Bang

You can take me out the hood, but can’t take the hood out me
Cause I’m ghetto.
50 cent, LB, & TY

*BANG*

I froze and my heart went racing. Time stops during an adrenaline rush, but a moment later I started to figure out what was happening. First, I realized that I had instinctively crouched and angled myself behind a slender tree. Then I realized that everyone else outside was still ambling down the street casually as if nothing had happened. The friend I’d been walking and talking with was already a few steps ahead and was now looking at me curiously, only just realizing that I had gone rigid, defensive, and wide-eyed.

I felt stupid. The sound came from a noisy truck that then clattered its way down the road, past the silent streetlamps and closed town shops of the suburban downtown center we were strolling through. It was ironic; we had just been talking about how different life in my neighborhood was from the environment we had grown up in and how much I enjoyed the sense of community there in comparison to the more isolated existence in the suburbs.

It’s amazing how much a year can change you.

***

A few weeks earlier…

*BANG… BANG BANG… BANG BANG*

Silence. I nearly dropped my groceries but then realized that the sounds were coming from somewhere beyond the backyard lot I was in. I had time, so I shut the car door and ran into the house. I locked the door, set down the bags, and listened. More silence. No more shots, no screeching car tires, but no sirens. Not yet. I waited a few more minutes, trying to listen over my own thudding heartbeat. Still nothing. I cautiously opened the door; other neighbors were doing the same, and I watched a car drive casually down the street.

Still no sirens, no flashing lights. I don’t know what possessed me except a few rapid calculations and conclusions that dominated my thoughts:

There are no more shots. People are starting to come out. Since it is broad daylight, most of the danger has probably passed.

But there are no sirens. No police. No EMS. It could take them minutes more.

Somebody could be seriously hurt. They might not have time.

Other cars are driving around…

“If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?“

I did something that, in retrospect, was really, really stupid. I got into my car and started to drive around the block.

***

It has been one year since moving into my current neighborhood, and it was an exciting, thrilling anniversary to celebrate. I wrote the following during my one month anniversary, when this website was first created:

… In ret­ro­spect, it was one of the best deci­sions I have ever made, since each day brings me a new story and hints that the life I once knew was not the life I was made for. It seems almost nat­ural, with each pass­ing day I am here, to believe that this is the way we should all live, though I am will­ing to give it more time to see the truth in that.

What did I do? I moved from a nice, sin­gle apart­ment near the hos­pi­tal I work at and into a row house in the inner city where my patients live. I moved out of a fully fur­nished site with laun­dry and Fios and easy access to every mod­ern con­ve­nience into a shared house and a room like my col­lege dorm except smaller, with­out air con­di­tion­ing, and with plenty of cock­roaches and a gas leak that’s worse every time it rains. I moved away from neigh­bors I loved who were fel­low physi­cians in train­ing and into a house on a block where the neigh­bors shrug and freely con­fess they deal drugs to “make ends meet”, hold vig­ils in my back park­ing lot for gang­sters who were shot, and are crazy enough to try my home cook­ing. I moved away from every­thing that was com­fort­able and safe into a world of rumors and sen­sa­tional rep­u­ta­tions and risk.

I thought I was going to write this blog to show off how dar­ing and cav­a­lier I am, but it really is just to share my daily strug­gle to over­come my fear of small things like the dark. I thought I was going to write about thugs and hood­lums, but there are only hon­est peo­ple, funny peo­ple, warm and tragic and open hearted peo­ple, under­stand­able peo­ple here. I thought I came here to embrace the suf­fer­ing and the lost, but am find­ing that it was I who needed a home.

I hope you enjoy the com­pany you find here.

All those words still hold true, though their depth and character have matured with time. Some things change you, often more profoundly and deeply than the things you try to change. I thought about this a few days after this particular shooting when D, a neighbor and friend, and I went out to grab a lunch one Sunday afternoon. We ate a good lunch at a “local” diner, which was only two miles away from our houses but still a fair distance away from the “inner city.” It sat on a corner in what I had considered to be a blue-collar neighborhood, and as we drove around that block, D said, “This used to be a much nicer area, with houses that everyone wanted to live in. Doctors and lawyers used to live here.”

I was stunned for several reasons. One thing was my automatic disbelief; all the physician and lawyer houses I had ever been to were at least double, if not triple, the size of any of the tired houses before me. It seemed unbelievable that these houses had either depreciated in value or that professional salaries had increased that much. D was certainly the authority on the matter though; he was not only a construction contractor, but had grown up on the very block I lived in and, over a half-century of shared history with the city, had become my local historian and cultural expert. In fact, he told me once that doctors and lawyers used to live as neighbors on our block… the same block that now had half its doors boarded up, that had sex offenders and ex-cons taking up a fair percentage of the remaining homes, that had police sweeping the area for crack dens and gunshot calls.

The other thing that stunned me was that I, and perhaps D as well, had completely forgotten that a doctor still lived in the neighborhood. Me.

***

My hands trembling from the adrenaline, my ears still keen for the sounds of gunfire, I turned the corner out of my lot and down the street. I immediately saw a crowd of people gathered on the corner ahead and ran through another series of thoughts:

Lots of people means it’s probably very safe. People probably knew who did the shooting, and that he (or she?) was long gone.

But there are still no sirens, no lights, no police, no EMS.

And a crowd of people can only mean one thing: someone is down.

I parked at the curb and jumped out. I grabbed my emergency medical kit from the trunk, made sure to lock the door, and ran towards the man hold a blood-soaked towel to himself…

“Here they are!” people said with mixed relief. If they knew I was just a passerby, just a resident with a medical kit he bought on eBay, they might have been more worried…

Pulses were intact. There was little active bleeding left. Wound looked through and through.

No signs of shock yet, relatively little blood loss, and no evidence of major arterial or visceral damage.

Just hold pressure.

I then became dimly aware of another set of hands, of uniforms and radios, of holstered guns, of sirens – thank God for the sirens! – and my own trembling fingers. The patient was loaded up into an ambulance and rapidly disappeared. I finally became aware that some of the hysterical shouting had died down, that I was surrounded by yellow police tape, and that a number of police officers and firefighters were looking at me and my little orange bag very curiously.

“So… what are you doing here?” one of them asked with a very, very puzzled look on his face.

“I live here, just around the block.”

“Oh.” He paused. “Well, then you’re going to need a lot more bandages in that kit of yours.”

I looked down at my bag. He was right.

***

So that’s the story of treating my first gunshot wound “in the field,” as ER people like say. I was never an ER type of person; I like to sit around and mull things over, to tap out my thoughts onto a computer screen, to hem and haw and debate and discuss ideas over a cup of tea or even a muffin.  I am not an adrenaline junkie; when I get nervous and wired, I begin to pace as my hands shake like a sheet of paper.  I am not a risk taker; I am naturally an introvert whose idea of a good time is maybe going out to a movie and whose vacations generally consist of reading, writing, TV shows, and catching up with friends.

*BANG BANG BANG*

These are the sounds of firecrackers and bottle rockets, sounds that startle me in ways they never did before.  They are supposed to be the sounds of celebration and liberty:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – Declaration of Independence

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. – Constitution

We celebrate those who take radical steps in departure from norms and stereotypes and typical expectations, who act decisively to forge something new or to defend something sacred, who act to move beyond the “ordinary and proper” in displacement as Henri Nouwen likes to say.  But he would be quick to point out that the most radical thing is not what we do, but how and why we obey.

Let us not mistake the idea of voluntary displacement as an invitation to dramatic action.  We might think that in order to become compassionate people we must make great farewell gestures to our families, friends, homes, and jobs.  Such an interpretation of the call to displacement is more in the spirit of the American pioneers than in the spirit of the disciples of Christ.  What we need to understand above all else is that voluntary displacement can only be an expression of discipleship when it is a response to a call – or, to say the same thing, when it is an act of obedience.  Christians whose lives are marked by impressive forms of displacement explain their movements not as self-initiated projects with clear-cut objectives and goals, but as responses to a divine invitation that usually requires a long time to be heard and understood. – Henri Nouwen, Compassion

I am slowly realizing that I am made for the neighborhood because a neighborhood is about relationships and people far more than it is about resources and circumstances and gunshots and stuff.  I remember the first time I heard gunshots in the neighborhood, how I breathlessly ducked beneath windows and spread myself out on the floor.  It seems a little silly in retrospect and in comparison, and though I don’t think I will ever run towards the sound of gunfire again, I am coming to understand what Jesus meant when he asked us to simply become a good neighbor.

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance apriest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’

“Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.” – Luke 10