Todaybour Day is a Labour Day

The hospital released Derrick this afternoon, sooner than either of us expected. Hospitals do that. They tamp down expectations so low that when exceeding them produces an asymmetrical happiness. They look like saints, take the gratitude with a stoicism I can’t begin to describe but dislike anyway, and off one goes to the parking garage. I don’t like hospitals. “To this end, we all must come,” I can’t help think. The old, infirm; the lame. This afternoon I saw a woman in her twenties weeping in the hallway. She perched in a vestibule that had more business as a bookshelf then a place of grief. Her hand over her mouth, was it there to muffle the sob or some more basic, instinctual gesture? I felt terrible for her. I looked at her as I passed. I owed it to her. To acknowledge her grief. I hear you and see you and I am so, so sorry for whatever has happened. A story I read (or heard on NPR?) years back taught me a lesson: that homeless people are, in fact, people that deserve recognition. “The worst thing a person could do,” a former homeless person said, “is to ignore me.” We are still people, he went on, and deserve the simplest gesture of recognising our existence. Being ignored was worse than being told “no” to a request for change or told to “get a job” or “get the fuck out of my way.” Those are words directed at a person and confirmed that person’s existence. I heard the woman maybe twenty seconds before I saw her. My back stiffened and I threw out my chest, the way I do if wanting to impress an attractive man walking the opposite way. I can do this. Do not look down. Don’t. She’s right there. Her eyes cast downward, her hand over her mouth, she sobbed. Seated upon the ridge, her feet dangled a good foot from the hospital corridor floor. She’s a child, I think to myself. I looked her full in the face in the moment allowed by my velocity and her immobility. Her eyes cast downward, hand over her mouth, she sobbed, and then I reached the door to the stairs. I did the right thing, regardless of her knowing or acknowledging. She and I were the youngest people in 3rd floor, north wing, at 115p on a Sunday holiday weekend mid-60s after a heavy fog and promising winds. What was I thinking about before I heard her aching?