Frenetic filosophy and foam

Life doesn't have an orchestra playing in the background. If it did, every event would have resembled the movies. Life doesn't have action replays either. If it did, we would've relived very many moments a la soap operas.
Life is fired upon us point blank. Life is one day at a time.

Life stops. Randomly.


Suppose you were on your way to a bookstore. You'd just gotten off the subway. Let's say the map was something like this:

Subway > Hospital > Mall > Bookstore

We need a setting, say, dusk. There aren't many people in this set. Only you, a few cabbies idling their Sunday dusk away, and a guy lying on the road. For dramatic effect, he's having a fit, there's foam frothing from his mouth. And he's convulsing just outside the hospital gates.

Let's now say that you've spotted this chap. No one else has seen him. You run to the cabbies. You ask them for help in carrying him to the hospital. Smart world-wise people that they are, they ask you to bring a stretcher from the hospital. Naturally, you rush in. Then what? Then you spot an ambulance and two attendants. You ask them for their empty stretcher and assistance, right? What do you do when they tell you that they don't have any? You look at them in disbelief, don't you?

But you need to do something. There's a foamy chap writhing in the dust. So you rush into the hospital. You see two burly guards massaging their bellies. You ask them for help. They're from the police, they are meant to help. But they politely tell you that it's not their job to pick up people from the street. You scream at them for increasing their fat bellies perhaps? Maybe you shout at their callousness. But there's a man outside in the grip of a seizure.

So you rush in to the emergency ward. There are three doctors filling prescriptions. A few patients paying bills. You're excited. You're angry. You're stammering. You ask the doctor to please send two boys with stretchers. You're expecting help. You get a polite refusal. It's a
Sunday evening after all. People have more important things to do other than saving lives. They need to increase their wallets, don't they? The doctors are here to do their job. You know, the saving lives bit. You might have had the orchestra playing high beats and a rapid violin piece at this point. But this is life. There's no music. It's just you screaming your lungs out asking for life savers to save lives. You are not pleasant to hear. You are screeching like a banshee.

This means you rush outside again. You need help to bring this chap in. He looks like he's having an epileptic fit. Yes, his limbs are rigid and shaking and the froth is flowing fast. You convince one of those previous cabbies to help you save a life. The both of you hoist the chap up. You are supporting his spine and cradling his head. The froth dribbles over your shirt. The cabbie holds his legs. You two jog into the emergency ward. Remember the ambulance attendants and guards? They are looking bemusedly at you. But you don't care. You need to get this chap to the doctors so that they can save his life.

But the doctors are earning money. They grunt at you to set the patient down in a corner. You do that. Then you ask them to conduct their miracles. You pant at them. There's not much breath left in your lungs. Of course, you're sounding like a dog now. Who listens to dogs? Not doctors, oh no.... they've got money to make, prescriptions to fill. Who wants to attend to a dusty, dirty ragamuffin having a fit on the road. He probably won't have any money. Let him be.

You're also a hot-headed idiot prone to violent anger. You want to see some action. You scream at the doctors to stop and come do something. All you get is a young intern who wags his stethoscope in your face and asks you what's wrong with the bloke. You yell at him for being an idiot. You have another intern. A female who tells you that they have handled far worse cases than an ordinary epileptic patient. Now remember, these are just doctors. You shouldn't be angry with them. They're just supposed to make money while saving lives. The female intern receives an earful from you along the lines of being a pathetic show of idiocy. The male is standing stock still, unsure of what to do. He probably has never had a stranger from the street tell him he's incompetent and inhuman for not saving lives. He saves lives on a daily basis. How dare you tell him that he's a sick fag who doesn't have basic humanity and ethics?

That's when the politerefusal doctor brings his toolkit out. Toolkit? That's supposed to be a first aid box. Just ignore the rust. Yes, he wipes the foam away. The patient has stopped convulsing. Maybe he's dead. You didn't notice. You were too busy yelling. Oh, the interns have started reanimating his hands. The female is massaging his feet. The male is checking the blood pressure. Someone grabs your shoulder and requests you to stop yelling. You rudely inform him that as long as doctors refuse to save lives and policemen refuse to take risks you will keep raving. Everyone is looking at you. Maybe it's you who need help. Is there an insane asylum nearby? No... people are just money mad. There's no asylum for that. Everyone's got this disease.

You stumble out. It's become darker. The cabbie just drives off, away from the whole scene. There's a drama unfolding inside the emergency room. You hope that the chap makes it. He didn't look more than 25 when you lifted him off the dirt.

The orchestra stopped playing long ago. The only sound I heard was my heart thumping as I walked to the bookstore.