To Know a Stranger

I met Em on the way home the night I expected B would die.  We’d both missed the light like idiots, staring at our phones, looking up only as the sign counted down from 1. Seems out of our periphery we had both been waiting for the other’s movement to tell us to cross. We looked at each other and I chirped “Oops. F**k me, I guess.”  We laughed, some of my heaviness lifting. We waited a full cycle then made our way to the 44 stop.

After brief intros, Em asked me if medicine is like it is on TV. I said I didn’t know, never been big into Grey’s. Em followed up by asking me if I get to “touch people, for real.” I answered yes, explaining what it means to have patients, take histories and do physicals. I said that I stroll around the hospital given trust and access into people’s lives I feel I’ve yet to earn.  I tried to explain that medicine is either the most organic form of inorganic or the most inorganic form of organic. I’ve yet to decide. Regardless, it’s a beautiful chimera in its structure, intimacy, rigidity, gentleness. 

Em told me they were in recovery. I said I was proud of them in the form of a “Congrats, that’s huge!” and the mandatory “Bless Up, Big Dawg!” as I wagged my finger, pointing upward to the nearly full moon. They told me that the drugs had been good for them, til they weren’t. They spoke with wisdom and nuance one doesn’t expect in youth. Told me they’d started finding community in sobriety. As we rode the bus, we joked like childhood friends. 

How special to know a stranger. 

—— 

B’s parents sat around the bed, their son dying in front of them. In the last few days, he had been lucid for me. Lucid in a way that he wasn’t for his mom when she took the hour long bus ride to see him and the hour long bus ride back home. The next morning, he told me he was glad his mom had been there, said she was a good mom.

In the end, it was the intractable pull of the street and drugs who had taken him. They were the winds that kicked up the perfect storm. A swirling, twisting gale which tore through his body, gnawing and stretching it from within, a swarm that had chipped, chipped, chipped away at its foundation.

We’d gotten him stable enough for him to say he didn’t want to be intubated, didn’t want shocks, didn’t want anything else from us other than comfort. The morphine drip was the best we had. His dad quietly remarked, “What a way to go...” I felt his words, although I know I cannot appreciate their weight. The bounds of my context were limited to a week, and they’d had a lifetime, albeit one too short.

“He was a pleasure to take care of,” I told his parents. And I told them he had said nice things about them in the moments I shared with him. I hope it brings them a little comfort to know he loved them and was loved. I hope what I said was enough.

I wasn’t quite sure how to leave. I touched his hand, “It’s nice to see you, B.” I said it twice, other words not coming to my mouth. I’m sure I was mostly reassuring myself. Then I shook his parents’ hands, said a short goodbye, and shuffled quietly back into the hallway, to the elevators and ultimately, out of the hospital. I wished for one more day. Hoped he would get to see his sister one more time. I’m glad he did.

—— 

As the bus neared my destination, Em noted that this would be a perfect sitcom, “a recovering addict and a medical student.” Seems like something I could get into.  And as if waiting to the very end, in the last few seconds, Em said that tomorrow was a big milestone. It marked a full month of sobriety, to which we both gave the requisite “Bless up” while lightheartedly addressing the heavens. We concluded that these 20 minutes were the most pleasant moments of our respective evenings, we said so, and I hopped off the bus.

—— 

Sitting here now, I'm mulling over Em’s question. “Do you touch people, for real?” 

I realize how much B, his parents, and Em touched me and how quickly. And now, I feel I’ve come to a more honest answer…

I hope so.