Last night the ER at St. Joe's was particularly alive.
Above average number of folks coming in for care. A steady stream of ambulance arrivals. Longer than usual wait times, but with enough of the variety of humankind around to make it interesting. Especially two different people brought in by police escort in the course of an hour.
The first was a young man who seemed really not too dissimilar from any of the rest of us. The two officers who brought him in seemed almost incidental to the scene.
The second was a young woman whose profanity, complaints, ploys, anger, and threats made us all both thankful and a little anxious for the two female officers responsible for her. And kept us all enthralled for the better part of the evening as she made her way with us through triage, waiting room, assessment, more waiting, testing, more waiting again, and then step-by-step treatment.
I say "with us." At each step along the way she was isolated and watched-over by the officers in an enclosed room of real walls, isolated from us but for the open door. But she was very much part of our journey, as her voice and her defiant spirit flowed out of whatever room she was in, to fill the rest of the ER and grab our hungry attention.
Some expressed shock and dismay that a young woman would be shouting such crude profanity, and for so long. "Has she no pride?" "Has she no self-respect?" "What kind of woman acts like that?" Indignation. Disgust. Incomprehension.
Others could be seen turning their heads and even craning their necks to try to catch a glimpse of this she-force of nature in our midst. Some even arranged little walks and side-trips for themselves to try to see what she looked like. Like you would any sideshow. Curiosity. Delight in the unusual and outrageous.
I wondered, as I'm sure others did, what she was "in for." What crime had she committed? Why the police officers? And what injury had she sustained, or what drug had she taken, or what disorder was she suffering to make them bring her first to a hospital? Curiosity of a different kind, but no less alienated and objectifying.
The officers must have seen her as a threat to run, as they had her in cuffs when they arrived. As things went on, they seemed to see her also a threat to herself, to others, and to hospital property because at one point at least they also cuffed her to the bed to limit her mobility. Word spread some time later that she was even "tied down."
Many, though, did their best just to ignore her. Maybe to avoid getting involved, and stay safe. Maybe to give her some space and a chance to regain some dignity. Maybe because their own ailments and reason for being in ER were quite enough for them to cope with. All kinds of reasons to practice distance and separation.
What most caught my attention was an overheard conversation among a cluster of paramedics waiting with their stretchered patients not far from where the young woman, unseen but still clearly heard, was maintaining her defiant challenge against authority a full three or four hours after first entering the institution.
Word was circulating that the medical staff were going to give her a mild sedative.
"I can understand calming her down," one paramedic said. "But you sure don't want to break her spirit."
"Yeah," said another, "with a spirit like that, she'd make a great fire-fighter."
So many ways of seeing the same thing, the same person ... so many different starting points and so many different end results when it comes to relating to others around us ...
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