Some words of explanation

For example, six years ago, or maybe it was seven, a whole shipload of people died in a series of hospital accidents. It was in the news, some of them had been pulled off of respirators by mistake, others were given blood thinners when they should have had thrombin applied to their wounds, still others were just left in the back corners of emergency rooms. It was quite a sensation.j

But the problem is, none of it made any sense. Not only did all the accidents seem unrelated, but they happened all over the country on the same day, in some cases down to the same fifteen minutes. That was just too much, and like other things that don't make any sense, people forgot about it.

Only I didn't forget about it, because my mother was one of the ones that died. She'd gone in for a stomach ache, and after she almost bled to death, a lung collapsed, and then her emphysema did the rest. Our family went to a lawyer, but we just didn't have the heart to pursue a long expensive legal battle.

I was the only one in my family who knew what had really happened. I still have a picture of her that I took at the funeral home, clearly showing her right hand. It's been itching under my skin for seven years and I just finally had to talk about it. Only I can't talk to a shrink, and if I talk to the wrong people, it would be pretty bad. So I've decided to tell the whole world about it, and probably then I can forget about it. Every last bit of it.