One hour commute | Counting the cost

On the shuttle ride home after my ED shift, a little girl with beads in her hair sat down next to me.  Her mother, visibly lethargic from hospital treatment, sat in the row in front of us.  A youngish-looking man carrying a stroller also boarded the shuttle with them, and sat behind us. The man turned out to be her grandfather. As usual, I am the only Asian person on this bus. The demographic that The Hospital serves is largely African-American and Latino.


The little girl hummed and played with a biohazard bag of ice that someone at the hospital had given her. I smiled at her and she shyly said Hi. She looked very sweet.


Behind us, the grandfather was conversing casually with another man riding the shuttle about a recent neighborhood shooting. At one point, he laughed loudly and exclaimed, "BANG! BANG! Right there in fronta his house! BANG! He dead. Right in fronta plain view!" The men laughed for a while, repeated some BANG noises, and I smelled the weed and alcohol on his breath.


I've heard some disturbing things on this shuttle, but this bothered me tremendously.  I wanted to put my hands over the little girl's ears to protect her from hearing these monstrous acts of violence. Yet everyone else on the shuttle stared forward disinterestedly, although I am quite sure the entire conversation was audible even to the driver. I wondered about the little girl's home life. I wondered if she was destined to grow up in an environment of gang warfare and poverty, someday becoming like the patients I see in the ED--destitute and angry.


I feel sick that circumstances like this exist at all.


Yes, one of the reasons I chose to volunteer at The Hospital was because there is great medical need in that urban zone of crisis. The first time a gun shot victim died during my shift (and I had to bring him to the morgue), I sent out text messages to my friends, urging them to pray for Oakland's brokenness. To clarify, the vast majority of patients are there for reasons not violence-related.  Yet, I do not tell my parents of the frequent GSWs and violent traumas, because I know they will fear for my safety, disapprove, and tell me to volunteer somewhere less dangerous. When my dad drives me to The Hospital in the darkness of 6am and sees figures lurking around the street entrance, he calls me to make sure I've made it safely inside. I used to pray for protection under my breath while waiting for the shuttle to take me back to Berkeley, and to Large Group, more than one hour late.  How can I love the people in this place if I am afraid of what will happen to me? It's a struggle that I have of wanting to delve into the ugliness of others while remaining relatively unscathed myself. I am realizing more and more that it may not be possible.