those days.

one of them, anyway.

i’m finding it difficult to write. service seem to compete.  why would i spend my time talking about doing something, when there is so much doing to be done?

this morning, i walked down churchill road’s steep hill, the fine, metal smell of poorly scrubbed gasoline driving itself deeply into my smallest spaces.  beside me, cars honked, buses chugged, people fitted between and moved across the road.  at the bottom, there is a corner where people gather selling tea or fried bread to long lines of ethiopians queued outside the ministry of immigration.  three women pushed past me, smiling, carafes of tea steaming in their hands, and ran towards a busy bus that had stopped up the road. i promised myself, like I often do, that one day i’ll buy all the tea and all the bread, and they can go home early.

i entered the hospital gate, past teams of students in white coats, walking hand in hand, leaning on each other, laughing.  i waved at the ones that i knew, or stopped to do the shoulder bump that ethiopians have been doing since forever.  i drew close to the emergency, and heard the high wail of a woman.  i turned the corner, saw her facedown, in the gravel outside our one window.  she rose to her knees, then threw herself to the ground.  again.  her mother.  her father.  her sister.  her daughter.  who knows.  i was five minutes early, five minutes late.  abat, i said, and tapped the blue jacketed security guard on the shoulder.  he kept his eyes on the woman, and unlatched the emergency’s half door to let me pass. inside, the thick smell of sickness in still air.

we put an ultrasound on a young woman’s chest, and saw her heart swinging wildly in a bag of water. with great care, we guided a needle into it, through her diaphragm.  its metal glinted white on the screen.  when it was next to the collapsing muscle, the one through which all the love passes, we pulled bloody fluid into a syringe. her breathing eased. ours too.

a man died breathless.  his pupils widened into a final, unflinching stare, because there was no more use for the light.   there were no wails.  he was alone, found by the side of the road, bruised, maybe beaten, or hit by a car.  we worked on him for long minutes, hoping to get his heart to beat wildly too.  we could not. we didn’t say , after, that if we had better tools, things might be different, because we already know that. we scattered in separate directions, separate thoughts on the same thing.

better people, though, i can’t imagine.  i am humbled by them.  that is why i end up in places like this.   people think it’s because i am generous, but it’s more selfish than that. i come to be, in equal measures, as two sides of the same paper, humbled and inspired, because i would give my life for the idea, that if we make the world easier, even briefly, for someone, the illusion of our separation from them disappears.  i am giving it.  i have no questions.

well, maybe some.  tomorrow i want to ask these young doctors and nurses: how do you deal with all the dying?  there’s a fine line, you see, a balance that can tip.  when you see a lot of it, and then catch yourself in the mirror, your eye to your eye, you can say to yourself, when you’ve seen a lot of it, have just watched a young man’s electricity shake itself free, blink out just like that, you can think that you too are mostly dying, and forget about all the living.

a week ago, I was in the omo valley, running on a straight, rocky path, jumping over small puddles, edging along larger ones, scratched by brambles, my hands bleeding from the thorns.  on hot flat stretches, swatches of brand new butterflies, perched on some treasure in the soil, opened and and closed their new wings.   I ran through them,  and the rose, pattered against me, swirled and trailed in the wind, weightless,  thousands and thousands and thousands blinking points of light.  so much living.

i left the emergency, late for my lunch, ravenous for my lunch, and a young man stepped in front of me and said “my muzzer….my muzzer…”, and pointed at the building i’d stepped out of.  what about her, i said, and his eyes became wet, and the tears started to fall.  he had no more english.  take me to her, i said.

beside her bed, her breathing fast and shallow, i gently welcomed this man to the end of her days, mourned with him and his sister, then left them behind.

how do you deal with it, and still get on with all the living you have yet to do?  i’ll ask them tomorrow morning.

late for lunch l walked down the street.  people smiled, and held hands.  trees stretched an inch closer to the sun, in as many directions as they could.  a bird flew underneath the eaves of a building and was gone.   the world was clear and wide open.   behind me, somewhere in the building i left, on its upper floors, two people came out, wet and new, crying: how cold, how bright.