Whatever You Do to the Least of These

Rain like fine mist splattered out of a sad-song sky. We rounded the corner at the end of Yellow Bucket Street and crossed the bridge, and in so doing, we were officially outside city limits. Queue the potholes. I dropped down to first gear, and we lurched through the cratered street.

“She’s up there where that guy is standing,” Laura said, pointing.

A concrete wall runs along the right-hand side of the street, and a man in a winter coat and hat stood next to it by a large bush. I wasn’t sure what I’d find once we got around that bush.

I stopped the car just past the man, and we got out. On the ground next to the wall, two white shoes stuck out from underneath a large sheet of black plastic. When Laura had found the woman on her way home, the woman had been lying in the mud completely exposed to the cold. She was barely conscious then. Now it appeared she was completely unconscious. Laura pulled back the plastic. Sure enough. Out like a light.

The young man said an ambulance was on its way. He said he worked at whatever place was right behind the wall we were standing next to. Seemed like he’d drawn the short straw (or was just the youngest) and had to be the one to stand out in the cold until the ambulance came.

Laura and I talked about what we should do. She looked through the woman’s bright yellow purse. It was full of candy, napkins, aspirin, a knife, underwear, a toothbrush, a comb, and a cell phone with a broken screen and no SIM card. No keys. No ID. No money. It appeared she was homeless.

When Laura had come home and told me about the woman she’d found lying drunk on the side of the road, we decided we’d take her to a homeless shelter run by a friend of ours. At least they could give us some help as to what to do next.

Now we weren’t sure if we should just go on our merry way since this guy had called an ambulance. We knew that sometimes ambulances don’t really come. Laura called the homeless shelter to see if they were even open today and until what time.

“We’d need to take her right now if we’re going to go,” Laura said after the call.

We decided we’d take her instead of waiting for the ambulance. Laura pulled the plastic off the woman. Someone had even gotten some cardboard underneath her to get her out of the mud. Laura stretched a sheet we keep in the car across the back seat, and the young man and I picked up the woman by the under arms and made our way to the car. She was wearing a bright pink winter coat. It was wet and smelly and warm under the armpits where I was holding her, and in order to not drop the poor woman, I had no choice but to hold on tight. She didn’t move the whole time we worked to get her up into the backseat. We made sure she was fully in the car, said goodbye to the young man, and drove off down the street. With an unconscious drunk woman sprawled out across the back seat of our car. Certainly a first for us.

“Careful,” Laura said. “She might fall forward if you stop too fast.”

Duly noted.

The shelter isn’t too far from our house. Before too long we pulled up in front of a bright yellow gate, a gate that stood that day in stark contrast with both the sky and the place that existed just behind its walls. Laura went in to find our friend, Merrell, an expatriate nurse in her sixties who has devoted several decades to the homeless of this city and country.

A man was standing outside. He asked for a smoke, and I told him I couldn’t help him. Soon a woman came out the door with an overstuffed plastic bag in her hand, yelling over her shoulder at the door she’d left ajar, and began to walk off down the street with the man. Another man appeared and started off after the woman, and it looked like he was trying to convince her to come back. But she wasn’t having it.

They were almost a block away by the time Merrell came out. She hurried off down the street after them, and somehow, she got them to come back at least initially.

Laura told me that she had gotten the go-ahead to bring the woman inside, so as Merrell was talking with the woman down the street, Laura went back inside the shelter to try to find a wheelchair. Not too long after, she was back. Another man from the shelter helped us move the unconscious woman in our backseat into the wheelchair.

The last I saw, the man out of cigarettes and the woman with the plastic bag were heading off again down the street.

Once inside the gate, we passed through an outside sitting area where tables were set up to serve people hot meals. I wondered if meals were served outside all winter long—I don’t think there’s a big enough inside space—but there wasn’t really a good moment to ask.

The waiting room just outside the exam room was long and narrow with seats on either side, and the acrid smell of unwashed bodies and vodka walloped me as soon as we stepped inside. We passed maybe ten people total. Some slept; some were watching the TV in the corner of the room.

The exam room was a breath of fresh air. Literally. After stretching the woman out on the exam table, Merrell, Laura, and the other nurses went to work taking the woman’s blood pressure, blood sugar, temperature, and pulse. The other nurses who worked at the shelter were all wearing masks and gloves. Not Merrell. She touched the woman’s face and hair and tried numerous times to talk to the woman, asking very gently what her name was.

At one point Merrell disappeared and then reappeared with dry clothes. Then, I’m not sure from where, but three or four heavy winter coats and a silvery blanket that reminded me of aluminum foil appeared. In the end, the woman, still completely unresponsive, was dressed in dry clothes and wrapped in coats and an aluminum foil-like blanket to keep her warm. The exam room wasn’t exactly toasty after all.

Then I looked over at Merrell, and what I saw was one of those things I’m not sure I’ll ever forget. At least I had better not. This saint of a woman had sat down in a chair in the exam room, removed her shoes, and was in the process of taking off her socks. Socks were the one thing she hadn’t been able to find at the shelter. So she was giving the woman hers. She slid her bare feet back into her shoes and with an exuberant “Socks!” passed the pair to the other nurse who, without batting an eye, went to work getting them on the woman’s cold feet.

And just like that the woman had socks. And Merrell didn’t. I can only begin to imagine the type of reward that awaits a person who gives her socks to an unconscious drunk woman on a cold day.

The woman’s vital signs were good, but she continued to be unresponsive. After some discussion as to what to do, we decided that calling the ambulance would be best. For starters, we didn’t know what she had taken to wind up in the state she was in. Was it just alcohol or something else? And we didn’t know how long she would be unconscious. What if she started convulsing? Yet Merrell knew what calling an ambulance could mean.

“They’ll just end up treating her like a slab of meat,” she said. “What will they do while she’s at the hospital? And what will they do for her when she’s discharged?”

Even still, the woman being in the state she was in, there was nothing the staff at the homeless shelter could do for her. So the call to the ambulance was made.

And what did Merrell do while we waited? She and her coworker prayed for the unconscious woman. Merrell gently placed her hands on the woman’s dirty face and ran them through her matted hair. She took her hand and begged for God’s mercy. At one point she told us that God had done amazing things there at the homeless shelter in answering prayers. In fact, at different times in the past, homeless people had been inspired to pray for other homeless people, and together they watched as God answered their prayers before their very eyes in amazing ways.

After a full hour of intercession had gone by, finally three stooges—I mean, three EMTs—and a meat wagon showed up.

There are some events you wouldn’t believe unless your own eyes observed them. We were about to witness one of those events. So in barged the stooges—I mean, the EMTs—and immediately they took control of the situation. Or lost control of the situation. I guess it depends on how you look at it. Having just witnessed one of the most compassionate acts I’ve probably ever seen, I was horrified to watch as a veil—or was it a shroud?—fell over the room with the breezing in of these three, two women and a man. They snuffed out the soft light that Merrell had lit aflame with her prayers and love. Where Merrell had seen a human being created in the image of her good and gracious God, these three saw a hunk of meat. And they were there to collect another cut.

With few questions, they went to work. One of the female EMTs slapped the unconscious woman across the face and yelled at her. The drunk lady didn’t so much as stir. They tried to place an IV twice but couldn’t get the line in. That, as you can imagine, only further agitated their irritability. That’s when they gave her some injections. The nearly lifeless soul that was stretched out on the exam table didn’t move a muscle.

Then the horror movie started. The male EMT got some gauze, soaked it in ammonia, completely covered the woman’s nose and mouth, and pressed down hard. Well, cutting off the woman’s air supply certainly produced a reaction. She began to squirm and try to pull away from the man’s grip. As soon as the EMT let up, the woman gasped, and then once more fell his ammonia-soaked gauze over her face. This happened several times, interspersed by the EMT pulling down hard on the woman’s ears.

Still, the woman wasn’t coming to. It was then that they decided to move into Stage 2 of their EMT training manual, which I can’t say for sure but would be willing to bet is entitled something like Everything You Shouldn’t Do to Revive an Unconscious Woman.

The eyes of the EMTs fell on Laura, Merrell, and me. A toss of one of their heads in the direction of the door signaled we were to leave. Apparently they didn’t want foreigners to witness Stage 2.

We went into the hall right outside the exam room. The door opened and closed a few times. Some of the homeless shelter staff were sent to get things like a couple buckets and a cup. At some point amid all the action, Laura managed to slide back into the room to give them assistance with something. Conveniently, she didn’t leave. That’s when Laura realized they were preparing to do a gastric lavage.

If you’re like me and need the commoner’s definition, gastric lavage is another term for pumping one’s stomach. By then the woman’s hands were tied to the exam table. To pump her stomach, first they shoved a rubber tube the diameter of a little finger down the woman’s esophagus. A funnel was placed into the end of the tube still outside the woman, and in went cold water from one of the buckets using the cup. Laura estimated they got a solid half gallon of water into the woman, maybe more. Then they lowered the tube all the way to the floor, below the woman and her swollen belly full of water, with the end of the tube in another bucket and let gravity do the rest. Out came the half gallon of water. Of course, to aid gravity, the EMTs struck the woman’s abdomen with closed fists.

In case you’re wondering, the modern Western world of medicine no longer recommends gastric lavages, especially if you’re not sure what the person has ingested in the first place. Whatever’s down there could end up doing more damage coming back up and out. Besides that, there are just other, less invasive means to treat most problems traditionally treated by stomach pumping—means that don’t risk perforating the esophagus and/or the stomach, for example.

In the end, however, in spite of all the EMTs’ most hardy labor, the woman didn’t stir. She was out just like me every time I stand up to bat. So they slapped her and yelled at her again. Wouldn’t you know? It didn’t work.

Finally, after about an hour of torture— I mean, treatment—they decided to take the woman to the hospital. They had one condition, however. Someone needed to go with her. Go ahead and take a wild guess as to who volunteered.

Yup.

Merrell.

And she was still sockless.

As for us, we headed home. Laura kept in touch with Merrell via text throughout the evening. Merrell was at the hospital for somewhere between two and three hours with the woman. A higher up at the hospital finally decided that the woman could stay the night instead of being thrown back out on the street. When Merrell had to leave, the hospital staff wouldn’t let her go back in to see the woman again. She was still unconscious anyway.

Merrell left her phone number at the hospital so the doctors could call her the next morning with an update. The call never came. So Merrell went mid-morning to the hospital just to find out that the unnamed woman had checked herself out at 7:00 AM. She hadn’t left a phone number. Or even a name.

And just like that, another desperate soul had entered and left Merrell’s life. And ours.