“Maybe there was a little blip of a heartbeat, something I missed?
Mirroring words lash my eyes
Making myself remember that treacherous time
Minuscule mistakes haunt these hospital halls that I call home.

After years spent spiraling in secrecy
Abandoned by all sense of serenity
And replaced with extraneous stressors,
Abrasive thoughts savagely shatter my soul.
A year after another of remembering that dark day
A doctor isn’t SUPPOSED to operate on their family…

Something we must’ve missed, how could I miss it?
Several years wasted, mangling that night in my thoughts,
Scrambling what I know and what I think I know.
Still, I wonder, should I have let another doctor work on her?
Sister of mine, I am filled with sorrow.

Some sister I am.
Somehow, I could’ve done better,
Somewhere, maybe, I did miss something?
Still, I wonder, was it not her time?

Boiling tears cascading down my cheek.
Bodily aches betray my age; the years since the operation suddenly vanished.
But did I miss it? A minuscule, inaudible heartbeat?
Blips of momentary life flashing before my eyes?

Did her heart really stop beating?
Definitely it did, right?
Deep down, I know I checked everything again and again.
Doctors know what they’re doing; I know what I’m doing.
Debates thrash around in my head,
Despair circles in on me again, as it did last year, and the year before that.