On October 26, 2021, at Baptist Health Richmond in Kentucky, 36‑year‑old Anthony "TJ" Hoover II was declared brain dead after a drug overdose. Doctors told his family he had no reflexes or brain activity. He had previously consented to organ donation, and a medical team began preparations. But about an hour into the procedure, the surgeons abruptly stopped. According to a whistleblower letter later sent to Congress, Hoover had begun "thrashing" on the operating table. Against all odds, he had regained consciousness. Though left with long-term impairments to speech, memory, and mobility because of the drug overdose, Hoover survived—and was eventually discharged into the care of his sister. His case—and others like it, from Kenya to Poland, Ecuador to China, where people have woken in morgues, coffins, or during last rites—force us to confront a mind-boggling possibility: What if death isn't the neat, cataclysmic, all-at-once event our medical protocols make it out to be? |
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