The human condition is so easily shattered.

I laugh to myself as I’m rolled into the emergency room.

If I could laugh, that is. A piercing pain prevents me from taking a full breath, suspended between short inhales rushed out by shorter exhales.

I do not feel great.

But I felt great yesterday.

What was I doing?

As I’m rolled into the room, blinding lights flood my vision.

My eyes feel as though the very optical nerves are exposed to the bulbs above. Just lifting my eyelids sends waves of pain through my skull.

Every jolt, a reminder that I’m injured.

Every vibration, amplifying my agony.

Yesterday…yesterday…

Yesterday I was leaving the house.

I was leaving the birthday bash with them.

It’s slowly fading back into my memory.

Not my birthday…I think. Someone else’s. The dark haired girl with the brown skin. She talked a lot. The music was so good. And the food tasted like edible treasure.

I would almost feel hungry now if I wasn’t dying.

“On the count of three!”

Oh no. Don’t lift me up.

“One, two…”

My recovering memory is shaken away as I’m loaded onto the hospital bed. I shake around some, then settle into a loose state of unconsciousness.

“Prime the defibrillator, now!”

If it wasn’t for the crushing pain and short breath, I’d let out a long sigh.

I have no idea how I ended up here.

I have no idea how the night ended.

I don’t even know what hospital this is.

But I like the nurse’s sticker on her lab coat.

It says, “you did good!”

Yeah.

As I feel my heart begin to slow,

I wonder.

I wonder if, with the life I was given, with the opportunities I had, the choices I made,

I wonder if I did good.