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 Depositions

The morning of Miss Blackwood’s deposition I wasn’t allowed in the room, but Orla told me about it afterward. How Miss Blackwood sat there in a navy suit insisting that we were all performing and that teenage girls especially were prone to mass hysteria and attention-seeking behavior. She actually brought up her sister’s daughter who supposedly faked seizures for two years before her parents stopped enabling her and miraculously she was cured. Using this as proof that she knew we were all faking and that’s why she felt confident using the strobe light as “exposure therapy.” When they asked her about David, she said he was probably just caught up in the group hysteria and that his death was an unfortunate coincidence but not related to her actions. Which made me so angry my hands shook and I had to leave Orla’s office to walk around the block three times before I could calm down.

The next week was Mr. Peter’s deposition and this time Orla let me watch through the glass door. I saw him break down crying when they asked him about looking through our classroom window that day. He admitted he saw Miss Blackwood give him a thumbs up and he assumed everything was fine because she seemed calm, but he didn’t really look at us students or notice the chaos happening behind her. And now he couldn’t sleep because he kept thinking about how he could have stopped everything if he’d just opened the door. His tears seemed real and he kept saying he was sorry, but sorry didn’t bring David back and sorry didn’t fix my brain that now had seizures twice as often as before that day. And I noticed Miss Blackwood never said sorry, not even once.

The last deposition that week was Dy Paxton, the district’s superintendent, who spent three hours explaining how the district’s substitute teacher training was comprehensive but that Miss Blackwood was an “aberration” who acted outside the scope of her training. Basically trying to throw her under the bus while protecting the district from liability. He kept using phrases like “isolated incident” and “couldn’t have been prevented” while his lawyer nodded along. When they asked him about David he called it a “tragic outcome” but insisted the district followed all protocols in their response even though it took the ambulance 15 minutes to arrive because no one called 911 immediately since Miss Blackwood had locked the door and taken our phones.

Three weeks later Walsh sat in the lawyer’s office for his deposition and I watched through the glass door as he kept looking down at his hands. The lawyer asked him about that day in music class and he started talking about our grandmother. How she’d been telling him since we were kids that I was faking everything for attention. He said she’d call him every week to warn him about my manipulation tactics and how I’d fooled all the doctors. She’d send him articles about Munchausen syndrome and tell him stories about times I’d supposedly pretended to be sick to get out of family events. The lawyer wrote everything down while Walsh explained how Grandmother had convinced him that helping me would just enable my behavior. He admitted she’d been poisoning his mind against me for years but said it didn’t excuse what he did back at the school.

A New Reality

The next morning everything felt different. Some kids came up to me in the hallway to say they were sorry for not doing more that day. Malik brought me a card signed by half the basketball team. But other kids rolled their eyes when they saw me coming. I heard whispers about how we were being dramatic and how David would have died anyway because of his condition. One girl said we were just trying to get money from the lawsuit. The cafeteria split into two groups: those wearing purple ribbons for David and those who thought we were overreacting. Fights broke out in the parking lot between kids arguing about whether Miss Blackwood deserved what was happening to her.

Two months passed before we got the court date. The judge listened to all the testimony and looked at the medical records and the video Billy’s phone had captured before Miss Blackwood took it. She granted the preliminary injunction requiring every staff member to complete seizure response training within 30 days, but she denied our request to have Miss Blackwood fired immediately. She said due process had to be followed and Miss Blackwood had rights too. The lawyer explained that this was actually good news but it didn’t feel like it when I knew she was still getting her full salary.

Another month went by before the district finally offered to settle. They created a memorial fund in David’s name worth $200,000 for epilepsy research. They promised to overhaul their substitute teacher training program and require medical emergency certification for all staff. Miss Blackwood agreed to resign with her teaching license under review by the state board. The district’s lawyer kept calling it a fair resolution, but David’s parents just sat there crying.

My neurologist appointment that week didn’t go well. The test showed my seizure threshold had dropped significantly from all the stress. She said I’d need to increase my medication and avoid any triggers including flashing lights, lack of sleep, and emotional stress. That’s when I knew I had to end things with Darren. We sat in his car after school and I explained that I couldn’t handle a relationship on top of everything else. He kept saying he understood but his eyes were red and he wouldn’t look at me. We’d been together for two years but my brain couldn’t take any more pressure.

Moving Forward

Emily helped me start a disability advocacy group at the school the following week. Twenty kids showed up to the first meeting in the library. We talked about creating buddy systems for students with medical conditions and pushing for better emergency protocols. One girl with diabetes shared how a teacher had refused to let her check her blood sugar during a test. A boy with Tourette’s talked about getting detention for his tics. We made plans to present to the school board and started working on a petition for mandatory disability awareness training. Having something productive to focus on helped with the anger that kept building up inside me.

Ne and I went to David’s grave on a Saturday morning when the cemetery was empty. We didn’t talk about the lawsuit or Miss Blackwood or any of it. We just sat on the grass next to his headstone and watched the clouds move across the sky. His parents had chosen a quote about light never truly going out but just changing form. Null grass out of the ground one blade at a time while I traced his name carved into the granite. After an hour we walked back to her car without saying anything because there wasn’t anything to say. Some things can’t be fixed with words or money or justice.

The next week I spent every evening writing an article for the local paper about what happened. I didn’t attack anyone personally or use inflammatory language. I just laid out the facts about the systemic failures that led to David’s death. I wrote about the lack of proper substitute training, the absence of medical emergency protocols, and the culture that dismisses student medical needs as attention-seeking. I ended it with specific proposals for change including mandatory medical training, clear reporting procedures, and accountability measures. My voice stayed steady as I read it to my parents before sending it in, not because I was healed but because I’d learned to carry the damage without letting it consume me completely.