Wondering

I wonder how it feels to have strangers tell you to calm down, have them reach into your pick-up truck and drag you onto a backboard, slap an oxygen mask onto your face and wheel you into a rescue vehicle.

I wonder how it feels to be held down by those strangers, have large needles stuck into your arms, all the while knowing that you are going to die, but those strangers keep telling you to just breathe and stop fighting.

I wonder how it feels to have your clothes cut off in a room full of doctors, nurses, firefighters and emergency personnel, and try to answer questions before the sedation medication takes over and a tube is thrust down your throat.

I wonder how it feels to put a gun to the back of a twenty-three year old kid's head and pull the trigger, and then shoot him in the face, just to make sure.

I wonder.

I wonder how this place got so crazy.

I wonder when the shootings became an everyday occurrence, and how they did so without me ever noticing it was happening.

I wonder who these people are, the ones that just got grazed, and call their friends from their cell phones as I bandage them up, telling everybody they just got shot, almost like they just got their dream job, or found the perfect mate, or had their first child.

I wonder why the people who are shot bad lose all of their bravado once in the back of the ambulance, when their blood is soaking the sheets, and their brain matter oozes from the head wound, and they realize that it was all for nothing, and all the guns and drugs and women are gone, and they are about to die.

I wonder if they would have gotten out, or if they were destined to live and die never having known that there is a bigger world than their little place in the city, bigger things to do than sell their drugs and buy their cars, and guns.

I wonder if I would be better off not knowing all of this is going on, a different world a few miles from my suburban home, or if knowing that the world truly is a crazy place, and people really do get shot, and really do shoot other people in the back of the head, and then in the face makes me appreciate what I have.

I wonder.