In the morning, quite soon after I had been awakened a nurse administered a relaxant which quickly chased away negative emotions that would have otherwise clogged my mind. I felt blissfully content and agreeable as my senses numbed and were encircled by an unearthly calm. I smiled dreamily as my parents descended upon my heavenly state of awareness, speaking and receiving words which sounded distant and muted, as those heard by one while swimming underwater, or standing behind a heavy door. Two interns arrived, wheeling a cart intended for my transport to places unknown. They skillfully guided it past my parents with minimal conversation, and easily hoisted me from the bed onto the unquestionably hard surface. I waved goodby to Mom and Dad, who stood dubiously watching as the men wordlessly rolled the stretcher down the hall, and finally, after a fair amount of travel, found myself in an expansive room, surrounded by gauges and meters by which a staff of doctors and nurses stood awaiting my arrival. The room itself was rather dark, which blended fittingly with my semi-consciousness. While the staff worked about me, I remained awake although my body was as limp and motionless as one in a coma. The doctor injected a liquid dye into my vein, watching a monitor as it slowly spread from the point of entry at the union of my leg and trunk, and I began to feel weaker still. With markers, the doctor charted a map on my stomach under the beam of a spotlight; I looked on maintaining awareness through a power that no longer seemed to be my own. It was crazy that people concerned themselves about death; I felt more than half-way there; whether I drifted closer to life or to death made no difference to me, then, for in all things existed only tranquility...and that blissful unearthly calm. Gravity tied me to the bed, and I laid like a dead thing, bound by an invisible, unyielding weight. All afternoon I slept, and into the deepest night; morning came, Tuesday morning, but I knew it not. Though numbered words to my parents I spoke, I can recall nothing. In my mind's hoard of memories, that morning never dawned before these eyes. For my parents, Monday, the day of the arteriogram, was spent primarily in my room. They did little but watch in silence as I slept, breathing quietly as dream after dream filtered through my subconscious mind.