Emergency

Most mornings I enter the building that houses my office through the back door. And most mornings my mind is elsewhere. I am preoccupied with thoughts of the day aheadthings to accomplish, people to see, meetings to attend, a lecture to give, deadlines to meet. But this morning, as I cross through the trauma center garage where I park my car, on the ground floor beneath the helipad, a man approaches me, disheveled, emaciated, his eyes a little wild, I notice as he nears me, walking straight toward me, quickly. I try to seem nonchalant, but I'm no longer preoccupied with anything but my immediate surroundings. I'm focused. The man has my attention. When we are within touching distance he stops abruptly, holds out his hand (or is he reaching for me?), and mumbles something I don't quite catch. Directions maybe? People often ask for directions down here. I ask, What'd you say? Can you spare some change? he repeats, more slowly. And then, as if to assure me he's no panhandler, he thrusts his other arm forward to show me a soiled, makeshift bandage barely concealing a suppurating wound. I got hurt. Been waitin' to get in. I need to get somethin' to eat, and he gestures toward the vending machines in the bare waiting room just behind us at the top of the ramp. I reach into my pocket and empty what change I have into his good hand and ask, Will that help? He replies, with gratitude, I think (his agitated expression didn't change), If that's all you can spare. Whereupon he wheels around and retraces his steps jerkily toward the candy and chips machines. I too turn and continue toward my office. All of a sudden I feel the softness of the leather attach tucked under my bare, unspoiled arm. I look down and see my $200 shoes staring back at me. And the oil drippings all over the garage floor from the dilapidated vans and pickups that deliver their damaged human cargo to the ER. I become aware of an acrid odor in the humid morning air. And the cry of a siren approaching from afar, and the throbbing beat of the rotor blades of the Medivac helicopter landing on the roof, the air around me pulsating from the downward pressure. And in my mind's eye I see the big jail bus with the bars on the windows turn the corner toward the clinics. That must have happened as I got out of my car when the intersection was in my line of vision. But I don't remember seeing the bus thenonly now. As I pass out of the garage into the sunlight I see a morbidly obese woman, her legs swathed in elastic wrappings, leaning hard on her walker, lugging her great weight toward the hospital one labored step at a time. And I notice for the first time a sign that's surely been there for a couple of years announcing, We care about your health. Our facilities and grounds are a smoke-free environment. On the benches beneath the sign the medically dispossessed gather, stealing a smoke, staring down and out, worrying, waiting.