They are Worth Every Minute

It's 4 am, I am on hour 21 of a straight 24 hour shift on the ambulance. It's a sort of tucked away part of me that I don't really share about. To have this job is unlike many others. There is some reward, when helping those truly in need. Often though it thankless and grueling. People call, we go. It doesn't matter why they call we have to go. We have to take them to a hospital no matter the reason. Many take advantage of the system and don't have true medical need for calling us. It is this part of the job, it is a large part, it is the ingratitude and misuse of a system of help me and do what I want that makes this a torturous job. Selfishness is ripe in this world. Too many people think only of themselves and not of others. What if family, neighbors and friends truly cared for each other and truly supported each other? Children would not be left in cold, dirty basements to fend for themselves. Children would not gnaw on their pizza crust sitting next to trash with roaches crawling across their dirty, tiny, chubby little feet while momma screams and tantrums because the babydaddy called the police because she went crazy when he showed up after months of not being there. These people would know how to treat each other with respect, they would care for their children because they have self respect and pride. There would be no dead baby that ate the "oxy" that he found when he was crawling across the filthy floor. Teenage girls, babies themselves would not be having babies that they do not know how to care for. Someone would help these girls learn how to parent through the stress.

A 16 year old shot an 18 year old, over drugs. He was lying in the gutter, nearly dead, in a nice part of town. The neighbors are horrified because things like that don't happen around here. Yet the lady with her bags, her dirty hair, her mumblings and stumblings are ignored by these people daily until she plops down on their front lawn in her blank, numb, confused I can no longer walk straight today or tell you who I am or where I am binge. She has no money and no support system and the system fails again.

She is an old woman, he is an old man. They are very sick and love each other very much. He can not take care of her but refuses to give in to the need to have her placed in a minimally staffed, over crowded, not enough of anything to go around nursing home, because really noone is nursing her or adequately caring for her or ministering to he basic needs as he so selflessly does here in their tiny basement apartment and when she slips and falls we come and help her back up because he can not and they refuse any other offer of care because at least here they have each other and that love is worth more to them than a system that will fail because they will not be able to stay together, no one will help her to the bathroom as soon as she needs to go, she will sit and wait and soil herself and feel shame and helplessness and he will be unable to to bear that sight. So they sit night after night and wait until the aide comes in the morning, for the few hours the medicare will cover, and then he will nap and try to rest assured that for a few hours they are both ok.

And soon I will finally get to go home and see their smiling faces and bright eyes and grumpy morning faces and that makes it all worth it.