(no subject)
And I asked myself, when did I lose my care? The installation, carried down from mother to son, from the boy scouts from the vera from this city, when did I lose the unstoppable need to care? This was not what I was supposed to be.
[redacted] came in to my work today. I was on the computer, like I do, reading my entertainment news sources, looking at pretty pictures of times past or some such. When Phyllis came in I recognized her before I forgot her; after I let her face pass in and out I asked, can I help you? To no reply, I repeated, Hi, Can I help you?
I fell.
Oh…is there something I can do for you?
And from there we got her in a chair and we got the 911 call out and we got the SFD in 2 minutes flat, the EMTs hot on their trail. I talked to her and got her name and some of her history. [redacted], an Ogala Sioux woman of 70. She had fallen and had heart trouble; she’d been drinking and was unresponsive to some. To me she would talk. The Fire Dept people were kind and would also talk with her; the EMTs treated her like a computer, so she switched into Sioux. When she asked them to get her backpack as they were wheeling her away the young student, no older than me, lost his temper. He didn’t like that she could understand him but wouldn’t talk to him. His training as a repairman didn’t prepare him for the pride that people have, the kind that is harder to stomp out than confidence-the pride of life, of your mind and all its glitches and intricacies.
The smell of alcohol on her breath made me feel at home in a different time. I remembered her hat. A black felt cowboy hat, studded with rhinestones in the shape of the word “princess.” I knew her from my time living on Capitol Hill. She was often hanging out at Bellevue and Pine; I’d seen policemen harassing her and her harassing hipsters. I’d seen her in an ambulance before, but I’d never seen her ask for anything besides change. The margin of help I could give her felt without worth, less than the 35 cents I might have given her two years ago.
The EMTs misread her name, Braveheart, as Braveeart, and they turned it into some Creole fascination. Right before they rolled her away they realized their mistake. The students thought it was sort of funny.
I did what she asked me to by having an ambulance come. Our executive director, alarmed that paramedics were coming into the house with their lights a-blazing, came downstairs to inquire; later she joked how The Lady certainly got a warm bed out of the call. Somehow, as the EMT’s teacher-medic corrected the student’s line of questioning, I realized how the help I gave wasn’t the help I’d hoped for at all.
[redacted] came in to my work today. I was on the computer, like I do, reading my entertainment news sources, looking at pretty pictures of times past or some such. When Phyllis came in I recognized her before I forgot her; after I let her face pass in and out I asked, can I help you? To no reply, I repeated, Hi, Can I help you?
I fell.
Oh…is there something I can do for you?
And from there we got her in a chair and we got the 911 call out and we got the SFD in 2 minutes flat, the EMTs hot on their trail. I talked to her and got her name and some of her history. [redacted], an Ogala Sioux woman of 70. She had fallen and had heart trouble; she’d been drinking and was unresponsive to some. To me she would talk. The Fire Dept people were kind and would also talk with her; the EMTs treated her like a computer, so she switched into Sioux. When she asked them to get her backpack as they were wheeling her away the young student, no older than me, lost his temper. He didn’t like that she could understand him but wouldn’t talk to him. His training as a repairman didn’t prepare him for the pride that people have, the kind that is harder to stomp out than confidence-the pride of life, of your mind and all its glitches and intricacies.
The smell of alcohol on her breath made me feel at home in a different time. I remembered her hat. A black felt cowboy hat, studded with rhinestones in the shape of the word “princess.” I knew her from my time living on Capitol Hill. She was often hanging out at Bellevue and Pine; I’d seen policemen harassing her and her harassing hipsters. I’d seen her in an ambulance before, but I’d never seen her ask for anything besides change. The margin of help I could give her felt without worth, less than the 35 cents I might have given her two years ago.
The EMTs misread her name, Braveheart, as Braveeart, and they turned it into some Creole fascination. Right before they rolled her away they realized their mistake. The students thought it was sort of funny.
I did what she asked me to by having an ambulance come. Our executive director, alarmed that paramedics were coming into the house with their lights a-blazing, came downstairs to inquire; later she joked how The Lady certainly got a warm bed out of the call. Somehow, as the EMT’s teacher-medic corrected the student’s line of questioning, I realized how the help I gave wasn’t the help I’d hoped for at all.