The world around him spun like a gyroscope, pierced by a blinding light and searing pain.
As the world continued to spin, he couldn't think but felt as if he was sinking back into an abyss. Perhaps recalling a time when he was driven only by impulses, compelled not to drown. An instinctive force or will resisted this sticky descent further and further down.
Struggling, disoriented, and maddened by indescribable agony, the Man forced himself to stop. Pieces of his essence disappeared into the depths, growing larger with each passing moment. Unable to see anything but blinding light, and feeling nothing but icy pain, William directed all his will in every direction, trying to find something to hold on to.
Without arms and legs, he surged forward. When he found something ephemeral and broken, in a single moment his senses raced toward this point. He held on, before losing even more of his essence.
Finding some stability, William clung to it with all his strength. Giving everything he had left, he let out a triumphant cry.
"UWUUUHAAA!"
"Uh..."
Opening his eyes for the first time, he felt bewildered. The last thing he remembered: he was sitting in a hospital bed, and it had been less than ten minutes since his family had left.
Of course, being a man on the brink of life, Bill found nothing strange about dozing off without noticing. It happened to him often enough while watching TV, so he was already used to it. One moment he could be watching his favorite news program, and the next, commercials would be on forty-five minutes later.
What really puzzled him was the room he seemed to be in and how bright all the lights were. He couldn't do more than squint without feeling a burning pain.
But even peering through tiny slits, it was obvious he was in some sort of bubble.
"This is too much... If I were dying, they should have just let me go."
Closing his eyes completely again, Bill knew he had little time left, even if the medicine could slow his liver failure. He didn't feel pain and had come to terms with the idea of death. If anything, now he felt angry for waking up. It seemed the doctors had saved his life and put him in some kind of bubble.
He didn't get a proper look, but it seemed to him that the bubble resembled an incubator. Yet strangely, he didn't feel any tubes inserted into him.
"What are they..."
Before he could finish the thought, a wave of drowsiness overtook him, and he drifted back to sleep.
This time, Bill woke up without a sound.
Keeping his eyes closed, he prayed not to open them and see that bubble he thought he'd been in before again.
Slowly opening his eyes to quickly look around, though without peeking through his fingers since, for some reason, his hands felt like lead, he saw the bubble again.
"Ridiculous."
That was the first thought that came to his mind. He was an advocate for the rights of the elderly; he was an elderly man himself, after all. But the thought that the hospital would place a ninety-three-year-old man with organ failure in a bubble was simply astounding.
Even worse, he was in his local hospital, which only had about fifty beds. He was temporarily there because of the unlikelihood of finding an organ donor for him, although he understood that at his age it was improbable. Even if he could receive a new organ, he didn't know if he would accept it.
"Well, maybe I've gotten sick, and they put me here as a precaution."
Now he felt quite normal, though a bit weak, so Bill didn't dwell long on the matter.
With that thought, he dozed off again.
Coming to his senses once more, Bill managed to open his eyes a little more than before.
"What kind of light is this?"
Barely seeing through the bubble, Bill noticed that everything seemed distant. It was hard to make out, as each time he opened his eyes, he was almost blinded, but it seemed he was in a huge room. Even worse, his head felt so heavy he could barely turn it in any direction.
"What's wrong with me..."
At some point in his life, Bill couldn't claim that he was an Olympic athlete. However, until the last visit from his children, he had never felt weak. One of the greatest blessings in his life was that he had always been in good health.
Now, lying in bed, feeling his body but unable to move it freely, he felt a slight fear.
"Pull yourself together, old man, it's just part of the process. We've seen this before."
Anyone his age had seen people around them die. It's a part of life. From the outside, death always seemed the same, but the ways a person died could vary. Now, contemplating this, Bill considered that he was facing the worst fate for death—slowly withering away until his body finally gave out.