The Emergency Room

at the mission in the Bowery when the addict comes in at night they are ushered through electronic doors that slam shut like a prison echoing down the hall & with few people on staff they make their rounds in the greater part of the shelter with walkie-talkies hooked to them but no weapons or defense tools of any kind which might allow for those spending their evenings cleaning the laundry of the homeless & taking care to the best of their ability of those that the rest of society has left to die in the garbage bin that is the piss ridden street--- in the emergency room where those that walk straight off the street are allowed to keep shelter, but only shelter, they need not even give their names & they are not hassled by the help--- they remain huddled together nodding off in a stupor with the staff checking on this specific room every 15 minutes with the hope that no one has drifted off to an overdose--- those with the walkies also have a needle on them at all times which contains a good dose of adrenaline & after gratuitous exercises upon being hired, of shoving the needle into a ripe orange over & over (as if this is supposed to prepare you for shoving it in a human being who has just overdosed), they are told to be on the ready for such a moment to arise when they will need to use it--- upon entering the emergency room, those who have come in off the streets often, having no respect for those with jobs & lives that they can no longer even imagine, or perhaps from a greater disdain for society as a whole, they often ridicule the help, cursing at them, maybe not even conscious that they are doing so & it is all in a night’s work to ignore or tolerate these insults to the best of one’s ability in hope that they are not struck or physically attacked because an adrenaline needle & a walkie-talkie isn’t going to stop someone who has nothing left in the world but rage.