(no subject)
I need to get a physical for medical clearance for the Peace Corps but I don't have health insurance. I called the Peace Corps peeps and asked about programs or special access or clinics that did work for the PC and they said sometimes you can get in at the Vet's hospitals, they can do physicals for you but they decide whether or not they have time to see you.
So today I get my dental exam for clearance and then head over to the hospital at 42nd and Clement. I arrive at about 1130AM.
As I walk my usual brisk pace toward this monstrous set of buildings that were seemingly engineered with the goal of mass confusion, I notice I'm passing everyone. Everyone walks slower than me. Everyone. I pass an exceptionally old couple, a White man about 6'2" with the "elder hunch" and his probable wife who is more like 4'10" a sweet, also exceptionally old, Asian woman. I think to my self that they as a couple make me happy to live in America and especially in SF. As I walk past them it occurs to me that if he and I are to wait in the same line, I'll get there and seen first, not because I need attention more, but because I'm healthier and younger and walk faster - the fact of life in this instant, is that I will get medical attention sooner than this man because I need it less. Oh, and he's a Vet.
I get inside and put on my "let's figure this shit out" cap 'cause I know I'm about to sit down with a tremendous and madly overbooked bureaucracy. I look around, no reception desk. I look some more, wading through crowds of wheel chairs with small shameful looking men wearing hats remarking on some conflict in Korea, Vietnam, older wars, newer ones, whatever ones. Some men, walking as though they are here for services as well, are suited, all of the reasonably well dressed men I see, whom it is my judgment that they are there as vets, are black. Apparently if you've got any shot at all and you're white you don't go to the service. Hey! that's my story!
I find an information desk and explain my story to the very nice woman behind it. I say I'm applying...Peace Corps...bla bla bla..."they said sometimes, if you guys (I'm getting more and more apologetic the longer I'm here) have time (inclination), you can see me for a physical." She says go to Emergency and explain to them what you just told me. In the 20 seconds it takes me to walk to Emergency I reflect on how fucking absurd it is that I'm not even a veteran, not willing to put my self in the kind of harm's way that fucking everyone else here ALREADY HAS and I just may be about to go wait in the EMERGENCY line, which means that if ANYONE sits down behind me, I'll be delaying, with a routine physical, someone else's EMERGENCY medical care. The 20 seconds are up and I'm staring at a middle-aged bald man who looks at me with a bit of "WTF" and a fair amount of "sure, alright". I tell him the story - PC, physical, no appointment, phone lady, can wait in line? Maybe? He says we can't see you if you're not a Vet, which doesn't dissuade me, there's no real reason he'd know about the option/program I'm talking about anyway.
He gives me a piece of paper with some information to call on it and sends me out the door and to the left to somewhere named "member services", one more place I utterly do not belong. I follow his directions and go out the door, turn left and begin walking down the hall toward a place I hope is somewhere at the end of it. There are no signs noting that a place called "member services" even exists and as I look for it I pass one waiting room full of my grandfathers and then another full of my uncles and they're all sick and broken - half are in wheel chairs. A few talk to themselves in a way that doesn't sound healthy. None of these men are dressed like my uncles or grandfathers, they all look a little poor, and very forgotten. No. Abandoned. They all look Abandoned.
The fact that if somehow I find someone who will let me wait in their line I will probably wait forever and my evening's plans won't get to happen hits me and I think, "well I've got a phone number, and a telephone, I'll call first thing in the morning and talk my way into an appointment and come back then." I head for the door.
On my way out the building a nurse asks that same exceptionally old woman, now without her husband, if she needs help with/finding something. She says "no" and begins to thank her but the nurse is already gone. Her smiling mouth reminds me of the way my grandmother's mouth creases when she smiles at me. Her eyes too. I know those eyes, the same look, the same light blue, honest eyes. Maybe I'm projecting, she is Asian after all, not a lot of light blue-eyed Asians around, but who cares. I know the look, it goes with the smile, but the nurse is too busy and overworked to even wait for the "thank you" they accompanied. The very patients whom our society should spend the most quality care upon, those who deserve that little extra talk time with doctors, are exactly the ones who, out of economic deprivation, are the ones treated most like old cars at the autoshop.
2 seconds more and I'm almost out the door. I see two large black men talking to each other as they walk in and while their weight and youth make me think they are probably not Vets, the possibility of looking another Vet in the eye makes me look straight at the ground as I pass the final threshold, where, to my left there sits a bike rack in between some kind of generator room and the building I was just in. I turn down this narrow passage even though it's not how I'm getting out of here and I start to cry. Just shame and the thought of crying at first and then a little welling-up. I'm alone enough to do this in public as long as I don't make any noise and so it just happens. A single tear runs out my eye, caught before it even hits my cheek. What the fuck am I DOING here?
I have an appointment for the 16th of June to get this very physical - I don't even NEED to get it here. I don't NEED any of this. The categorical difference between me and my purpose here and EVERYONE else is just that, need. The only thing I need at this moment is to leave because I sure as shit don't belong here. All of these people are suffering chronic, ongoing, probably fixable ailments that in one way or another likely came out of their tour of duty. All of them literally, not jokingly, sarcastically, or with any amount of fucking exaggeration, risked their lives for something I believe in. They are all better men than me, they are all deserving of my flesh, my youth, my money (what little I have), my opportunities and none of them have any of it. And here I am, the little shit who fancies himself a smooth bureaucrat and thought he'd just come in and wait in the fucking Emergency line for a fucking physical to go do my hippy shit in South America - my half-way contribution compared to theirs.
And so I cried, just a little bit really, because it's fucking ridiculous - none of these men are crying, and they are waiting in the Emergency waiting room and have E M E R G E N C I E S.
Ashamed, grateful, undeserving,
Cameron Ottens May 22nd, 2008
So today I get my dental exam for clearance and then head over to the hospital at 42nd and Clement. I arrive at about 1130AM.
As I walk my usual brisk pace toward this monstrous set of buildings that were seemingly engineered with the goal of mass confusion, I notice I'm passing everyone. Everyone walks slower than me. Everyone. I pass an exceptionally old couple, a White man about 6'2" with the "elder hunch" and his probable wife who is more like 4'10" a sweet, also exceptionally old, Asian woman. I think to my self that they as a couple make me happy to live in America and especially in SF. As I walk past them it occurs to me that if he and I are to wait in the same line, I'll get there and seen first, not because I need attention more, but because I'm healthier and younger and walk faster - the fact of life in this instant, is that I will get medical attention sooner than this man because I need it less. Oh, and he's a Vet.
I get inside and put on my "let's figure this shit out" cap 'cause I know I'm about to sit down with a tremendous and madly overbooked bureaucracy. I look around, no reception desk. I look some more, wading through crowds of wheel chairs with small shameful looking men wearing hats remarking on some conflict in Korea, Vietnam, older wars, newer ones, whatever ones. Some men, walking as though they are here for services as well, are suited, all of the reasonably well dressed men I see, whom it is my judgment that they are there as vets, are black. Apparently if you've got any shot at all and you're white you don't go to the service. Hey! that's my story!
I find an information desk and explain my story to the very nice woman behind it. I say I'm applying...Peace Corps...bla bla bla..."they said sometimes, if you guys (I'm getting more and more apologetic the longer I'm here) have time (inclination), you can see me for a physical." She says go to Emergency and explain to them what you just told me. In the 20 seconds it takes me to walk to Emergency I reflect on how fucking absurd it is that I'm not even a veteran, not willing to put my self in the kind of harm's way that fucking everyone else here ALREADY HAS and I just may be about to go wait in the EMERGENCY line, which means that if ANYONE sits down behind me, I'll be delaying, with a routine physical, someone else's EMERGENCY medical care. The 20 seconds are up and I'm staring at a middle-aged bald man who looks at me with a bit of "WTF" and a fair amount of "sure, alright". I tell him the story - PC, physical, no appointment, phone lady, can wait in line? Maybe? He says we can't see you if you're not a Vet, which doesn't dissuade me, there's no real reason he'd know about the option/program I'm talking about anyway.
He gives me a piece of paper with some information to call on it and sends me out the door and to the left to somewhere named "member services", one more place I utterly do not belong. I follow his directions and go out the door, turn left and begin walking down the hall toward a place I hope is somewhere at the end of it. There are no signs noting that a place called "member services" even exists and as I look for it I pass one waiting room full of my grandfathers and then another full of my uncles and they're all sick and broken - half are in wheel chairs. A few talk to themselves in a way that doesn't sound healthy. None of these men are dressed like my uncles or grandfathers, they all look a little poor, and very forgotten. No. Abandoned. They all look Abandoned.
The fact that if somehow I find someone who will let me wait in their line I will probably wait forever and my evening's plans won't get to happen hits me and I think, "well I've got a phone number, and a telephone, I'll call first thing in the morning and talk my way into an appointment and come back then." I head for the door.
On my way out the building a nurse asks that same exceptionally old woman, now without her husband, if she needs help with/finding something. She says "no" and begins to thank her but the nurse is already gone. Her smiling mouth reminds me of the way my grandmother's mouth creases when she smiles at me. Her eyes too. I know those eyes, the same look, the same light blue, honest eyes. Maybe I'm projecting, she is Asian after all, not a lot of light blue-eyed Asians around, but who cares. I know the look, it goes with the smile, but the nurse is too busy and overworked to even wait for the "thank you" they accompanied. The very patients whom our society should spend the most quality care upon, those who deserve that little extra talk time with doctors, are exactly the ones who, out of economic deprivation, are the ones treated most like old cars at the autoshop.
2 seconds more and I'm almost out the door. I see two large black men talking to each other as they walk in and while their weight and youth make me think they are probably not Vets, the possibility of looking another Vet in the eye makes me look straight at the ground as I pass the final threshold, where, to my left there sits a bike rack in between some kind of generator room and the building I was just in. I turn down this narrow passage even though it's not how I'm getting out of here and I start to cry. Just shame and the thought of crying at first and then a little welling-up. I'm alone enough to do this in public as long as I don't make any noise and so it just happens. A single tear runs out my eye, caught before it even hits my cheek. What the fuck am I DOING here?
I have an appointment for the 16th of June to get this very physical - I don't even NEED to get it here. I don't NEED any of this. The categorical difference between me and my purpose here and EVERYONE else is just that, need. The only thing I need at this moment is to leave because I sure as shit don't belong here. All of these people are suffering chronic, ongoing, probably fixable ailments that in one way or another likely came out of their tour of duty. All of them literally, not jokingly, sarcastically, or with any amount of fucking exaggeration, risked their lives for something I believe in. They are all better men than me, they are all deserving of my flesh, my youth, my money (what little I have), my opportunities and none of them have any of it. And here I am, the little shit who fancies himself a smooth bureaucrat and thought he'd just come in and wait in the fucking Emergency line for a fucking physical to go do my hippy shit in South America - my half-way contribution compared to theirs.
And so I cried, just a little bit really, because it's fucking ridiculous - none of these men are crying, and they are waiting in the Emergency waiting room and have E M E R G E N C I E S.
Ashamed, grateful, undeserving,
Cameron Ottens May 22nd, 2008