swinging blind

 Bloodied and bruised, stained t-shirt with one hand over my eye I ask the ambulance driver parked in an enormous gas station parking lot, 

"can you point the way to the nearest hospital please ma'am?"

"Oh well here, let me get you something, for that," she replies in the same way your friend's mom offers you a coke.

Somehow an officer of the law approaches the scene.  I try to give him slip.  

"Man, I just wanna go to the hospital."

Oddly enough this is the nicest any officer has ever been to me, and I look like hell.  I must have looked pathetic enough to feel sorry for.  Never before in my life had I considered playing the sympathy card with the police.  As it turns out there's a shred of human decency buried beneath the veneer of the legal system. I begrudgingly give this beat cop the description and he's off my back.  It's odd how starkly different the reality of police interaction is from what they teach you in Boyscouts.

"Shoot on site," I joke. (Not really)

Every so often you find out what your life is really worth. In Louisville Kentucky it's worth about $1200 in stiches and three hours in a standard American waiting room and/or hospital bed.  Driving through a one way street maze with your face throbbing, you look for blue H signs.  Hospital employees tend to have split personalities.  Depending on the situation, you might get treated like a criminal.  The general assumption is that if you display signs of violence even if you're purely innocent, you must have done something to deserve it.  As if the sole utility of violence was emotional.  The medical system can't afford the energy it takes to actually care deeply about people's problems. Doctors and nurses accidentally tend to see the worst in people while they're "healing" you.  It causes you to wonder what people's real motivations are.  Or at least I do.