"Rautavaara's Case" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick.
It was first published in 1980 in Omni magazine and subsequently in the 1985 short story collection I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon.
However, a rescue team from Proxima Centauri gets there in time to save Rautavaara's brain and impose artificial life support on it.
In her damaged brain, Rautavaara goes through a series of experiences that draw on the conceptions of afterlife held by herself on the one hand and the Proxima Centauri natives on the other.
A theme of the story is whether it is ethically right to keep a human on life-support if they exist only as a mind, with their body paralyzed or otherwise destroyed.