Read Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital for Free Online

holds her hand as the liquid goes in.
    “Good,” I say. “You’ll both have to learn how to do the feedings and look after the equipment. It’s not hard. You’ll get the hang of it. Small amounts six times a day and slow feeds overnight by the pump. That’s it.”
    I smile at them as I leave.
    Back in my office, I put on some music and make myself a coffee. I email Patty for an update, but ask her to give me a few minutes if possible. I sit and look out the window, and am suddenly furious. Why is someone like Juan Guerra treated the same as the Mara? When didmental illness and petty drug possession offenses become equivalent to major crimes? The psychiatric patients need mental health care, Guerra needs cancer treatment at home with his family, and “Tako” needs to be locked away in the supermax—not that imprisonment will deter him from continuing the terrible things he’s done. There are now at least tens of thousands of Maras and their deadly offspring spread from LA to Long Island. Do we really need to finance an incubator for more? Why are so many people, with such a wide range of problems, sent to prison as the one-size-fits-all solution?
    If our goal as a society is to lock people up and throw away the key, then there is a genius to the three-strikes laws. If the goal is to make us feel safer and to create a society that is healthier and more productive, then we have failed miserably.
    I pull my thoughts back to the present when Patty calls. Guerra’s papers have been signed and he is being released within the hour. She also tells me that the young woman in the SICU with a severe brain injury from her motorcycle accident has died. Normally Patty wouldn’t call me about this, but the body was left in the room for six hours before being claimed by the medical examiner, headquartered just a block north of the hospital. The family flew in from Italy, not only bereaved but irate over the lapse. They are saying they won’t be able to get their daughter home for a proper burial. I tell Patty I’ll phone the parents and apologize profusely after speaking with the attending and getting details from him. The
ministro de salud
of Mexico has arrived, she adds, and will be up in five minutes. I look at the building encroaching on my view, the steady thread of cars heading north on the FDR. One of them will soon have Juan Guerra in the backseat with his wife and son on their way to the Bronx and a future they can’t anticipate. Will he even complete the treatment? This thought starts to burrow its way into my brain. I reel it in and turn off the heart-aching fado music of Dulce Pontes as I get up to greet Mexico’s minister of health.

CHAPTER 2
Tanisha
    The walk from Bushwick in North Brooklyn had taken several hours. Ice-cold air and slushy snow on the streets had the effect of another dose of adrenaline for Tanisha. She had climbed down the fire escape outside the window in her room when commercial garbage trucks were making their predawn rounds. Her hands were freezing against the oxidized and flaking bare metal that scraped raw the skin on her palms. Three flights down and then a fifteen-foot drop to the sidewalk. By the time she was at the bottom and hanging from the rusty bottom rung, her five-foot-one frame left her with a mere ten-foot controlled fall. It was four o’clock in the morning, and the streets were empty. A flickering streetlight reflected off the snow and ice. She could see the barbershop sign as she hung for a few seconds. The lights of a 24/7 Bodega “El Amanecer” on the corner were nearly hidden in a cloud of steam from a sidewalk vent. She let go and dropped, hardly making any noise when her Converse All Stars hit the cement. She remained in a crouch, rubbing her ankles, for a few seconds.
    Tanisha was sixteen, pretty, with braided hair that hung to her mid-back. She had bundled herself in several T-shirts, a sweater, and an extra-large Yankees sweatshirt along with jeans layered over