Every morning that I wake up is another morning that I wonder how I’m going to avoid dying today. It’s routine, like anything else, I suppose, and though some might call it morbid I consider it as practical as, say, writing up a grocery list, or making sure to drop off your laundry.
It’s not an upfront process, is what I guess I’m getting at. I don’t stare at every passerby and wonder which one of them has cholera. I’m not crazy.
But it’s something I think about, nonetheless, something that is always whirring along in the background, occasionally slipping forward but mostly just a quiet hum at the back of the mind.
Funny enough, then, that it had come to the fore in purely theoretical terms as I stepped off of the street at 47th and Blake, dodging a kid on a bike and walking smackdab into oncoming traffic.
I’d like to say I wasn’t alarmed. I’d like to say that it’s exactly the sort of slipup I’d been waiting for. I’d like to say that I’d kept my cool.
Mostly I felt surprise. Not pain, my body took care of that, mostly. Enough adrenalin to keep me alert and peppy for the whole experience.
I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t perceive the gravity of my situation, so when the E.M.T.s finally scraped my broken body off the pavement they didn’t understand what I was saying. “It wasn’t a hit and run,” they said. “We got the guy.”
“No,” I was quiet and coughing. “No, one second. Did you get-” and I coughed again, “Did you get the license plate number?”
And then, you know. Poof. Gone.
Magic.
