For Compassion, an Elegy

We found him sitting on the curb, crying, drunk, and surrounded by firemen.

"They kicked me!" he howled, "like I'm not even a person."

I looked at him and thought, well, you are a drunk...

The fire department lieutenant looked at me and smirked. "Yeah," he said, "one of my guys gave him a little shot in the ribs to, you know, make sure he was still alive and everything. We found him passed out on the sidewalk...Now he's saying something about having chest pain."

I nodded and motioned for the man to stand up. I find that with drunks it is easiest to grab them with two hands, one on the belt, another on the collar. You can control their movement that way. Especially if they're really hammered, you can kind of throw them onto the stretcher and prevent them from falling. I grabbed him and helped him into the bus.

"Twenty years ago," he sniveled indignantly, "no one would have ever dared to kick me."

Oh yeah, right, back in the good ol' days, I thought.

I had never picked the man up before, which is something of a rarity with drunks, especially homeless ones. The man was Puerto Rican, named Jose, and the 14th of 14 children. He had served as a Marine in the Vietnam War and been a Corrections Officer for most of his life. I was moved by this, but not surprised. I had met two retired Corrections Officers--that is, prison guards--on the job, and they were both trainwrecks.

A lot of EMTs want to be cops, and sometimes it's easier to get a job as a prison guard than a regular cop. I beg them with my eyes not to take the job, not to volunteer for prison duty. Prison engulfs you, it cages your soul and estranges you from the world outside. It's not just a place but a state of mind, and come-and-go as you might, your mind stays there, trapped.

Jose keeps crying and whining about being treated like a dog. I ask him if he had ever kicked anyone while he was in prison. No, he said, he would never do that. I was dubious, and looked away.

At the hospital, he thanked me profusely for being so kind, as drunks tend to do. He offered me his hand, but I didn't want to touch it. I was afraid it was dirty, that maybe he had wiped his ass with it or jerked off in the morning. That's what I told myself at least.

I shook his hand nonetheless, and wanted to wash it immediately. It really wasn't the grime that bothered me so much as his humanity. By touching his hand and accepting his thanks, I had to recognize him as a person, not just a drunk. I didn't care about him, really, or at least I didn't want to. He was just another fucking drunk with a story. I hate fucking drunks. Kick 'em all you want, FDNY, it's fine with me. But in touching his hand and meeting his eyes, I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for the guy. He had worked at an honorable, if thankless, job his whole life; he had served in the military and gotten shot in the knee; and now, here he was, drunk and homeless in New York City.

I felt uncomfortable, perhaps a little guilty.

A long time ago, when I was 18 and I had just become an EMT, I thought I was gonna save the world. I remember one day I went over to People's Park, where all the homeless slept, and offered them whatever medical assistance I could.

Jesus, I think to myself now, what was I doing.

Medicine--EMS--has changed me, made me less sympathetic to the world. I try to remember how I thought about the world and about people before I was in EMS, and I can barely remember it. That person that I was seems so foreign, so distant from who I am today.

When I first started working as an EMT, I would tell my friends how much the job makes me appreciate the fragility of my own life and how much it compels me to adopt a Carpe Diem outlook on life.

Yeah, that phase is over. Don't get me wrong, I still love my job, but I'm not a bright eyed kid anymore. I look at patients with one eye and another fixed on the cold calculus of self-preservation. I could care about you, but that would mean giving some of me to you, and I don't have that much of myself to go around. Empathy is dangerous--it can get inside you, remind you of the you you might become. It can make you imagine your father's heart attack or your sister's suicide. It can make you feel like you might be a patient, and that's all well and good when you're a kid with heart and love to spare. But I ain't that kid anymore. And here, today, on my stretcher, you're just another fucking drunk and I don't have time for your bullshit.

I know this post isn't as polished or dramatic as my usual writing, but it's the straight shit, it's how I feel, unedited, and the thing is, I want to be a good person and I still want to make the world a better place. But sometimes, I don't. Maybe I'm a bad person for feeling this way and thinking these things, but surely, I'm not alone.

Comments

[Maciek]

You’re right. You are not alone….
Medic from Poland

[...]

Your post reminds me a lot of this homeless man, Ray, I knew when I used to attend a catholic elementary school back home, years ago. My mom worked at the school, was friends with all the teachers and priests who were part of the parish, and dragged me, her religiously dubious daughter, to church every Sunday (I guess growing up Catholic has made me immensely suspicious of organized religion). Anyway, there was this man, Ray, a Vietnam vet. He'd hang around the school every day, and he'd try to have conversations with all the parents who picked up their kids from school. He just seemed so lonely. I, at 12 years old, was scared of him. He was just so dirty and rarely ever sober. But he loved my mom. She was always so nice to him, while everyone else, those devout Catholics, seemed to just ignore his existence. She'd give him money, ask him how he was doing, bring him food. I never understood how she could care about this man who, to 12-year-old me, was just gross.

But there was a moment, one Sunday at the 12:45 mass, during the sign of peace (my favorite part of mass): I kissed my mom, dad, and sister on their cheeks, I shook hands with the woman sitting next to me, and I turned around to shake hands with the man sitting behind me who had been singing so loudly throughout the mass. When I turned around and realized it was Ray, I didn't want to extend my hand, but my mom gave me this look...

It was only when I shook his hand and stared into his smiling blue eyes and prematurely wrinkled face that I recognized even one shred of humanity in this man whom my friends and I described as "just plain icky." And when I touched his calloused hand, he said "thank you" and I just felt so horrible for everything that I had ever thought about him. In that moment, I actually cared about him. Well, I at least felt sorry for him. But once our hands were no longer touching, I didn't really care anymore. He went back to being icky ol' homeless Ray.

More than a decade later, my view of compassion is that it's sort of a complicated emotion. If you care too much, you let yourself become engulfed in other people's suffering and you lose a part of yourself. If you don't care enough, you tend to make allowances for completely selfish behavior.

But, I think it takes a strong person to be able to separate himself from the chaos that may be shoved in his face. You're not a bad person for not caring about "just another fucking drunk." But you're a dedicated person for not allowing his problems, whether you feel for him or not, to affect the job you're out there to do.

[Jen]

You are not alone. I have yet to meet anyone in this field for more than a couple of years who doesn't feel the way you do. I've actually decided that my niche in the company is to have a smiling positive outlook, at least around the station, because it saps my energy to be around so many people who seem so unhappy and unsympathetic. I know they are good people and they treat one another with care and compassion, but once they leave the building, all bets are off. Good luck to you in finding a middle ground!

[Steve]

My EMT-B teacher once told us that if you dont have compassion for the people you serve, you ought to find another line of work. I'm not saying that is what you ought to do, but surely if you have lost the ability to feel sympathy for these wretches, something needs to change. After all, why would you want to do this job if you dont care about people?

The thing I think that needs to be kept in perspective is, something really bad drove these people to this life; a deceased child, an abusive spouse, being laid off from a job, horrific war memories; everyone has their own varied and different breaking point, and noone wakes up one morning and thinks "Gee, I want to be a drunk for the rest of my life!". So there logically has to be a catalyst that caused all of this, right?

I dont particulalrly find homeless people all that thrilling to be around either,I'd be lying if I said I did; but that one instance of compassion they see in a week could be the compassion that you show them, and they've come to expect that, because you are a Medic, after all, right? You're their to help, and sometimes when even your faith has gone south, you need something to reel you back into civillization.

Please dont feel like I am preaching, I'm not. I'm just trying to help.

[Barbara]

Beautifully put. It struck me so much more because I am surrounded by prisons where I live and have run the ER in the max-security one myself. Correctional officers have been some of my best friends and/but I completely understand your observation.

I'm linking you, I hope you don't mind. Found you by way of DTs. You are eloquently human.

[Simon]

You're forgetting "drunks" are alcoholics. Alcoholism is a disease. Welcome to reality.