Death and Liberation The sweat on my cold palms shone like glitter as I traced the path of my lifeline with my tired eyes. The waiting room was still as the hospital building's air conditioner relentlessly hammered the eighty-degree spring. A crumpled newspaper on the stand next to me was expired and torn, as if someone had abruptly tossed it aside during a monetary loss due to the calm tide. Can you use Febreeze to remove the smell of death from the air? Or will you then be left with a mixture of death and “fresh spring laundry”? Where do the flowers go in the hospital room when the patient dies? Do they wash the body bags they use to wrap corpses? Can you erase the memories from your mind like you can clean dirt from a bathtub with laundry detergent and hot water? I started asking myself trivial questions. Do they steam clean that ugly gray carpet, or do they use the state budget to rip it out and replace it every few years? How much of the hospital budget is spent on tissues for families' tears? Kleenex or a generic brand? Does being familiar with death make you immune to the effects of death? My brother worked with restaurant chefs who told him they cut so many onions that their eyes were immune to tears when they prepared dinner. I wondered if it worked the same way with death. So many thoughts crossed my mind and I became the goose that flies north in autumn. I was the moth who was denied the luxury of dying on my own terms. Instead, I floated in the small crack of fluorescent lighting. I panicked and stole disorganized patterns frantically, constantly hitting the bulb and plastic casing that trapped my curious attraction to light. Is it exhausting... middle of paper... one room bothered to look up - everything was normal. I stepped out into the blistering spring heat, feeling the tears evaporate from my cheeks. I sat on a sidewalk outside the hospital and buried my sobs in my shaking palms. A gray-haired homeless man pulled his cart over to me and had the audacity to ask if I had a spare cigarette. I threw a five dollar bill I was saving for overpriced ATMs out of my pocket and told him to get away from me. He said “Honey, that’s all I ever did” and wheeled his creaky cart full of stuff down the hill. I watched his back as he walked away, wondering what that was supposed to mean. And in that moment, I felt the deepest feeling of jealousy towards this man. What a luxury it must be to walk away from the situation, like a freed dove escaping from its carefree owner's cage..