is it still alive?

"Would you rather feel pain
or be numb?"
The surgeon asked.
He couldn't tell.
He could no longer differentiate
a lung from a heart,
or movement from momentum.
Even now, as he lay comfortably still,
He knew the strings that constructed the fiber of his atoms were vibrating, alive and tentatively active, orchestrating themselves
outside of his control.
"Son?"
"Pain."
He had something to prove to himself.