When I came to work, one of the evening techs was telling me about the 84-year-old lady that passed away before the tech could get her x-rays done. The patient was a DNR (Do Not Ressusitate) and the tech wasn't really sure what to do.

Does it matter?

The man bails his beloved 17-year-old nephew out of jail, selling almost everything of value that he had. The nephew pays him back with four bullets. Only one of them produced a fatal wound.

Does it matter?

Once a minute, a steer is struck in the head with a sledgehammer and drug off and butchered.

35 cats are euthanized every day in Topeka.

A woman bears a child in Africa, in Arizona, in Europe... the children will get no food, for their mothers are starving, and the children will die painfully, and so will their mothers.

Does it matter?

A friend of mine, who I hadn't seen in 20 years, died of exposure in his mother's driveway, clutching an empty bottle of vodka. His mother wouldn't let him in the house.

A friend tonight has a mother who is dying in our ICU.

A father of three, a chronic alcoholic, hits a light pole on the way home from the bar. His chest hurts: he telescoped the steering wheel.

He's had three DUIs, and he knows that they will throw him in jail if he stays at the scene of the accident... and he's relatively young and strong... he can walk home. It's only a coupla miles.

He walks about six blocks and becomes extremely tired. He decided to sit down and rest behind some bushes by the side of the road. Just for a minute, because it's really cold.

He closes his eyes about the time that his heart can't keep up with the tear in his aorta. His frozen body is found the next afternoon by some schoolkids.

Does any of it really matter?

I'm pretty damned selfish. All that really matters to me is how my life is affected... what happens to the people that I love.

That's all that matters.

That's all that matters to me.

That's all that matters to me right now.

And when I die, nothing will matter to me.

In the end, then...

Nothing matters.