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| mural near Pioneer Park |
This Christmas morning I get to my hospital floor where I work and it
was eerily empty. Asking around upstairs I find out that it was closed last
night, and they forgot to call me, so I head home. Walking. It’s just getting
light outside and I put on my headphones. Music and playlists and likes have
become my new best medicine.
The world is slowed down. Practically no one is out, and I take my time
traversing, exploring a few new streets downtown. Columbia tower, courthouse
overlook, art murals. I pass the Union Gospel Mission and King Street Station,
a red lady’s coat thrown on the sidewalk. First I get mad that some ungrateful
person just chucked it on the street, probably not aware that she would be cold
later, for somebody else to pick up… Then the metaphor of the discarded people of
our society softens me, and I no longer have any harsh feelings. I’ve been
watching the people that live in the shelters, tents, under bridges, storefront
crannies. I always have, ever since I was a child. I want to do so much. My
emotions are all over the place when I see my kin in the cold, under the free
skies, getting wet, carrying shit, scraggly and… me.
I reflect how I’ve never been attacked, object of a crime by these
marginalized, like the myth supposes… but I have been kissed on the cheek, hugged,
sung to, and loudly talked to. Still I am careful, this is a city, strangers,
brothers.
Yesterday I read in the paper how the mayor declared an emergency of
homelessness earlier this year. And one of my patients says the beach she goes
to in Hawaii is full of tents of homeless. I think of the rich getting richer,
the poor getting poorer, Bernie Sanders, Richard Wolff on Marxism and
capitalism which I’ve been listening to, and the swelling of this mass of
humanity. Maybe we’ll stop trying to ignore it.
Them.
Us.
Loading my ORCA card (city transit pass), a slender pretty human with
seal eyes comes and says Merry Christmas and asks if I have something to spare.
I remove my earbuds and give her 5 bucks, not that I have them to spare, and
look her in the eyes. Walking away I think that she’s gorgeous enough,
prostitution maybe a thing at one time, kind and elegant.
Further on through Chinatown. I revel in the fog and sprinkling kisses.
Asian courtyards and pavilions, early morning geriatrics limber routines. Brisk
air. Pleasurable.
Under a wide freeway overpass I glance at a couple tents, a threesome
on a mattress, and a duo sitting up in the piles where they sometimes have a
fire. Soon I pass a man on the sidewalk curb sitting yelling out. Arms
outstretched. I stop, but keep a respectful distance. Help me up he mumbles
with volume. I see that he’s not going to swipe at me, but his hands and coat
are oh so dirty. I ask him if he wants me to help him stand up. Yes. I reach
out and grasp his forearms so that I don’t have to touch his hands, little
wounds and rough. No, he says loudly, from behind, gesturing. I go around and
tell him that I’m going to help lift him up, on the count of three together. We
manage to stand up.
Bent over, he shuffles a couple inches. I ask him where he’s going, and
he says to the bus. I see that he’s not
going anywhere, and I help him three feet over to a sign where he holds on. His
name is Oscar, and he’s from Cuba. He lifts up his pant leg and shows me a very
swollen leg, sock pinching the shin. He hurts all over and broke the leg two
months ago he says.
I can’t just walk home now. What can I do? We talk. He’s hard of
hearing. He starts trembling. Nose dripping on the pavement. I ask him if he
would be okay with going to the hospital. He looks at me and tells me last time
the cops were rough with him. The nurses were just in the hallways chatting all
happy. As the minutes rolled on Oscar’s trembling worsens. He wobbles back and
forth, even holding on with both hands to the pole, and I think he’s going to
fall. The fresh red scab on his forehead now seems more like from a fall
instead of an assault like I originally thought.
He agrees to a call to the ambulance to go to the hospital. I think for
a minute to frame my language in the most convincing and accurate manner. Prepare
to combat on the phone to advocate. The phone call takes a while, I talk to the
911 dispatcher, then the medic, then then ambulance team, but at no point do I
sense anything but helpfulness. The last lady asks me to tell the patient to
collect his medicines. Ha. Sure I tell her. It will be 10 to 15 minutes before
they arrive.
I tell Oscar, who has been trying to talk to me while I’m on the phone,
so I had to walk away a few feet. I help him sit, hoping he doesn’t fall. Sit
next to him on the curb. We wait under that freeway bridge, Christmas morning,
coolness settling in under our gloves, and sigh. Relax a bit. He asks where I’m
going next. Home I said. Feeling ironic. He looks at my scrubs. To rest in bed?
Yes, I responded. Damn.
We switch to Spanish. I ask him about Cuba. He tells me about the other
people under the bridge. They all do drugs. I only do alcohol. I should
probably stop, it’s hurting my leg. We talk about crystal. I don’t like it. I
couldn’t sleep. Marijuana’s better he says, you can sleep, and dance, and be
normal.
The EMT’s arrive in their tall quiet ambulance. The kid with the male
pony tail on top brings the stretcher. The new girl fetches them the blue latex gloves.
Together we help Oscar onto the stretcher, I lift his legs up onto the
platform. They unlock the brakes and elevate the device. Oscar says, “Oh man,
que Dios te bendiga [may God bless you].” I follow them to the back of the vehicle
and watch them roll him in. The girl asks if I want to ride with them to
Harborview [hospital]. I decline and wave goodbye to the man getting his vital
signs checked.
My walk home continues, earphones back in, Christmas music melting and
stirring me. Our system is messed up, but in this small (and expensive instance),
through emergency rooms, can our brothers on the streets receive medical care,
if in dire crisis, for a few days. Man, the U.S. Reagan through Clinton years dumped
all of our institutionalized people out onto the streets. Now we pay for it
still, just through hospital emergency rooms. Stupid. Part of me hopes that the
emergency rooms are flooded, maxing the system economically, until we start to
do things preventively.
May God bless you he said. I think: may society help you, may people
help you, and stop relying on some exterior idea to magically do something
while we do nothing different. May legislation change. May people-systems
change. May there be houses and beds for the “lazy,” and whatever other silly
names we call each other to make distance and put each other out of sight. We
cannot ignore the poor. One day that could be me.
I walk past the Indian Center. Then the bridge where just weeks ago I
helped Vladimir step off the railing a dark morning at 6:30 a.m.. I look below
at Nickelsville’s pink shacks. Stop to count about 40 tents and huts that the
city of Seattle has allowed on this freeway twirl parcel. I look across other
worn paths through the leaf-less trees and count another 50 or so tents.
Belongings strewn. Just today, on my way home from work, I must have passed at
least 180 people without homes on the streets. Or um muddy woods and concrete overhangs.
Well we can ignore the poor, until the numbers swell, and the crisis
rooms are full, and the problem spills into the middle and upper-class
freeways, and streets, healthcare systems, stores entrances, and
everywhere else we try to brush under the carpet. Something is inside-wrong
with the way we do things. Like inner demons we try to repress and pretend are
not there, we can only pretend so long until the illusion is ruptured, and the
other components of our psyche explode. Like terrorism, mass shootings, and
violence, we can only externalize it so long until at some point we have to
realize that the problem is also internal.
Stepping off my soap box, riled up as I can sometimes wind myself, I
take a deep breath. I’m home now. Sitting in front of my home’s Christmas tree.
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| building-side a few blocks from Pioneer Park |
