They leaned against the gurney in their cocky way
winking at the hardworking nurses
and making sly jokes to each other
as the most buxom walked by.
They stood in the maelstrom of groans and sobs and shattered lives
but were not at all a part of it.
Their minds and talk were on the date they had last weekend
or the big party tonight
or the flashy improvements they planned to make to their already excessive cars.
They idled,
waiting to be relieved of the broken body they had wheeled in,
oblivious to the plight of their cargo,
somehow unable to recognize that they too,
after their handsome faces had sagged
and their taut bodies had betrayed them,
would be hauled in someday
by brash young lions
who didn’t even see them
as they lay there in their despair.