Thoughts (eng.)

Carter was in the hospital room by himself.

It wasn't requested by the doctor, nor by himself. And it certainly wasn't because he was an asshole despised and distanced by every one else, or any kind of reasons like that. As a matter of fact, those who know Carter would have assumed that he ought to be a people-person wherever he went, based on that pretty face and nice personality he had.

While Carter was staring at the Pantone ceiling, he started wondering how to draw an association between being a popular person , and what he was going through at the moment. How is it possible that a poplar person was facing all of this by himself?

By "all of this," Carter was thinking of his damn kidney. The kidney that was stabbed by some lunatic, failing day by day for the past twelve years, and was finally meeting its retirement today. It was going to be taken off from Carter, then replaced by another kidney that was looted from a dead body.

How did the person die? Was the doctor who tried to save them doing okay? Carter knew for sure that should that person were his patient, he would've felt bad for their death for such a long time, longer than anyone else. And yet, at the moment he was depending on the person's death to get a few extra years of living.

Carter closed his eyes and took a deep breath-- his thoughts had gone too far, think about the proposition first: Why was he facing all of this alone?

He had loved many. Or dated, that might be a better to put it. Or perhaps just "went out together". Not all of his relationships were like that, of course. He also had friends, close colleagues, patients-turned-friends, etc. In short, there had been many passengers in his life, some of them he had provided recognizable spots in his heart. He had left traces of him in their lives, vice versa. Those were the people who he thought he could entrusted his life with.

Despite all that, at the moment he was still facing all of this by himself.

WHOOSH

The door of the hospital room was opened. The nurses entered the room, and pulled the bed that Carter was in on to the hallway.

His brain began to work on a rapidly accelerating efficiency while he was on his way to the surgery room, to the point where he had started to revisit every single interaction that he had had with other people, and all of the moments he had spent with them. He thought to himself that there must be something he had done wrong, or a personality flaw that he had overlooked. That should be the reason why he was at where he was.

He was still revisiting the memories when the tube was planted, and he was set for anesthesia.

The anesthesiologist asked him to count from one to ten, but he knew that he would have lost consciousness by the time he counted to three.

"Don't worry. Just a small nap, then it's all done."

Carter had also said this to many of his patients. Most of them woke up later, and became the residents' duty. His duty was to remember all of the faces that fell asleep for good.

"One."

Maybe he really had failed too many people. Those he failed to save in the E.R., and those he failed to hold onto in his life.

"Two."

They should be doing alright now, just as always.

"Three."

Before he had stepped onto Mr. Sandman's land, the last stream of thought that flew across Carter's mind was that this surgery could end on a good note, so that he could become one of the faces that the surgeon didn't have to remember.