I Was Clinically Dead For 90 Seconds Because My Teacher Thought My Epilepsy Was A “Trend.” My Friend Didn’t Survive, And The School Is Trying To Cover It Up. We Just Leaked The Security Footage. Is This Enough To Put Her In Jail?

The Aftermath

Fast forward two weeks later, and we were sitting in science class when they broke the news. David’s parents only managed to raise $30,000 of the $130,000 needed for treatment. He didn’t make it.

That’s when I knew we had to take matters into our own hands and destroy Miss Blackwood.

My hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t hold my pencil. The teacher kept talking about cell division, but all I could think about was how David’s cells stopped dividing because his parents couldn’t afford to keep them going. I sat there frozen while everyone else took notes like nothing happened. Like David wasn’t dead. Like Miss Blackwood wasn’t sitting at home getting paid while he was in the ground.

The rage was so hot in my chest I thought I might throw up right there at my desk. When the bell rang, I ran to the bathroom and barely made it to the toilet before everything came up. Emily followed me in and held my hair back while I heaved. She kept whispering that we couldn’t let Miss Blackwood get away with this. I knew she was right, but I could barely stand up straight. My legs were shaking and my head was pounding.

That night I couldn’t sleep at all. I just laid there staring at the ceiling and replaying those 90 seconds when I was dead. The darkness, the nothing. I kept wondering if David felt that same darkness or if it was different for him.

Grief and Confrontation

My parents kept checking on me every hour because they were scared the stress would trigger another seizure. Mom would peek in and ask if I needed anything, and Dad would stand in the doorway just watching me breathe.

The next morning at the school, there were flowers and cards piling up at David’s locker. Someone had taped his school picture to the door and people were leaving notes and stuffed animals. This freshman girl walked by and asked what happened. When someone told her about the seizure in music class, she actually said it sounded made up. I wanted to scream at her, but I just stood there staring at all the flowers.

At lunch, I found Billy sitting alone at a table in the corner. His knuckles were still wrapped in bandages from when he punched through the Smartboard. He looked up when I sat down and I could see he hadn’t been sleeping either. He told me he couldn’t stop seeing David on the floor. We just sat there in silence because there wasn’t anything to say that would help. Nothing would bring David back.

After school, Darren was waiting by my locker with a stack of printed papers. He’d found Miss Blackwood’s social media accounts before she made them private. Post after post going back years where she mocked kids with disabilities. She called them trendy. She praised her sister’s tough love approach to her daughter’s fake seizures. There were pictures of her at some conference about combating “victim mentality” in schools. Every post made me want to throw up again.

David’s funeral was three days later. The church was packed and his mom, Nev, sat in the front row looking like she hadn’t eaten or slept since it happened. When I went up to pay my respects, she grabbed my hand so tight it hurt. She kept whispering about the GoFundMe messages and how people kept saying they were sorry but $30,000 wasn’t enough. Her grip was crushing my fingers, but I didn’t pull away. She needed someone to hold on to.

Betrayal and Bureaucracy

After the service, I saw Walsh in the parking lot and I couldn’t help myself. I walked right up to him and asked how he could do it. How he could tell that substitute I was faking when he knew about my epilepsy. He started crying right there by his car. He said our grandmother always told him I was faking for attention and he believed her because it was easier than accepting I was really sick. He said he was sorry, but sorry didn’t bring David back.

Monday morning, Principal Penn called me to her office with my parents. She sat there behind her big desk offering these careful condolences and talking about proper procedures. She kept emphasizing how the school followed protocol and how substitute teachers go through training. She never once admitted that those procedures failed David. She never said his name without looking at her lawyer on the phone. My parents were trying to stay calm, but I could see Dad’s jaw clenching every time she mentioned procedures.

After that meeting, they sent me to see Renwiggley, who was the district’s 504 coordinator. They sat there with my file open and this fake sympathy on their face while they reviewed my accommodation plan. They kept asking if there was anything they could have done differently, like David wasn’t literally dead from what they did. They wanted me to say it was okay, that the system worked. But the system killed David and they wanted me to pretend it didn’t.

I sat there listening to them talk about updated training and new protocols while all I could think about was David seizing on that floor. Something feels really strange about how Miss Blackwood knew exactly which buttons to push. The strobe lights, the locked door, even calling epilepsy trendy. It’s like she had this whole plan ready to go for some reason. The way his body went rigid, the way his eyes rolled back, the way the substitute stood there eating her apple while he was dying.