over the intercom, i hear:

code blue

suddenly there's a ruckus behind me. i turn around, then stumble backward as a gurney rushes by, with some tubes and bags and metal and doctors that it has collected. the woman on the gurney is the one that rode with us in the elevator.

when elvis died, a lot of people cried, even though they didn't know the king personally. same with kurt cobain and john f. kennedy. not so with my friend jeremy's mother.

my only hope for the afterlife is this: i want statistics to have been meticulously kept. i want to know:

how many times i kissed every person that i kissed
when my serotonin levels were lowest
when i screamed the loudest
who admired me the least

in a hallway that gently slopes downward, the gurney is still rolling, but now there is nothing attached. just shiny metal, some sheets that smell too good to be hospital sheets, and long, gray hair. some sonofabitch is calling this sickness.