The smell of decomposition, feces and urine smacked you in the face. Before the door even opened. Yet there was life on the third floor of the ‘squat’. We were informed by the caller/tour guide that someone there does indeed own the house, that their presence was not illegal. None of the utilities seemed to be operating. There was filth and waste everywhere, and the cockroaches were not hiding their presence. Gloves on, do not brush against the walls. Up two flights of stairs we went, the decor only worsening as we ascended. The patient was one of those people for whom age is irrelevent, having wasted away from alcohol and drug abuse long before the natural progression would have done him in. Beer and food cans littered the soiled mattress and the room at large, complimenting the half-dozen or so needles strewn about, and dozens of flies continually changed positions on the patient. GI bleed seemed the culprit judging from the vomit and human waste on and around the patient. In a moment of clarity our tour guide had become concerned for the patient whom he said had not left the mattress in quite some time. He wasn’t even moving his arms for booze anymore. For weeks the tour guide said he had been bringing the weakened immobile patient food and alcohol. For the last couple of days though he had consumed neither. The attic bedroom was hot, the open screenless window calling further flies into the room by the minute. Infected rotting pressure sores for buttocks. Gout. Incontinence. Immobility. Seperating him from the mattress was like pulling a giant scab off of a wound. We got a space blanket and a couple of sheets wrapped around him, and I hammocked him down the stairs with a firefighter to the stretcher out on the sidewalk below. My partner was carrying all the equipment the whole time so that we wouldn’t have to actually put it down anywhere in there.

What am I supposed to feel? Repulsed and saddened? Angry? Numb? Was I just supposed to go to work and remain indifferent to dealing with this stuff? I had to appear to. For a while I believed I was. Numbness and apathy aren’t the same. I wasn’t sure for a while but it turns out I am human. I’m just afraid of being seen as weak for having feelings and stupid for not being able to express what they are. Toxic bravado.