About four years ago, I was talking to the students
about their health records. I do that
with every class that leaves TRACEN Petaluma.
It’s important. Your medical
history is really important. So that’s
why I talk to the students about getting their health records to the next place
they are going. You know, you need to make
sure what happens to you medically can be traced for several reasons. Continuity of care. Health benefits. Maintaining a medical
history. It’s a big deal whether you
have served in the military or you could never fathom a military lifestyle. Your health care and treatment is as much your
responsibility as it is that of your health care providers. I’m digressing though. Point is that I make a concerted effort to
make sure every patient I see understands how important their health history is
to their future.
So, I go and I talk to the students and I have
them fill out a form. It’s a very simple
form; a form that I built myself in Microsoft Word in about three minutes. It asks pretty simple questions like your
name, your date of birth, the unit you are reporting to and when you are
reporting there. Seven lines. They fill
out the form, I have them sign it, you know, just to make it a valid
document. (Don’t tell anyone that it is
in NO way official. I’d lose all my
street cred.) After that, I carry on my way.
Anyway, about four years ago I was talking to the
students about their health records. I
did what I always do. I gave them a
brief lesson on their health record and how significant its contents are to
their future. Then, after I collected
all the forms, I took a minute to ask them where they are going and how they
feel about their orders and if anyone is so devastated that they won’t make it
through the next three or four years. As
usual, that a courtesy laugh. I thanked
them for their time and for being a good audience and exited stage right. I remember that day very well. They were the first class to applaud me when
I walked out the door. Again, a
courtesy. But I remember their laughter
and their applause very well. I remember
smiling as I walked up the hill.
When I got back to my office, I filtered through
all of the forms to make sure they were complete and I could read all of the
hen scratch. I put them into two
different piles, a “to be shipped” pile and a “hand carry” pile. I was about half way through the sifting when
I found a form that didn’t look like the others. It was complete. And accurate.
But that’s not why it didn’t look like the others. Even though, truth be told, none of the others
were complete and accurate. This
particular form stood out because there was a very intricate drawing of a giant
robot shooting at an army of much smaller robots.
When I saw it, I smiled. Just like his class had made me smile as I ascended
the hill back to the clinic. I maintained
that feeling of delight when I saw the image that young man shared with me on his
complete and accurate medical record transfer form. I remember thinking two things 1.) This kid didn’t hear a thing I said. 2.)
How did he complete such an intricate drawing in the 10 minutes I was
there?
It touched me so much that I emailed his class
advisor with a scanned copy of this kid’s artwork with a note that said “Thank
him for me.” After I scanned it, I
pinned it to my bulletin board. And the
days after that, when I was having a hard time, I would always look up to that
drawing and put it all in perspective:
Medical records are important, but creativity is makes other people
smile. That was the message I got from
him.
About a month after talked to that class and transferred
their health records, the clinic supervisor came up behind as I sat at my
desk. The only thing I remember was a
hand holding a piece of paper with a name on it. I recognized the name. I looked up at the robot etching on my bulletin
board. Above the armed robot, on the
first line of the form I had created myself, the names matched.
I turned around and I looked at Allen. I shook my head. I yelled at him “NO!!!!” He asked “do we still have this record?” “NO!!!”
I screamed at him. “NO!!!” He went to that boat in Hawaii. “He took his record with him before he left. He drew me this picture.” I pointed at the picture. “HE DREW THAT FOR ME!!! He was excited about going to Hawaii. I asked him.
I looked in his face and asked him if he was excited. He said ‘yes.’ That name is wrong.” That’s what I told Allen. “That name is wrong. You. Are. Wrong.”
Allen wasn’t wrong, though. He was right.
That kid had left California on a plane for Hawaii. Within hours of reporting to his new boat, he
swallowed a 9mm round. I was so devastated. I wondered what his last days were like. I wondered how a smart, handsome, likable
young man who never went to medical ended up as a self-induced blood stain on a
hotel carpet. This young man who never exhibited
any signs of feeling helpless or hopeless, was suddenly dead because he felt SO
FUCKING alone.
When he picked up his medical record, I hazed him
a little. I said “I emailed YN1 the
picture you drew. Thanks for paying attention when I talked. And just so you know, I’m keeping it on my
board forever.” I pointed behind me at
the place he had memorialized in my heart.
He smiled cordially and walked away.
18 days later he was dead. I
thought my jokes were funny. I thought
that he understood that he had made a difference in my life. I never would have thought that he was so
sad, so alone that he wouldn’t want to be a part of our world anymore.
It has been four years to the week that I learned
of that young man’s death. It’s been just
a little more than four years since I tacked that picture up onto the board. I knew that cute kid was sharing something
meaningful with me when he drew that picture on the bottom of a printed Word
document. I knew he was sharing
something so much as to email his class advisor about it. I made a huge deal about it when he left the
clinic. But I made what he was sharing
with me about me. It wasn’t about
me. It was about him. It was about a nameless, faceless
statistic. Where I saw another creative,
free spirit, another creative, free spirit felt abandoned. Again.
In five years of doing this. I have never received another message like
that. I get the Coast Guard’s “best” who
can’t write their social security number or their next unit. Sometimes they can’t even write their own
names legibly. But in five years, the
only time I had a piece of art handed to me, I didn’t recognize the plea for
acknowledgement; the silent scream for relief.
Don’t ever do that. Don’t ever
let someone ask you for help and not recognize it. Don’t ever do that.
-Inner Peas
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