Down in the park

Walking home just now, I saw a figure ahead in the darkness, walking through the linear park. A very large, female figure dressed in badly-matched clothing. She was staggering slightly, and weaving from side to side, in the manner of one who is paralytically drunk.

The linear park often attracts the homeless, so I thought nothing of it. Seeing a large drunk female vagrant wandering towards the liquor store on Mass Ave made perfect sense.

As I got a little closer, I heard her mutter something. Several somethings. There was nobody else around. OK, I thought, so it’s the kind of homeless person who hears voices and talks back to them. Nothing unusual there.

I got a little closer still, and noticed with some alarm that the staggering homeless woman was clutching the side of her head, as if trying to staunch a bleeding wound. It occurred to me that maybe she’d gotten in a fight with some of the other bums in the square. If so, I couldn’t really leave her to stagger off to her death with a head wound; I’d have to try to get her some medical attention.

I still don’t quite understand how the whole emergency medical attention thing works in the USA. When the kidney stone decided to bid me adieu,:w and I had to get to an ER in a hurry, I picked MGH on the basis of pure brand awareness, coupled with knowledge that it was near my location at the time.

Yesterday I discovered I’d actually made an excellent choice. MGH is rated as one of the finest, if not the finest hospitals in the Boston Metro area. However, it was pure luck that I knew of it because I’d gone through Charles MGH T-station thousands of times.

Anyway, I had no idea where I’d take an injured homeless person, or if they’d get treatment anyway. Would an ambulance come for them? Would the police need me to make a statement? It was late, and I didn’t really want to learn the answers just now, but I knew I could never leave someone who needed help that badly.

Then I got a little closer, and suddenly I could make out that the woman had a tiny mobile phone in her huge hand, and it was that which she was pressing up against the side of her head. She wasn’t drunk, either; she was staggering aimlessly from the apparent cognitive overload of attempting to walk and speak on a mobile phone at the same time.

Whew.