“When the death knell tolls, when the breath of life returns from where it came, will you be proud of the life you’ve lived?”
-- Sage of Eridu (1) 18,900 A.M.C (2)
Walking out of the hospital building and onto the sidewalk of the street, Malik took in a deep sullen breath and exhaled.
A fleeting misty cloud escaped his lips as it made its way into the cold wintery January night.
He’d just finished a grueling 12-hour night-shift in the emergency department of the hospital where he worked and was heading home.
It was Saturday night and as usual, a flurry of inebriated college students from the nearby university, who couldn’t hold their liquor, occupied about a quarter of the emergency department beds.
One-half of the patients were there for what he’d so politely labeled “altered mental status/delirium” in the patient’s charts.
In other words, they were so fucked up and high on drugs they couldn’t tell shit from Shinola. Of course, no doctor would write that: not when a patient could read what was said about them when they were more sober.
In addition to enormous gun violence, the city he was living in had a huge drug problem. Bath salts, cocaine, heroin, spice/K2 whatever drug you wanted you could easily find.
The remaining quarter of the patients had been admitted for gunshot wounds. Some of them were still being operated on as he left the hospital.
While ambling home, Malik found himself unable to forget one of the young teens who died of his wounds shortly after arriving at the hospital.
He saw himself in the boy’s face -- a kid from the projects just like him. The teen was an innocent bystander unfortunately caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout.
His mother showed up at the emergency department from her overnight shift frantic and worried.
She had been working two jobs to make ends meet and couldn’t be home to keep an eye on her kids. She didn’t even know why her son was out that late.
It took all Malik had to hold back his tears while breaking the news to the shaken, despairing mother.
After doing his best to comfort the grieving mother, he took a trip to the bathroom and wept.
Dead-beat tired and emotionally drained, Malik headed home as he tried to mentally process the night.
Two miles into his walk, he chanced upon a parade and crowds of people celebrating. “Oh right, it’s St. Malaika’s today,” he muttered to himself.
Families were walking around everywhere and there were colorful fireworks in the sky.
The cheeriness of the crowd was infectious, a stark contrast to the somber mood in the emergency department.
He stopped for a moment and closed his eyes to bask in the merriness.
A high-pitched chorus of panicked screams abruptly shook him out of his short-lived respite.
As he opened his eyes and surveyed his surroundings, the first thing he saw were the people running helter-skelter away from what seemed to be a speeding white truck that was plowing through the crowd.
Confused and still lost in his thoughts, Malik was unable to react in time and stood frozen in fear as the blinding white headlights of the truck met his eyes.
For a few seconds, time slowed. His mind seemed to be processing everything he was seeing at an unimaginable speed.
At this moment Malik knew; he knew was going to die. He suddenly began to recall all of his life in great detail.
Memories he was never consciously aware of began to resurface: he remembered the face of his parents crying at his birth, scenes from his third birthday, learning to ride a bicycle, his first day in middle school.
He also recalled how he felt losing his best friend to cancer when he was 12, he recalled his first kiss senior year of high school.
Perhaps this was the near death experience he’d heard about. Within those few seconds, Malik felt like he had reviewed his entire life.
He imagined how his death would affect his family -- his mother, little sister, Zuri, would be devastated.
If he knew that the hand of the grim-reaper was so close, then perhaps he would have at least wanted to let them know he loved them.
With great reluctance “fuck,” was the only word he could utter before the darkness closed in.
- The Sage of Eridu is regarded as the greatest intellectual since the dark ages after the cataclysm. Under his wisdom, the kingdom of Eridu prevailed through many tumultuous times.
- A.M.C - Anno Magna Cataclysm: this is the year system used in the time after the great cataclysm that destroyed Assia
