one world

purpose: to connect, create value, stretch, and witness the mundane magical

December 25, 2015

Christmas morning

mural near Pioneer Park 
Merry Christmas all. Below are a few thoughts from this morning.

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. 
building-side a few blocks from Pioneer Park 

1 comment:

  1. I'm so late reading this Percy, but I'm so glad I did today. Thank you for sharing your beautiful experience and thoughts. I'm so proud to have you as a brother! I too notice homeless people everywhere I go, and it makes me ache inside, wishing I could/would do more. At some point in my life, I hope I have the strength, courage, and compassion to reach out as you do. Thank you for your wonderful example. I love you!

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