At your best friend's thirtieth birthday you give the toast. Not long after, you are on the floor of his flat with a paramedic's thumb on your neck, finding nothing, and they pronounce you dead.

You can't open your eyes, move a finger or make a sound. But you can hear every word, for hours, while the friends who clapped for your toast talk about you in the kitchen.

Chapters

0:00 The thumb

0:51 Forty minutes earlier

2:00 The floor

2:50 Pronounced

4:01 The crew packs up

4:35 The statements

5:14 Past one

5:51 Ten minutes later

6:20 Around two

7:00 A floorboard

7:26 Keys in the door

8:15 Nine seconds

8:40 The doorway

Sources

- Eberle B, Dick WF, Schneider T, Wisser G, Doetsch S, Tzanova I, "Checking the carotid pulse check: diagnostic accuracy of first responders in patients with and without a pulse", Resuscitation 33(2), 1996: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/9025126

- Ed White (Associated Press), "State: Southfield paramedic misled doc about 'dead' woman", WDIV / ClickOnDetroit, 2020: https://clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/09/03/state-southfield-paramedic-misled-doc-about-dead-woman

- WDIV / ClickOnDetroit, "Police records: Paramedics performed CPR for 30 minutes on Southfield woman wrongly declared dead", 2020: https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/09/25/police-records-paramedics-performed-cpr-for-30-minutes-on-southfield-woman-wrongly-declared-dead

- Blundon EG, Gallagher RE, Ward LM, "Electrophysiological evidence of preserved hearing at the end of life", Scientific Reports, 2020 (University of British Columbia): https://sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200708105935.htm

- Russell S, "An exploratory study of patients' perceptions, memories and experiences of an intensive care unit", Journal of Advanced Nursing 29(4), 1999: https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2648.1999.00953.x

- René Laennec on listening to the heart before the stethoscope (1816), as quoted by the University of Washington School of Medicine, "History: Heart Sounds & Murmurs": https://depts.washington.edu/physdx/heart/history.html

What-if parts are our own extrapolation, labelled in the sources: what slowed your pulse, how long it lasts, and the hours before anyone comes back. A made-up story: the party, the flat and every person in it are our own invention. The pulse study, the Michigan case, the hearing study, the intensive-care study and the ear on the chest are real, as the film tells them.

#whatif #animation #declareddead

If your room went quiet tonight, who would put an ear to your chest?