we walking wounded

I’m sure, even as I write this, there are additional dead and wounded out there across the world from where I sit after a day watching my world as through a camera lens.
She walks. Dead woman walking. She hurts, all over. She needs to drink, but she gives us a hard time. She needs to sit or lie down, but she refuses. It’s as though if she stops, she thinks will die. Or maybe she thinks that if she stops, she won’t die.
The doctor says we need to consider taking her to the emergency room, getting her hydrated, getting a CAT scan to see if she’s got blockage in her intestines somewhere. The last time we took her to the hospital she got worse and worse until we signed her out “against medical advice.” We had her feeling better in a day.
Her bones are so fragile that any mishandling (which happened last time) might likely cause even more little fractures than she has. If she needs surgery, we wouldn’t risk it; she doesn’t want it. At her age, the anesthesia would probably kill her.
And this morning I had one of my front teeth pulled. The crown was loose (all the clenching, grinding, clenching), and apparently I shattered the root, which had a root canal anyway. So, I get home with a wad of gauze in my mouth, take three Advil, and sleep for two hours until my mother wakes up.
She can’t seem to communicate; I don’t want to. We both hurt, want it all to end.
She is sleeping, finally. She ate a little, drank some orange juice, took her meds.
I am not sleeping. When I sleep, I grind my teeth, wake up wounded. But not as wounded as she
And we not as wounded as they.

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