Please forgive me in advance for how I author this diary. I'm a bit tired, frustrated, and also angry.
I was in Brookyln, NY this weekend visiting a family member and became involved accidentally.
This Sunday, I was staying with my sister and her fiance in Brooklyn. I went to the corner store to pick up a few things and when I returned to the building, I saw a man standing near the apartment door rummaging through through his plastic bags of belongings.
The young man was black, probably in his early to mid twenties. He was wearing a super-oversized clean white t-shirt, light blue basketball nylon pants, and hard soled shoes which were 3 sizes to big for him.
Being curious, I flipped open my cellphone and pretended to be talking to someone as I hovered about 15 feet away. At first I thought he might be a homeless person scrounging for stuff in the trash cans which were also right where he was. He was moving very slowly and with what seemed difficulty.
After a couple minutes, we made eye contact and he mumbled something in my direction. Being hard-of-hearing myself, I didn't know what he said but I assumed it was either (a) Do you have a cigarrette or (b) do you have any spare change?
I folded my phone and walked over to him and asked him to repeat himself. He said:
"Can you call an ambulance? I need to go back to the hospital."
Now being close to him, I then noticed he was wear a hospital ID tag on his wrist and with the way-to-big shirt he was wearing, I saw the remnants of the tape used to adhere vital sign monitors to his chest.
I asked him why he had been in the hospital. He said he had been hit by a car. Said he had titanium in his leg. I noticed his right leg was not moving much and I could see padding from bandages in his right shoe.
I asked him where he was going and he said he was going to his Aunt's place but he said he went there and she had moved. He pulled out a wad of papers from his pocket and said he needed medicine, I assume from a perscription. I asked him if he was going to see his Aunt to buy the perscription(s) and he said yes.
At about this point, he reached into his pocket and retrieved several cigarette butts and he plucked through them with his finger. I told him to "stay right here" and that I would be right back.
I went upstairs to my sisters apartment and asked her to call 9/11 and gave her the general details. I grabbed a pack of cigarettes from my bag and went back down to the street.
He was still there. I lit a cigarette for him. He said "I really shouldn't smoke." I told him, "Yeah, probably not, but if it makes you feel better right now, it's okay." He agreed.
I asked him more about the hospital. He was becoming someout delirious and said something about $6,000. I said $6,000 for what and he said "hospital bill".
He took two hits from the cigarette and then butted it out, putting what remained into pocket, I assume for later.
A few minutes later, NYFD EMT rolled up. They put on rubber gloves and the woman asked him "do you want to go back to the hospital?" He said nothing. He tried to reach into his pants pocket but started yelping in pain from his leg. The EMT's helped carry him to the ambulance but his right leg gave way half way there and he screamed in pain as he went down.
As he was being stuffed into the ambulance, he twisted his head around to look at me and tried to say something. No words came but his face said it all. He was THANKING me.
That evening, I thought I had done something good, but now I am not so sure. Friends and others have said this person had simply been "dumped". Hospitals in NYC patch up the uninsured, give them some drugs for the pain and drop them back off the street. I didn't konw.
Here was a young guy, clean clothes, roaming around a Brooklyn neighborhood with no money and no pain meds. I truely believe he arrived at my sister's apartment building door as the meds were wearing off. He was starting to become lucid again and he knew he needed to be in hospital.
"Dumping" patients apparently goes on all the time in places like NYC, Chicago, LA, and other overpopulate regions.
The hospital only has to 'stablize' patients and after that, if they have no insurance for means of payment, they can just toss them back on the street.
I had no idea that this practice went on prior to my immersion into the topic on Saturday.
The young man I "saved" Sunday night may yet again now be back on the streets... alone, confused, and drugged outa his mind... the hospital hoping he'll be someone else's problem.