My own negligence cost me everything

I don't know if this is supposed to have a trigger warming it something, but TW I guess, death. One of my best friends was only 28 years old when he died. We were living together as roommates. He was the more mature friend, the one everybody else in our circle looked up to and admired, so his loss sent this powerful ripple of greif through the community like no other death I've seen so far. Four years later, I'm as old as he was, now. And every day I live with the guilt that my own negligence is was killed him. I knew, that night when I went to bed, that he might have had pneumonia. I heard the funny noises in his chest when he breathed. I told him, "maybe we should go to the hospital?" but nobody seemed to think it was necessary, the doctor said to wait another 24 hours for the medicine to kick in, and I went to bed with this sinking feeling in my gut, like i was making the wrong choice, I was the only one who heard those noises, and I knew they weren't right. I laid in bed listening to him, from across the house, groaning and wretching. But I had work at 6am. God the noises were so awful I remember wanting to get up many times. And when I finally did get up to get ready for work, and check on him, he was utterly delirious. He didn't know where he was, and it frightened me. I'll never forget - I told him "hey, it's going to be okay" and he looked right at me and shook his head and said "no it won't".

I was dressing him to put him in the car, and take him to the ER. I got a shirt on him, I think. Maybe i asked him where his pants were. But he started to fall backwards. His arm did this strange jerking motion and I thought for just a second that he was messing with me, until i looked at his face. His eyes rolling in the back of his head and the sounds of him gasping for air. I screamed at him, shook him, nothing. He just kept falling. Why didn't I know CPR or something useful? We had called an ambulance before we got him dressed but it was raining, and taking such a long time to get here. I remember bolting out the door, into the rain, to the neighbors, to anyone. I remember thinking, the rain, the screaming, the running, it's like the movies almost, it's not even real. But when we came back and these strangers I found and dragged from their home tried to revive him it was too late. He was probably already dead the moment he fell over. Whenever I think about the fact that the last person he saw and talked to was me, it makes me want to throw up.

The weirdest thing was the aftermath. Filling out police reports. Watching them carry his half clothed body off on a stretcher. Walking aimlessly in the woods near our house, just to not be in it. That's the weirdest thing. The woods. I think about that walk a lot, how dazed and robotic the walk was. Like I did a strange loop through the woods with no goal but to just make the lap. Going through the motions but not really seeing the woods at all.

His mother took the medical practice he went to to court. He was very obviously neglected by them. No chest x-ray. Incomplete chart. Seen by somebody without a license. They pulled me on the stand as a witness, and the doctor side tried to tell me it was my fault, and our team reassured me that I couldn't have known. Never before in a public space have I ever been so choked up that I couldn't speak. I tried to compose myself but every time I opened my mouth and started to talk it was caught in my throat. We won in the end. The medical practice was grossly negligent. It was true. But, I also know, and could never say to his mother, to my friends who loved him, to anybody, that I did know better. I knew that night when I was laying in bed and listening to him make those horrible sounds. I knew. I'll never forget watching him fall, dying, knowing that I should have stopped it. Missing him.