last night my sister (diabetic for fifteen years), attempted to assuage the worries of our friend (listing recent complaints of thirst, disorientation, worsening eyesight, exhaustion), by taking a read of his blood sugar. a casual thing, expecting something normal, a low number we'd shrug about before going back to making dinner. only the number was high, let's-double-check-that high, and the second reading said the same thing. it was five times as high as it should have been. she wanted to take him to the hospital right then. he's stubborn and laughed it off for the moment, saying he'd go today. I'd have shoved it aside too, if I were hearing a notoriously overdramatic friend's inexpert medical opinion while I was having a holiday picnic in my driveway. but it was this cloud that lingered all night, and my boyfriend is with him at the clinic now. and there are ten of us holding our breath hoping to say, it was the machine that's fucked up, not his pancreas.