When next I opened

my eyes, I was a better person!  Ahem, Reader Dear, all I'm trying to say is that the medical personnel were able to shock my partially-bovine heart into a proper pumping rhythm!

It was a relief to know the deed was done, there'd be no more fruitless attempts.  (When first they had tried to do this heart-zapping thing [a few weeks earlier, I was told] they'd been foiled by a small blood clot!)

Back to my small double room they wheeled me, and I got to listen to my new roommate have conversations with her family*.  "I don't know why I'm here," she said.   "They just keep doing stuff to me.  I don't know what they're doing.  I don't know why."
*(only my astute assumption)

Over on my side of the curtain, however, I was preparing to leave the hospital (hallelujah!).  I would be going back to the rehab facility, and (wonder of wonders) both facilities had granted permission for The Yard Man to drive me there (no more ambulance rides!). 

I dressed and collected my tiny pile of belongings.  When a nurse wheeled me out of the room on my way to the hospital lobby, I bid goodbye to my roommate.  She was sitting in her chair by the bed, clutching an antique pocketbook.

Down in the lobby my nurse asked, "Do you know how old your roommate is?"
"No," I responded.  "She looked pretty old."
"She's one hundred years old!" the nurse told me.  "She came into the hospital because of shortness of breath!"

"Wow!" I said.
Reader Dear, it took my breath away!