Please listen to me.
I am a 55 - year old security officer for a large metropolitan hospital in Oklahoma. Everyday I am required to escort cadaveurs to the morgue in the lowest part of the hospital - down a long, partially lit hallway that is quite unremarkable.
I have been bothered these last 2 days by an incident that happened on Saturday. I had to sit in a patient's room as the medical examiner and homicide detectives unceremoniously picked over the corpse of a 26-year old girl who overdosed while she was an inpatient recovering from a spinal infection that she aquired from shooting heroin. Her "boyfriend" had slipped her some drugs during his visit.
After she died - The medical examiner joked, the detectives lamented about cockroaches in a local housing project - and this girl (who was someone's dauther, sister, wife, mother and a human being) laid in that bed - intubating tube still inserted - eyes fixated on the ceiling. Motionless. Cold. Ashen. Lifeless. For 2.5 hours.
She was 26 years old.
Lividity set in to her back - picture bulbs flashing, each and every angle photographed, stripped of clothing, dignity and identity - she was just another junkie... just... another ....junkie. After all, what did anyone care?
The M.E. calliously slipped her into the blue taupe bag, placed the zip tie seal - one last photo and she was loaded into a weather-worn minivan for the slow ride across town to the M.E.'s office.
Her belongings were hastily piled onto a hospital cart and delivered to the sub-basement storage of the hospital to be donated to charity in 3 - months time should no one claim them.
I checked her Facebook page - I saw her beautiful daughter - the life she was leaving behind and I wondered how could such a beautiful person slip so far away - so far away that now everything she had was gone with the zip of that blue taupe bodybag.
Please. I'm begging you. Do whatever you need to do to save your son's life. Have him commited, arrested, restrained.
I'm tired of watching young people die needlessly. Please don't make me wheel your son to the morgue.