle, but they finally managed to secure equipment capable of lifting the engine from her lap.

Intuitively, Corrine knew little Livi hadn’t survived. She also knew her unborn child had saved her life by displacing all the other vital organs from the impact zone. Surgeons delivered Livi in the OR and repaired Corrine’s traumatically ruptured uterus.

Four years later, against all medical probabilities, and with only one surviving ovary and fallopian tube, Corrine conceived without help from doctors.

Even before the pregnancy test results came back, Livi visited Corrine and said, “I’m sending you my little sister.”

Corrine and her husband named their baby Hope.

“And you don’t know why you’re here?” I asked incredulously.

She cried. She knew.