The Presumption of Malfeasance

Earlier this year, I had occasion to spend a few hours in the waiting room of a hospital ER (everything is/was fine; the particulars are not relevant to this narrative).  My phone battery was dead, and not wanting to touch any infected magazines, I amused myself by people watching and eavesdropping.

A rough-cut bearded man with long gray hair wearing loose, greasy overalls approached the triage desk.  He explained that his wife was hurt, and that she had run out of her pain meds and called her doctors and they had said she could have more, so he was here to pick them up.  The ER nurse didn't even bother to roll her eyes - and I imagined this scene was well rehearsed on a daily, if not hourly basis.  She explained that he had to to go to the pharmacy, that prescriptions are not filled from the ER.  He was insistent and became quite agitated.  A doctor and a security guard eventually helped the man understand the difference between the ER and the Pharmacy, and he lumbered off to another building, but returned empty-handed and even more insistent.  I have since learned the term, Code Grey.

At no point did I hesitate to think that this man might be genuine, that he might simply be confused and overwhelmed by a complicated system in which he clearly does not walk often, nor gracefully.  I had no doubt that his wife had some sort of condition, and would eagerly concede that it involves some sort of pain, but I had absolute perfect faith in my assumption that this man was just trying to manipulate the legal drug trade to get another fix.

Yesterday, Kevin was on the receiving end of such emotional generosity, as he was turned away from 3 pharmacies who would not honor my prescription for narcotic pain-killers.  My imagination dressed him in greasy overalls as he explained that his wife was struck by a car in San Jose, but we live up here, and I have a broken leg, so can't make the drive down from Shingletown, all the while becoming increasingly agitated by the silent judgments being caste upon him by the pharmacists and physicians, whose greed and negligence created the problem in the first place.

Unfortunately, this lesson in karma is going to be lost, because the convenience of thinking the worst of people is irresistible.  It takes so much less imagination and emotional investment to drop to the lowest rung on the ladder of explanations. Dismissing a person as a junkie is quick, efficient, tidy, effortless. It takes more energy to imagine the complexity of a real-life situation, to consider the interplay of cause-and-effect over time that leads to addiction and disassociation.  To think like this requires empathy, and engaging with empathy puts one at risk for feeling unpleasant emotions.  And no one wants to do that...

Which is exactly why pain-killers are essential.