On November 25th 2014 a grand jury in Missouri stated that it would not seek an indictment against white police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
I was interning as a paramedic student in a Florida Fire Rescue station that day. We were between calls. Firefighters were stretched out in their recliners watching the TV as Michael Brown's mother sobbed and collapsed into the arms of Michael Brown's stepfather Louis Head. Riots ensued through the night and were replayed the next day over all the news stations.
The Lieutenant of the fire station, a tall dignified gentleman with a handsome silver mustache, snorted in disgust over the images on TV. "It's all that Democrat governor's fault!" he said, "Just let anything like that happen here! Once any hooligan near my house sees my Mossberg 590 he'll be sorry he started anything! I'll shoot him! I'll shoot him and my conscience will be clear!"
"Yeah," a Fire EMT chimed in, "It's like, 'Oh, don't racially profile me but let me behave in the exact way that will make someone racially profile me!'"
"Yeah, exactly," said a third Fire Medic, "My Mossberg 500 doesn't have the military hardware and expensive shit that the Mossberg 590 has but it'll do the job! If I own a business and they want to torch it, I will shoot them! That's my property! I'm protecting my property, and they'll probably prosecute me and call me racist and all that bullshit. I mean, that's unjust."
The other fire fighters, all white and all male, nodded in agreement. At that moment piercing tones rang through the station, alerting the Rescue crew to a 911 call made at that moment.
"Rescue, Medic, respond," the professional female voice of the Dispatcher said over the station's loudspeakers, "Caller reporting a fall with possible injury." Dispatch relayed the address and the rescue crew (including me) sighed, heaved themselves up off the recliners, and walked towards the garage where the ambulance and engine were.
Ten minutes later we were at a block of modest apartment buildings. As the Fire EMT gingerly backed the ambulance into a spare parking space and the Fire Medic helped me unload the stretcher I saw a large black man walk towards us. He was waving to get our attention. He was still holding his cell phone.
"He's right in there," the man told us, "I'm his neighbor. I hadn't seen him for days and that wasn't like him so I finally just went in the back door. He was on the floor! He's been there for over a week!"
"OK, is the front door unlocked?" the Fire Medic asked the neighbor. He walked on ahead with the man as I rolled the stretcher after them. As we approached the door I saw a pile of cat food on the doorstep that had attracted ants. At least a week's worth of wet, water-logged papers were piled on the doorstep.
As the Fire Medic and the neighbor opened the door, there was an overwhelming smell of human feces, spoiled food and general decay. The Medic turned towards me with a resigned smile and said, "Leave the stretcher outside, we're not gonna need it."
"We're not?"
"He's probably dead," the Medic said softly. He and the EMT entered the apartment with the neighbor. After only twenty seconds, they both bolted back to the door where I stood.
"Bring in the stretcher!" the Medic told me
"How the FUCK is he still alive?" the EMT whispered urgently as we all maneuvered the bulky stretcher in through the door. "He says he's been there a week!"
The Medic walked towards the back of the apartment where the patient's bedroom was. As I looked inside, I saw the body of an elderly white man lying on his back. He was naked from the waist down and his skin was grey. As the Medic bent over the body, the body (astoundingly) moved and groaned.
"My shoulder," the elderly man groaned, "My shoulder, my leg... I can't move. You'll have to carry me."
As the Medic and the EMT stabilized the elderly man's body, I talked with the neighbor who was hovering nervously by the door. "He's been there a week?" I asked the neighbor.
"Oh yeah!" The neighbor replied, "I rang his door last Tuesday 'cause I'm always stopping by to say 'hi'... and he didn't answer. That's just not like him, so I called him later and was like 'Hey, how are you? Where are you? Call me back.' He didn't call back so I got real worried. I was knocking on his door and he wasn't answering and his car was in the driveway so I just knew something was wrong. Finally I just went in through the back door, and thank God it was unlocked, and there he was! On the floor!"
The Medic and EMT transferred the elderly man to the stretcher. He was in bad shape. The elderly man was massively dehydrated as well as suffering from several obvious bone fractures. His tongue was the consistency of dried tobacco, a phenomenon I had never seen before. We quickly hydrated the him by establishing an IV and giving him fluids wide open. As we rolled the man to the ambulance, I saw him talking to his neighbor. "Make sure the door is locked," the elderly man said, "And feed the cat. I don't know if the cat's been fed."
"I will, I will," the neighbor replied, "You just get well, alright?"
We transported the elderly man priority one. When we arrived at the hospital the nurses already had a room for him. They were astounded that the man had survived a week on his floor without any food, water, or attention.
After leaving the man in the capable hands of ER nurses, the Medic, the EMT, and I returned to the station. As we slowly trooped back into the station's lounge images of the Ferguson riots were still playing out on the TV screen. The Lieutenant was continuing to air his views. "This is what happens when we as a society start giving excuses!" he was saying "Just, 'Oh, it's okay to riot! You're just expressing yourself!' People just have no respect for responsibility and property! I knew this was going to happen yesterday! They should have had the national guard in yesterday! This is why I own guns, okay? This is why I just bought a new hunting rifle three days ago!"
Three days ago. I thought about what I had been doing three days ago. Probably doing homework and stressing about rearranging my schedule. Three days ago news pundits across the nation were deliberating about possible outcomes of the grand jury decision in Ferguson. And three days ago a white man lay in pain and despair on his bedroom floor, forgotten by all except his black neighbor who was trying desperately to reach him.