On my way home from work a few days ago, I saw someone staggering toward me as I headed to the subway station. It was a typical city scene—lots of pedestrians steering clear of someone who was probably drunk, potentially homeless, and possibly dangerous. No one was offering to help him as he stopped and crouched in a doorway. And I did what any urban-dwelling young woman with a sense of self-preservation would do: I started to walk quickly past him.
Then I did a double take. He was one of my patients.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. “What happened?”
He wasn’t really coherent; all I could get out of him were a few scattered words that didn’t add up to much. I asked a passing transit officer to call 911, and then I waited with him.
Although we were in the heart of the city, it took the EMTs 30 minutes to reach us. My patient was sweating profusely. I was worried that he would collapse before help arrived. Although I’m a doctor, there’s not a lot I can do without equipment.
What struck me during those 30 minutes was how completely we were ignored. There I was, professionally dressed and holding the arm of a disheveled, distressed-looking man twice my size. No one—man or woman, young or old—met my gaze. They all did what I had planned to do and walked on by.
My patient was in kidney failure and needed urgent treatment. He survived. But I am left with the realization that, had I not recognized him, he probably would have been ignored and invisible for a lot longer. Perhaps he would have been sent to jail for loitering, before anyone realized that he was sick.
I can’t say that I now plan to stop and investigate every time I see someone lying on a park bench or huddling in a corner seat on the bus. But I was chastened by the realization that some fraction of the people I’ve walked past over the years—drunk or not, homeless or not—may have urgently needed medical attention. And I didn’t stop to ask.
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