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route22ny · 4 years ago

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Inside DC’s Secret Covid Morgue

Written by Luke Mullins

April 21, 2020—The clerics have been sworn to secrecy. On this warm morning, they’ve come to a vast and empty parking lot, instructed not to tell anyone of its location. The pitch of asphalt is unusually secure, hidden behind a 12-foot chain-link fence that’s been swathed in sheets of black tarp to prevent anyone from peering through. At the front gate, armed soldiers stand guard.

Inside, large trailers are arranged behind tented canopies and banks of lights. Metal ramps are affixed to each trailer so that stretchers can be wheeled in. The interior walls of the trailers are lined with seven rows of metallic shelving, sturdy enough to support thousands of pounds. The temperature is 24 degrees.

The clergymen gather with a handful of city officials in front of the canopies. They form a circle, each six feet apart from the next.

Reverend Andre Towner of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ.

Imam Talib Shareef of Nation’s Mosque.

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom–The National Synagogue.

Dr. Donell Harvin, a top official at DC’s homeland-security department.

Kimberly Lassiter, a supervisor at the medical examiner’s office.

And Dr. Roger Mitchell, the chief medical examiner himself.

Wearing masks and rubber gloves, they bow their heads. Tomorrow, the first body will be sent here. Today, a blessing.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

One by one, the clerics offer prayers, solemn exhortations for strength and humility, courage and dignity, resonating above the grinding hum of the trailers. Imam Shareef invokes the victims—“Their deaths,” he says, “are not to be in vain.” Reverend Towner prays for the workers, that their bodies will be protected from the virus, that their minds stay healthy during the difficult days ahead. Rabbi Herzfeld stresses the righteousness of the mission. “In Judaism,” he tells the group, “we believe that the greatest kindness is to care for the dead.”

***

It’s an ominous time in the nation’s capital. Several miles away, federal officials are dismissing warnings about the deadly airborne pathogen that has exploded out of Asia. Their unwillingness to act has impelled local governments across the country to launch their own scattered efforts to prevent Covid-19 from decimating their communities. In the District of Columbia, where African Americans make up 46 percent of the population, the task is especially urgent, given the virus’s disproportionately cruel impact on people of color.

Over the previous month, the city has been locked down as panicked residents watch their leaders navigate a 100-year crisis in real time. Mayor Muriel Bowser shuttered businesses. The DC Council pushed through legislation to extend unemployment benefits. Health-department officials opened testing sites and implored residents to wear masks and keep their distance. But away from public view, a weightier matter has come to preoccupy a little-known but essential corner of the bureaucracy: the caretakers of the dead.

“There’s not going to be a parade for you guys. You’re not going to get discounts or big thank-you signs. The work we do, we do in silence.”

It’s a problem of space. As Drs. Mitchell and Harvin prepared for the pandemic, they realized that the city’s morgue didn’t have the capacity to handle the surge of fatalities that the virus would leave behind. And so, over the previous few weeks, they hustled to secure the land, equipment, and manpower necessary to build an additional facility.

The clergy who led prayers on the day the field morgue opened were there to make sure the space didn’t violate the tenets of their three distinct faiths, and to consecrate the site as one. Then the work began. Over the next two and a half months, Harvin, who describes himself as the “general in charge of the death troops,” and his top deputy, Lassiter, who has recovered bodies throughout DC for more than two decades, will oversee the makeshift mortuary. By the time the spring surge is through, 404 Covid victims will have passed through the site.

Still, through it all, almost no one in the city will have any idea the Covid morgue exists. The work is carried out in strict secrecy; staffers are instructed not to disclose the site’s location or tell anyone what takes place there, not even their own family members. A mistake—such as a body being released to the wrong family—would be humiliating for the mayor and the city. News footage of workers moving the dead could upset victims’ families, opening new wounds, or lure gawkers to the site. As much as anything else, though, the silence reflects the professional ethos of those who perform this work for a living. While they’re dispatched to every hurricane and school shooting, their efforts take place entirely behind the scenes. They are the first responders you never see.

The District of Columbua invited an imam, a rabbi, and a minister to consecrate the morgue.

***

“There’s not going to be a parade for you guys,” Harvin tells each new set of workers to arrive at the Covid morgue. “You’re not going to get discounts or big [thank-you] signs. The work we do, we do in silence. Not even the family members of the victims will know what we do. There’s a pride in that. There’s a silent pride in that,” he says. “You’re taking care of someone’s grandmother, grandfather, husband, daughter, son, and that’s a higher calling.” When it’s all over, they’ll return to their previous jobs or assignments and no one will ever know what they’ve done here. “It’s a heavy burden,” Harvin says. “It’s a very heavy burden.

“[But] the world is watching,” he assures them, “whether they see us or not.”

***

Donell Harvin is 48 years old, with a sturdy build and flecks of gray in his goatee. He’s married to a physician and has four daughters. He lives in Howard County and spends most of the year looking forward to his annual scuba-diving trip.

Over the last 30 years, Harvin has been an eyewitness to some of America’s darkest moments. As an EMT, he responded to the World Trade Center when it was bombed in 1993; after joining the New York Fire Department, he was there when the towers were destroyed in 2001. As a deputy director in New York’s medical examiner’s office, he led the effort to identify victims of Hurricane Sandy. And in 2012, at the request of Connecticut officials, Harvin assisted with forensics after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary.

His path from first responder to frontline bureaucrat began in the Bronx, where he spent his teenage years. After dropping out of high school, he got a GED and then a college scholarship from the Children’s Aid Society, enlisting as a paramedic. Though he loved the work, as a young father he began to worry about his safety. He was caught in shootouts while tending to accident victims and lost colleagues in ambulance crashes. On 9/11, his wife and daughters saw him on TV, racing away from the rubble, and then didn’t hear from him for 24 hours. Upon seeing their faces when he finally got home, he knew it was time for a change.

Harvin went back to school and earned a master’s in emergency management. Landing a position with New York’s chief medical examiner, he became an expert in mass-fatality management—the grim business of identifying and processing victims of large-scale tragedies. He also came to know Mitchell, and the two worked together on Sandy Hook. Two years later, when Mitchell was hired as DC’s chief medical examiner, he recruited Harvin.

Donell Harvin, who was at Ground Zero on 9/11, helped devise DC’s Covid death-handling protocols.

***

Their immediate task in the District was to turn around an office plagued by mismanagement. But an equally important project loomed. The previous year, Washington had been shaken by tragedy when a mentally disturbed government contractor gunned down 12 people at the Navy Yard. Although the medical examiner’s office had properly managed those deaths, officials realized that a larger or more complex disaster would have overwhelmed its capabilities. The city needed a mass-fatality division robust enough to absorb the kind of tragedy that Harvin and Mitchell hoped Washington would never face. They went about building it—securing federal funds, adding staff, and running mass-casualty drills.

By early 2020, Harvin had been in Washington six years. He’d since left Mitchell’s office and finished a PhD in public health. He was teaching at Georgetown and had become chief of homeland security and intelligence at DC’s homeland-security agency. But the imminent arrival of Covid meant the District was facing the catastrophe he and Mitchell had trained for, the biggest mass-fatality event in the city’s history.

On March 2, Harvin went to DC’s Emergency Operations Center for the first day of formal briefings about how the city would navigate the pandemic. Halfway through the morning, he found a quiet spot in the hallway and placed a call to his mother. “This is going to be bad,” he said.

***

The city morgue is located at 401 E Street, Southwest. In any given year, only a fraction of the fatalities that occur in DC pass through the facility. When a person dies of natural causes at a hospital, nursing home, or hospice, a physician will typically sign the death certificate and release the body to a funeral home. It’s usually only those who die alone or in unnatural or suspicious circumstances whose bodies go to the morgue, where medical examiners determine the cause and manner of their death.

Initially, Harvin and Mitchell planned to use this same approach for the pandemic, relying on hospitals—where the bulk of virus-related deaths would take place—to serve as de facto Covid morgues. But they quickly revised their thinking. For one thing, little was known about how contagious the disease might be postmortem. Would storing victims at hospitals risk infecting staff? At the same time, Harvin learned from former colleagues in New York—which was being ravaged by the virus—that hospitals were too overwhelmed to manage the bodies properly. The result was an appalling spectacle: forklifts carrying pallet-loads of bodies outside hospitals, decedents stacked on top of one another in trailers. At one point, police discovered nearly 100 rotting corpses in unrefrigerated U-Hauls parked by a Brooklyn funeral home. As the funeral home’s owner told the New York Times, “I ran out of space.”

The city handles the body of every Covid fatality, a process meant to ensure victims don’t pile up at overwhelmed hospitals, as in New York. Above, an autopsy room and viewing area at the city morgue.

***

The truth is that all mass-fatality events carry the potential for this type of disgrace. Amid the chaos of a calamity, victims get misidentified. Morgues fill up. “We saw that with Hurricane Katrina—bodies just left out there,” Harvin says. “And that’s a stain on our society.”

So Harvin and Mitchell made a decision that would set them apart from most coroners and medical examiners in the country. Instead of depending on the hospital system, the chief medical examiner’s office would assume responsibility. Every single person who dies of Covid in DC would be sent to Harvin and Mitchell’s team—a protocol that remains in place today.

By studying the mortality rate and projecting infection levels for the city, the men estimated that as many as 3,500 residents could perish in the pandemic. Or one in every 200. Putting aside the magnitude of the suffering, the math presented a serious logistical problem: The city morgue had an official capacity of only 205. The solution was apparent—they would have to build the Covid morgue.

Harvin immediately began acquiring the materials he’d need. He ordered six refrigerated trailers. He borrowed mobile light towers for nighttime work and generators for power. He acquired PPE, Porta-Potties, drinking water, 500 gallons of hand sanitizer, and heavy-duty body bags specially designed for mass tragedies, 4,000 in all. For families who couldn’t afford funerals, the District agreed to pay for cremations. And to prevent a backlog of fatalities, the city shortened the time it would hold unclaimed bodies before they could be cremated, from 30 to 15 days.

The truth is that all mass-fatality events carry the potential for disgrace. Amid the chaos of a calamity, victims get misidentified. Morgues fill up.

Meanwhile, Harvin combed the local and federal bureaucracy in search of an additional 30 workers—to volunteer. The Army agreed to detail members of its mortuary-affairs unit, which had operated similar morgues in combat zones. A trade association found out-of-state funeral directors who wanted to pitch in. DC’s Medical Reserve Corps, a group of volunteers willing to assist in health-related emergencies, provided workers. The DC Guard and the Air National Guard sent personnel.

As he rushed to get things in place, the virus was already spreading through Washington. Harvin felt the same sense of foreboding he’d experienced six years earlier when he was waiting for Hurricane Sandy to make landfall. “It’s like a slow-moving train,” he says. “You know it’s coming and you can’t stop it.”

***

While Harvin was acquiring equipment and manpower, his top lieutenant, Kim Lassiter, spent two days driving around the District, scouting possible sites for the morgue. At her last stop, she got out of her car and peered through the fence. The property had everything. It was city-owned land—a parking lot for DC employees, empty because staffers were now working from home. It was large enough for the trailers, and it could be secured with tarps and guards. Most important, the site was inconspicuous: You could drive right past it and not realize it was there. “This is perfect,” Lassiter thought.

Lassiter, a 54-year-old grandmother with a soft smile, is the second-longest-tenured medical examiner’s employee, with nearly a quarter century on the job. In the 1990s, she lifted the victims of gang wars off street corners and washed the blood from their wounds at the morgue. In 2002, she used x-rays to identify the remains of Chandra Levy, the 24-year-old intern whose murder had become the subject of national fascination when it was alleged she’d been dating a married congressman around the time of her disappearance. And in 2008, Lassiter carried the remains of four children—ages 5, 6, 11, and 17—from the house where they’d been decomposing for seven months, after their mother, Banita Jacks, became convinced they’d been possessed by demons and killed them.

Lassiter came to the work by way of her own personal tragedy. She grew up in a housing project in Prince George’s County, with five brothers and sisters. Her father wasn’t around, and her mother, who worked in healthcare, struggled to do it all on her own. She eventually fell victim to drug use. It was up to Lassiter—the eldest of the children—to run the household. She cut class three days a week to watch her siblings. At 12, she got a summer job to support the family. Even after she graduated from high school and entered the workforce, there were periods when she would drop everything to nurse her mother through the various chemical fogs and illnesses that encumber the life of an addict.

In 1987, when Lassiter was 21, her mother passed away. Lassiter was called to the hospital. A nurse escorted her to the elevator, and they rode down to the basement. There, in a frigid room, Lassiter found her mother lying motionless on a stretcher. Her eyes were still open. “I felt like,” Lassiter remembers, “she was waiting for me to show up.”

Kim Lassiter, a 25-year veteran of the medical examiner’s office, ran the Covid morgue day to day.

***

The nurse explained that her mother was being taken away for an autopsy. Lassiter didn’t know anything about the process, and the news frightened her. “If I could have gone with her through that,” she says, “I would have.”

Following the funeral, Lassiter obtained custody of her siblings, whom she supported through her job as a clerk at the US Department of Health and Human Services. A few years later, her life took an unexpected turn when she spotted an alarming story in the newspaper: The DC chief medical examiner’s office had released the wrong body to a grieving family. The incident sounded both outrageous and intriguing; more than anything, it reminded Lassiter—by then a mother herself—of when her mom had been sent to the morgue. She called the office, talked her way to a supervisor, and asked if she could help. She joined the office as a volunteer.

This was the late 1990s, and the agency was considerably smaller than it is today. Lassiter was quickly hired and eventually promoted, becoming one of seven technicians responsible for a full sweep of duties: fielding intake calls from police, snapping photographs at death scenes, transporting decedents to the morgue, and assisting with medical examinations and autopsies. She viewed the work not as some macabre responsibility but as an expression of love. While she hadn’t been able to care for her own mother after her death, she now looked after the deceased loved ones of others.

When arriving at a place of death, Lassiter is vigilant about wearing a blank facial expression, to acknowledge the gravity of the circumstances. She offers condolences, then completes her tasks—attaching the toe tag, placing the deceased into the body bag—at a diligent pace so as not to prolong the trauma of those looking on. Once an autopsy is complete, she uses tight, neat sutures to close the incisions. She then washes the stains from the body and wraps it in a crisp white sheet.

Occasionally, when working alone, Lassiter has found herself speaking out loud to the bodies. If she hits a pothole while driving someone to the morgue, she’ll apologize. I’m sorry. Upon entering the morgue’s cold-storage facility, she sometimes greets the people being kept there. Good morning. When examining a crime victim’s body—particularly when it’s a child’s—she often pledges to help get justice. I’ll do everything in my power to find the evidence needed to make whoever did this to you pay.

The hardest days are the ones when she finds herself face to face with someone she knows. One morning, as Lassiter was preparing for autopsies, she checked the manifest and saw a familiar name. It was an older woman, a friend of her mother’s who’d looked out for Lassiter as a child. She walked into the cold-storage room, slid the body out of its cabinet, and said goodbye. It was the only time she ever broke down crying at the morgue.

***

April 22, 2020—The day after the religious leaders consecrate the site, the Covid morgue begins to stir with workers in face shields, gloves, and white protective suits. It’s been six weeks since DC recorded its first case of Covid, and the death toll has exceeded the city morgue’s capacity. Now the first wave of bodies is arriving.

The process begins with a phone call. A hospital official, or sometimes a police officer, contacts the medical examiner’s office. Lassiter, who is chief of the transport unit, dispatches her team to the scene. Two workers, in full PPE, arrive in a black, unmarked van. They present paperwork for the physician’s signature. In the hospital’s morgue, they take custody of the body. Opening the body bag, they attach identification. They zip the bag closed and spray the outside with disinfectant, then place it into a second, heavy-duty body bag. They disinfect it again. The workers lift the decedent onto a stretcher and paste an identification tag onto the bag. They slide the stretcher into the back of the unmarked van.

Every body arriving at the Covid morgue is first accounted for at the intake tent, then transferred to a refrigerated trailer.

***

At the Covid morgue, the workers move the decedent onto a table in the intake tent. Here, they weigh the body, to help confirm identification, and enter the victim’s name into a computer. They wheel the decedent across the blacktop and up into one of the refrigerated trailers. Next, the transfer. If the victim is heavy, the workers—at least two, sometimes four—lift the body onto one of the lower shelves. If the person is light, they place the body on a higher shelf. The staff use internal coding—6D, 2A—to record the exact location. They exit the trailer, remove their protective suits, and put on fresh ones.

A victim typically remains at the Covid morgue a few days, rarely longer than a week. During that time, a separate team calls family members to help them through the paperwork. Once burial arrangements are made, the funeral director schedules a pickup. The workers wheel the victim out of cold storage and into a second tented canopy—the release tent. They again wipe down the outside of the body bag. They again spray it with disinfectant. The funeral director pulls up. They load the dead into the hearse.

***

Though it was difficult to find volunteers, Harvin had assembled what he called “a coalition of the willing.” The active-duty Army morticians and military reservists, the citizen volunteers, the funeral directors, along with medical-examiner staffers and UDC students. While many had backgrounds in mortuary services, others did not. “We had people,” Harvin says, “who had never touched a dead body before—never seen a dead body.”

When each new group of volunteers arrived, Harvin—“the general in charge of the death troops”—brought them together to discuss the effort. The victims had come to the Covid morgue after suffering lonely and terrifying deaths—hooked up to breathing tubes, surrounded by masked doctors and nurses. “These people often were dropped off at the hospital, and they couldn’t see their loved ones for two or three or four weeks,” he continued. “They expired around complete strangers.” The staff’s goal, Harvin told the troops, was to provide each person with a dignity in death that they didn’t experience during their last days of life.

The operation has depended on volunteers—students, funeral directors, military reservists with no prior training.

***

Then he turned it over to Lassiter, who ran the day-to-day operations. She instructed new volunteers how to implement the values Harvin had espoused. When carrying the deceased, move deliberately and with caution. Keep the body as horizontal as possible. Do not, under any circumstances, stack one on top of another. Check, double-check, and triple-check the manifest to make sure each victim is in the correct rack. And pay respect through your words. Lassiter never refers to the deceased as “corpses” or “cadavers” or “cases.” Instead, she calls them “my people.”

“That’s the only way I can get [the workers] to treat them the way they would treat someone that they love,” Lassiter says. “Because it makes them see how special these people are to me.”

***

Gerald Slater, 86, was a television executive at PBS and WETA.

Richard Paul Thornell, 83, was a Howard law-school professor who helped establish the Peace Corps’s first-ever program, in Ghana.

Jose Mardoqueo Reyes, 54, was a refugee of El Salvador’s civil war and a beloved internet-radio broadcaster.

Luevella Jackson, 87, was among the first female bus drivers in DC’s public-school system.

Samuel Shumaker III, 90, was an Army colonel who also taught English and creative writing at UDC.

Florence Gilkes, 97, was a loving wife and aunt, as well as a dedicated fan of the Washington Football Team.

Iraj Askarinam, 76, owned a restaurant in Adams Morgan, where he regularly provided free meals to the homeless. They called him “Mr. Spaghetti.”

***

By May, the pandemic’s bleakest days had arrived at the morgue. The daily influx of new decedents fluctuated—eight one day, 19 the next. As the volume swelled, the workers came face to face with the breadth of the city’s suffering. They began recognizing the last names of victims they’d been dispatched to retrieve, and it dawned on them that these were additional members of already devastated families. Payton McFadden, a UDC premed grad, describes the crushing duty of traveling to a DC hospital to collect the body of a Covid-positive baby: “We had went and gotten one of the [baby’s] family members one week prior. [Covid] was slowly but surely matriculating through the whole house.” In a searing example of the District’s racial inequality, 74 percent of the fatalities were Black. “I will never forget this as long as I live, ever,” Lassiter says. “It just took so many people at one time, so suddenly.”

A Chicago-area funeral director who asked to be identified only by her first name, Stacey, came to Washington to volunteer. She served in the medical examiner’s main office, calling families and guiding them through the process of finalizing death certificates and retrieving loved ones. On one occasion, she spoke with a man whose father was in the Covid morgue, and he dissolved into tears. The man explained that they’d been estranged for years. It was only recently that they’d finally begun speaking again. “We do help carry that burden of grief,” she says. “And it’s hard.” On another day, she had a series of conversations with a police officer whose mother was at the disaster morgue. When the officer suddenly stopped returning her calls, Stacey got hold of his wife, who told her he’d been hospitalized with Covid himself. Nearly a year later, she still wonders about him. “It is always in the back of my head,” she says. “I don’t know [if] he made it through.”

Routine tasks touched off bouts of anguish. A worker might spot a detail about a victim that resonated personally: a birthday shared with the worker’s daughter, the same last name as a best friend.

As the morgue’s lead official, Harvin was spending up to 12 hours a day at the site. “Everyone’s talking about Covid and fatalities, and it’s just numbers to them. We’re actually dealing with them,” he says. “I have a PhD and I’m in there putting on gloves and a [protective] suit and I’m helping the crews move bodies in and out of trailers. It’s visceral for us.”

The staff feared for their own safety. “The scariest thing was [potentially being] exposed ourselves,” says Denise Lyles, supervisor of the investigation unit. Lassiter grew terrified that she’d infect her family. “I have a husband that goes out and he works. I was concerned about him,” she says. “Grandchildren that are asthmatic, concerned about them.”

Routine tasks touched off bouts of anguish. While checking the manifest, a worker might spot a detail about a victim that resonated personally: a birthday shared with the worker’s daughter, the same last name as a best friend. Harvin and Lassiter did what they could to look out for their staff’s mental health. At the end of each day, Lassiter pulled people aside to see if anyone was experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression, connecting them with counselors or chaplains. Over time, even veterans of the medical examiner’s office began struggling with the weight of their mission.

After several weeks at the site, Harvin found that when he returned home from work, he would drift into a haze. He had no appetite. He stopped engaging his wife in conversation. He passed entire evenings staring blankly into the television. “I don’t even know what I’m watching,” he recalls. “I had no motivation.”

Harvin, of course, had worked mass tragedy before. After hijackers flew the first plane into the World Trade Center, he approached the South Tower on foot. From two blocks away, he saw bodies falling from the sky and his entire body froze. He couldn’t take another step forward. Minutes later, there was a deafening sound and the tower disappeared into a cloud of gray debris. Out of the rubble came a speeding ambulance. Harvin jumped into the back along with dozens of other firefighters and cops. As they neared the North Tower, Harvin turned to one of them. “Doesn’t it look like this one’s leaning?” he said.

He spent the next two days at Ground Zero searching for survivors and recovering the dead. The experience was so traumatizing that he vowed never to return to the site. But he found the work at the Covid morgue even more emotionally taxing. “I survived September 11,” he says. “I didn’t know if I was going to survive this.”

“There were so many women. So many mothers there.”

While he was able to walk away from Ground Zero after the attack,the pandemic was taking new victims each day. Every time Harvin arrived at the Covid morgue, he confronted a fresh supply of misery, and there was no end in sight. “Your mind and your soul get worn down far long before you body [does],” he says. Recognizing that he was experiencing depression, he turned to colleagues at the homeland-security department and found solace in chatting with them virtually.

For Lassiter, the pain manifested not as psychological trauma but as profound sadness. The heartache was always there, growing more intense over time. May 9—Mother’s Day—was the hardest. It had always been a tough one, the day her own mother’s death was most painful. But there was an additional heaviness now; she couldn’t stop thinking about everyone at the Covid morgue. “There were so many women,” she says. “So many mothers there.”

Though she was scheduled to be off, Lassiter didn’t feel right staying home on that particular day. She left her house in Prince George’s County and made the 25-minute drive to the site. Arriving at the morgue, she put on a protective suit and greeted the workers. “What are you doing here?” they asked. “It’s Mother’s Day,”

“I know,” she replied, “but I came down because I wanted to really thank you for what you’re doing.” She understood that some of them were mothers themselves, and she appreciated them for spending the day at the site.

Lassiter walked over to the cold-storage trailers and turned to face her people. “Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms,” she said. As she returned to the car, she noticed a lightness of spirit.

“It felt kind of like a sign of relief,” she says. “Just to speak out. To let them know that someone cares.”

***

June 2020—As summer approaches, the pace at the Covid morgue begins to slow. Fewer victims are arriving; the number of bodies in the trailers is declining. By the end of the month, the volume is thin enough that it can be handled at the city morgue. Washington’s first wave of Covid has reached its conclusion.

It’s time for Harvin to shut down the disaster morgue, at least for now. But before doing so, he organizes a final ritual. On July 7, 2020, Rabbi Herzfeld, Reverend Towner, and Imam Shareef return to the site. They were present at the beginning, and Harvin wants them here today, too.

The faith leaders gather by the intake tent as a group of three dozen workers form concentric circles around them. They offer prayers of thanksgiving that the work is coming to an end. “It is at death that the earth receives its treasures,” says Imam Shareef. “And we want to honor the facility that now has allowed for individuals to be returned back to the earth.”

After the ceremony, Lassiter assembles the men and women on her team to thank them for their two and a half months of service. When she finishes, a soldier who was assigned to the site pulls a patch off his flak jacket and approaches her. “This patch has been around the world,” he tells Lassiter, “and I want you to have it.”

Though the pandemic rages on, Harvin and Lassiter can’t help but feel a certain triumph. They haven’t misidentified any bodies. None of their team has contracted Covid. They know they may be back. But in a dark and painful year, this is a good day.

Months later, Lassiter will remember it, the special pride she felt that despite dozens of workers toiling and thousands of pounds of equipment rumbling, despite 404 fatalities passing through, word of the Covid morgue never reached the public. Her colleagues hadn’t enlisted for accolades. They’d pressed through the fear and the grief in order to care for the innocent victims of a historic pandemic.

“It felt good,” Lassiter says. “Even if no one would ever know about it.”

It’s been nearly a year since the pandemic struck Washington. In the first four months of lockdown, the city lost three times as many jobs as it did during the 2008 recession. By July, small business revenue had been cut in half. Metrorail ridership has plunged by as much as 90 percent. Over the coming four years, the District is anticipating a budget gap of roughly $800 million. All told, more than 933,514 people in DC, Maryland, and Virginia have contracted the virus, and 15,148 have died.

Today, Covid fatalities are being processed at the city morgue in Southwest DC; although the number of deaths is once again elevated, it’s well below the peaks of last spring. At the disaster morgue, the light towers have been hauled away and the generators have gone silent. The trailers are resting on a deserted blacktop. Each day, thousands of cars pass right by the site, oblivious to what happened there. If they knew where to look, though, the drivers could see something that Harvin made sure to leave in place. The DC and US flags, rising above the fence.

***

This article appears in the March 2021 issue of Washingtonian.

#death #long reads #washington DC #covid-19 pandemic #luke mullins

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samueldays · 4 years ago

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Bitter notes adjacent to police reform and criminal justice

1. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/disturbing-video-shows-random-attack-hydrant-head-smash-of-92-year-old-woman-in-manhattan/2466659/

A 31-year-old man has been arrested in connection with an apparently random attack on a 92-year-old woman in Manhattan four days ago, authorities say.

The suspect, Rashid Brimmage of the Bronx, was charged with assault shortly after he was taken into custody Tuesday. Police believe he is the person seen on disturbing video shoving the 92-year-old woman named Geraldine to the ground on Third Avenue between 15th and 16th streets on Friday afternoon.

[...]

A senior law enforcement official tells News 4 Brimmage is a recidivist with 100 prior arrests who has gotten a desk appearance ticket for his most recent ones because of bail reform. He is an NYPD co-response client, which means police have responded with social workers when dealing with him. Brimmage has an extensive history of being emotionally disturbed in police encounters as well.

He’s been arrested three times since February for alleged assaults. On March 9, he allegedly punched a 29-year-old man in an unprovoked attack at a pizza shop in Manhattan. A few weeks before that, Brimmage allegedly punched a 39-year-old female at a Dunkin’ Donuts in the Bronx. On Feb. 4 he allegedly punched a 39-year-old man in the face at that same Dunkin' Donuts. In the latter two cases, he received desk appearance tickets.

Brimmage is currently a suspect in a grand larceny that happened on Feb.19 at the 116th St. train station in which a woman had $120 stolen from her purse, the senior law enforcement official said. He's also a transit sex crime recidivist.

From elsewhere, a list of unique charges for Brimmage, a man of 100+ arrests and so far 39 criminal convictions:

Assault, Assault of a victim 65 or older, Assault on a police officer, Assault on a police officer, firefighter or EMT, Cemetery desecration, Criminal mischief, Criminal possession of a controlled substance, Criminal possession of marijuana, Criminal sale of marijuana, Criminal trespass, Failure to register as a sex offender, Failure to report change of address as a sex offender, Forcible touching, Grand larceny, Harassment-stalking, Menacing with a weapon, Obstructing governmental administration, Persistent sexual abuse, Public lewdness, Resisting arrest, Sexual abuse, Tampering with physical evidence, Trespass, Turnstile jumping, Unspecified violation of state sanitary code, Violation of unspecified local law.

Taking these reports at face value, he should have been long since executed and his body strung up in the public square with a warning plaque of “Don’t be this absolute scumbag.”

(There are graver crimes, but most of those don’t have the sheer persistent evil attributed to Brimmage. For example, I’m also in favor of executing every US president for war crimes, but Trump does not appear to have a similar record of “I’m bored, let’s find another country to bomb. How about Portugal?”)

Since the above-board system is failing to execute him or even exile him to Australia (not that there’s an Australia left to exile him to), I am grudgingly considering that police brutalizing him to death during an unexplained camera malfunction might be the lesser evil.

Of course, perhaps we shouldn’t take these reports at face value. Perhaps the urinalists are conspiring to misrepresent events...

2. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/06/26/blaxit-black-americans-leave-us-escape-racism-build-lives-abroad/3234129001/

Anthony Baggette knew the precise moment he had to get out: He was driving by a convenience store in Cincinnati when a police officer pulled him over. There had been a robbery. He fit the description given by the store's clerk: a Black man.

Okunini Ọbádélé Kambon knew: He was arrested in Chicago and accused by police of concealing a loaded gun under a seat in his car. He did have a gun. But it was not loaded. He used it in his role teaching at an outdoor skills camp for inner-city kids. Kambon also had a license. The gun was kept safely in the car's trunk.

Tiffanie Drayton knew: Her family kept getting priced out of gentrifying neighborhoods in New Jersey. She felt they were destined to be forever displaced in the USA. Then Trayvon Martin was shot and killed after buying a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea.

That’s not my selective quoting, the paragraph just ends there, followed by a change of topic. It’s grievously dishonest. Trayvon Martin was shot and killed after trying to bash George Zimmerman’s head in.

The weight of evidence presented at Zimmerman’s trial includes: a) eyewitness testimony that Martin was on top of Zimmerman, beating up Zimmerman b) medical report that Zimmerman suffered black eyes, head lacerations and a skull fracture c) ballistic forensics report that Martin was shot from in front and below while leaning forwards.

The press doesn’t even bother to deny this sort of evidence, just elides it entirely. USA Today isn’t unique in its misrepresentation, it’s just one I had to hand as being a particularly blatant case. You can see the same kind of lie in the NYT, and on the cover of TIME:

3. https://time.com/magazine/us/5847952/june-15th-2020-vol-195-no-22-u-s/

No doubt there are some true innocents in the list as well, but when your first name and one of the most famous flagship cases for the Holy Black Victim myth was a violent scumbag, I get suspicious about the rest.

The article itself is this disconnected litany of grievances, from police brutality to disease:

Now pent-up energy and anxiety and rage have spilled out. COVID-19 laid bare the nation’s broader racial inequities. About 13% of the U.S. population are African Americans. But according to CDC data, 22% of those with COVID-19, and 23% of those who have died from it, are black.

--- ---

If America ever tries to have a serious reckoning with its police brutality problem - and it has a police brutality problem, make no mistake - it’s going to be inevitably entangled with the other problem of black violence (and stupidity), and the secondary problem of numerous reporters who think their job is excusing black violence.

Homicides per 100 000 people per year, numbers from Wikipedia (2019):

Nigeria - 9.85 Mississippi - 7.4 (blackest US state) US average - 5.3 Maine - 1.9 (whitest US state) United Kingdom - 1.2

Blacks are (on average) much more violent than whites in America. Like “quintuple homicide rate” more violent. One study estimated 10x after trying to separate out hispanics from whites. The gap decreases, but doesn’t go away, when you control for poverty - and even that is probably an overcontrol since stupidity is a causal factor for both violence and poverty, and blacks are stupider than whites on average.

Any criminal justice reform will by default end up with more blacks than whites in jail relative to general population. Any attempt to avoid this will require one to say “We will jail whites and we will not jail blacks for the same crimes”.

Any police reform that attempts to lower the rate of police killings will likewise still end up with police killing blacks at a higher rate relative to genpop, because blacks commit crime at a higher rate relative to genpop.

(In before “the acceptable rate is zero”. If you push hard enough for a zero rate of police killings, the police will retreat to the donut shop and you’ll get mob killings instead. The Netherlands have 1/20th the population of the US and they still have police killings.)

Retroviral genetic engineering to make all the blacks 15 IQ points smarter is not available, nor any other measure of similar impact that I’m aware of. Short of such an enormous measure, any kind of reform will still have blacks being stupider and violenter, which means blacks will still (on average) be poorer, more criminal, more arrested, more incarcerated, and more prone to catching diseases, etc.

There will be Brimmages going around punching people in the face, and there will be a moral obligation for reformed police to deal harshly with Brimmages. Perhaps you will have the luxury of locking up Brimmages for life rather than executing them. You will also have to figure out how to deal with urinalists stirring up racial hatred and running interference for both individual scumbags and violent mobs, because “police reform” is not going to alter the underlying racial differences that urinalists make hay of.

#all #journalism #journalism delenda est #US rioting #racepol #crimers gonna crime

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ourperfectcollectionface-blog · 7 years ago

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As we know that sudden cardiac arrest can cause death in the USA and maximum cases occur outside a hospital. That's why learning CPR and first aid techniques can save someone's life. For more information, You can check here:- http://www.emergencycareny.com/heartbeat.html

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emtclasses-blog1 · 7 years ago

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How to become an EMT Get more details click here http://www.emergencycareny.com/about.html Employment of emergency medical technicians and paramedics is expected to grow by 23 percent between 2016 and 2022, which is faster than the average for all occupations.

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bronxnewsroundup-blog · 3 years ago

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Probationary firefighter from Brooklyn suffers medical episode, dies during training - News 12 Bronx

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rcambulancecandidatecare · 5 years ago

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justanothagurlindaenwhycee · 7 years ago

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I Don’t Know Who To Be Mad At?

I need to make some disclaimers before I begin my rant! First, I know that only cows go mad and humans get angry, but damnit...on this morning here...Friday the GOT DANG 13th, I’m mad as hell! But, I’m not sure at whom? Second, I really despise when people say that New Yorkers are mean or rude! And, this grossly false statement usually comes from non-NYers or dingbat spacey tourists who like to stop in the middle of the street at look up at the skyline or skyscrapers. NYers are generally nice and helpful people. But, TODAY...not so much! Third, I’m a die-hard Feminist, but I’m also a realist on limitations of this fine specimen of human!

My morning commute consists of daily aggravation riding the God forsaken MTA’s southbound #5 train from Da Bronx (I’m a transplant from Brooklyn). All of my commute life, I’ve had to ride this #5 train and I can’t ever remember it being a smooth non eventful ride!? Every damn day the track break, catch fire or someone pulls that daggone emergency brake! Last night, the rare event of me watching the news, I saw that train delays 60+ something % and it costs employers $1.2 million in lost time! Holy Moly!

One morning, I was on the #5 train and a passenger pulled the emergency brake on the train ahead of us, so the express train that I was on got rerouted onto the local tracks. Being the savvy commuter that I am, I should’ve known to get the heck up and wait for another express train once that announcement was made. But NOOOO, I grunted like everyone else on that train and went back to sleep. And what typically happens is that the train will do the snail pace and each station and you’ll see a few express trains whizz by! This happened one particular morning and a male rider just started screaming from the top of his lungs, he was that angry! He wasn’t screaming expletives, he was literally screaming! The other straphangers didn’t even flinch because I think we ALL agreed with his sentiment. I laughed, put my headphones on and went back to sleep. I figured if I get fired for my daily sin of being tardy to the party, oh wells!

I digressed. This morning, an elderly lady came on the train. She must’ve been in her late 70′s/early 80′s and she had a pull bag thingy. She was standing over a man that was 2 people to my right and the train was extremely crowded. This guy was out cold, so he didn’t see her. The woman directly to my right peered at her and pretended to not see her and closed her eyes. Since my daily commute automatically alters my personality, I literally almost mushed the lady in my head to get the hell up and give up her seat to this dear grandma. I wanted to get up, but the train was so damn crowded that she wouldn’t be able to get her bag over everyone.

Second digression: This morning, I got my period. This is pretty eventful people because this monthly mishap usually resembles a murder scene and I try to contain my womanly issues as much as possible. So this morning, I’m literally dying on the inside with a smile on my face as a decoy. I had a headache the size of Texas and my back was telling me how awful like can be!

I was determined to give this lady my seat, though. Granny got on at E. 180th Street and the next stop was a good 10-15 minutes away at 149th Street. I lost the will and exhaustion took over me. My eyes closed. They were pried open at the sound of gasps and chaos. The trained jerked and granny fell over. God, I wanted to die, I felt so damn guilty! And ANGRY! The guy she was standing in front of miraculously rose from his coma, helped to pick her up and sat her down. He also conveniently got up because it was his stop!

Some of the gasps were from the fear of the emergency brakes being pulled! That’s always drama! But, Granny insisted she was ok and just wanted to sit. All of a sudden, Mother Teresa to my right wanted to be all helpful and concerned and what not. I’m sitting there trying to contain my anger. 2 more stops go by and Granny’s eyes begin to roll in back in her head, she turns pale and vomits on herself. Oooph, it was over! The next person that uttered a complaint was gonna die by my hands! And, it happened...an irate man started to complain, but the girl directly in front of me beat me to the assassination while someone called the conductor for assistance. High fives to that girl! She was thinking about her own granny and she got in that fool’s ass!

The AC is blasting, but Granny is saying she’s hot and she’s thirsty. But, no one has water to offer. The conductor cross examines her to see if the EMT should be called, but Granny is determined to get where she has to go and refuses. I wanted to know why Granny was traveling by herself, why some NYers are worthless as humans and WHY IN THE HELL THE MTA CAN’T GET THEIR SHIT TOGETHER!

#mta #newyorker commuter straphanger mtawoes mtanightmares

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mascaracoffee · 8 years ago

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Attacked ~Rafael Barba Imagine~

Rafael Barba X OC (Kelly)

Summary: Rafael Barba believes he is keeping his family safe by keeping the threats a secret. However, Barba is shaken when the threats materialize too close to home and suddenly everything Barba holds dear is Attacked.

Warnings: Assault, Anxiety attack, cursing

A Baby Changes Everything

She was perfect. Her thick dark hair was full of body and was already beginning to show signs of curls that tickled her small, delicate ears. She had inherited my blue eyes encased in long, dark lashes and Rafael’s mouth and a small, button nose was nestled between her full, round cheeks. She was a blessing, our little miracle.

Gabriella Lucia Barba

I smiled softly before finally pushing myself away from her crib. I stopped to switch on the monitor on the dresser before gently closing the door. Sighing, my bare feet carried me to the living room where I fell into the couch with a content sigh. I smiled pulling a plush stuffed bunny into my lap from behind my back and smiling softly.

It was unbelievable what a small little girl could change in just two months of life. I especially loved the change I saw in Rafael. His normal stoic disposition had crumbled once he laid eyes on his little girl, he was completely and utterly wrapped around her little finger. Let Gabby even whimper and Rafi was there checking on her with a kiss and a song. I had even become a morning person when my mornings consisted of waking up to Rafael singing to Gabby as he made the first round of his morning coffee. Our normally orderly, clean, quiet apartment was now filled with 3 am feedings and diaper changes stuffed animals and pacifiers. I don’t know how we ever survived without her.

A knock on the door broke my train of thought and my brows furrowed in confusion glancing at the clock. It was 10:45, Rafi said he would swing by for a quick lunch around 1. A habit he had formed when he returned back to work. ‘That’s odd’ I thought. Our usual visitors were all at work, my parents had flown back home weeks ago and Rafael and Lucia had a key.

I stood up and walked to the door before opening it enough to stick my head out.

“Can I help you?”

The question rolled off my tongue as I examined the stranger. He was taller than me around 5’6 with a stocky build. His hair was buzzed and faded down the sides into a beard. He was dressed in all black and his tan skin and dark eyes made me think Latino.

“Yeah, is this the Barba residence?”

“Yes.” I quirked an eyebrow questioningly, keeping my grip on the door handle firm.

He smirked. “My name is Manny. I,uh, I know Rafael we went to school together in the Bronx. I ran in to him on the street a couple weeks ago and he gave me his card” he stopped momentarily to fish the card out of his pocket “said I could drop by and we could catch up on old times.”

I took the card from him and examined it.

Rafael Barba ADA

Along with his contact information, his office address and suite number, on the back of the card I recognized Rafael’s messy scrawl that spelled out our home address.

“Oh” I opened the door a little more for proper conversation. “Well Rafi isn’t home right now but he should be in soon for lunch.” I chewed on my lip softly “ Would you like to come in?”

“Thank you.” Manny smiled accepting my offer and following me into the living room. He shed his jacket and took a seat on the couch as I took a seat on the couch opposite of him.

“So you must be Kelly. Rafael couldn’t stop talking about you when I ran in to him.”

I blushed deeply absentmindedly twisting my wedding ring in place.

“That would be me.” I smiled. “We’ve been married almost two years now.”

“That’s great. Seems ole Rafi is doing good for himself.” Manny nodded his eyes inspecting the apartment. “Did you two meet at Harvard?”

“I was actually an ADA with him here in New York. I had just moved up here from New Orleans so the DA put me with Rafi until I got adjusted. Just helping him with big cases and such so we spent many a sleepless nights together going over case notes and testimonies over Chinese takeout and scotch.” I chuckled. The conversation continued to flow casually about mine and Rafi’s life for a few minutes.

“I always looked up to Rafael growing up. He was older than me but I admired him ya know?”

“I know exactly what you mean. Rafael just seems to have that spark that naturally pulls people to him. He’s so dedicated to his work and he’s so goal driven. Or it could just be his snark.”I laughed.

I smiled at Manny. It was so nice to have someone to talk to that knew Rafi from when he was younger. Since the incident with Alex and Eddie, Rafael didn’t talk much about his past before Harvard. I believed he blamed himself in some ways for going to Harvard and leaving Eddie to be manipulated by Alex. It was nice to have someone shed some light on Rafael from his younger years.

“He gets that from his dad.” I froze. “I remember wishing how my dad would be more like him take me to baseball games and go with the family to church. I know he’s proud of Rafael.”

That wasn’t right. Rafael’s father was a terrible, abusive drunk who never made time for Rafael. His father had hurt him so terribly we as a couple still had to find ways to maneuver around the obstacles. Not to mention his dad died while he was away at college. He seemed to know so much the Bronx and Harvard surely he would know about Rafael’s father? This was all beginning to feel very wrong and Manny seemed to notice my change in disposition.

“Why don’t I just call Rafael? That way he’ll know you’re here.” I went to stand up when Manny shot up quicker, pulling something from his pocket.

“Don’t. Move.”

I froze seeing the knife glimmer in the light before I met his eyes.

“Yeah seems ole Barba’s doing well for himself. Upscale apartment in Manhattan,” Manny walked around tossing over an end table. I jumped as the table collided nosily with the hardwood the contents it held shattering to the ground. He rounded the coffee table and came closer to me lifting the knife to my chest “gorgeous wife” He gripped my sweater in one hand use the knife to slice through the material before it ripping it the rest of the way off me. A whimper falling from my lips as the sweater was ripped away, I cringed and shut my eyes. “beautiful baby girl.”

My head snapped toward him, ice running through my veins, as he mentioned Gabby.

“P-Please! Please don’t hurt my baby!” I begged. My heart was thudding in my ears seeming to cloud over my senses. “The-there’s a safe in Rafael’s office I’ll give you the combination I’ll give you my jewelry. Anything you want just please don’t hurt her!”

Fear was coursing through my veins mixed with the adrenaline and the nerve to fight. But fighting wasn’t that easy, not this time. It wasn’t just my life on the line here. He knew about Gabby, I had my daughter to think about. I had to make sure she was safe.

Manny chuckled before pushing me down onto my knees roughly, his hand gripping my shoulder tightly.

“Oh you’re gonna do what I want Mama. That’s for damn sure.”

I felt the bile rise in my throat as he used one hand to unclasp his belt buckle that was before my face. The other hand holding the knife loosely to my face. How could I trust If I did what he wanted he wouldn’t hurt Gabby? I couldn’t give him the upper-hand with my cooperation. As he shoved his dark jeans down his thighs I took the distraction and pushed my body weight into his causing him to lose his balance. From there it was strictly a fight response.

Rafael Barba had always considered himself a levelheaded man, able to think through rationally before jumping to fear, but that wasn’t the case today. Rafael had never felt so terrified in his entire life. When Rollins and Finn had met him outside his office he expected them to talk about their upcoming case, perhaps new evidence or a new witness, never would he have guessed they were coming to tell him that his wife had been attacked in their home. Once Rollins had pulled in front of the apartment building the fear intensified seeing the numerous patrol cars and the ambulance. Rafael raced up to his apartment, pushing and shoving others out of the way.

“That’s my wife” Rafael growled as a rookie attempted to stop him from entering the living room. He quickly threw the officer’s arms away from him and pushed by.

Rafael felt as if the world had crashed down around him. Liv sat beside Kelly, holding one of her hands, as her statement was being taken, an EMT applying butterfly sutures to her cut cheek. Her right eye was swollen shut and turning a nasty purple hue, her lip busted. Rafael’s observant eyes could make out the faint, purple outline of handprints around her slim throat.

“Oh Carino” Rafael whispered pushing himself closer to her.

“Rafi” Kelly said, her voice breaking and tears filling her eyes as she reached out toward him. The EMT stepped back having finished his job as Rafael gently embraced his wife holding her head to his chest as he felt tears wet the front of his suit. He closed his eyes and muttered prayers, thanking God that she was alive.

“Where’s Gabby?” Rafael asked his head turning from side to side looking for his daughter, a new course of fear beginning to pump through him.

“Sonny has her.” Olivia nodded to the tall, blonde Staten islander who held his small daughter in his lanky arms.

After taking a quick sweep of the room, Rafael felt his knees weaken as he saw Kelly’s sweater that she had been wearing earlier that morning, torn on the floor being tagged and photographed as evidence. It was then that the ADA noticed his wife wearing one of his old tattered Harvard tshirts.

“Oh God, ” Rafael started with a raspy breath “Did he..

“No” Kelly whimpered into his chest shaking her head. “He tried, but he didn’t.”

“Oh mi amor” Rafael whispered solemnly placing kisses into her hair “lo siento, lo siento”

“He said he knew you Rafi” Kelly hiccupped as she pulled away to look up at him. “He said he went to school with you and he had your card with our address on the back and I-I…let him in.” Kelly wailed falling into a fit of tears again clutching on to Rafael desperate for his forgiveness.

From the moment her neighbor, Mr. Atkinson, had arrived at her apartment hearing the commotion to the second of relief she felt when the assault had stopped, Kelly had been flooding herself with regret and self-loathing. Why had she let that man into her home?

Once Manny had fled, startled by Mr. Atkinson’s presence, Kelly rushed to her wailing daughter’s nursery. She had held her daughter tightly to her chest before the EMT’s begged her to be evaluated in which Sonny offered to take the little girl. Kelly was sick to her stomach at the thought of the danger she had put not only herself, but her daughter in.

Rafael’s heart felt as if it had solidified into stone and dropped into his gut when Kelly mentioned the business card. The one that he had filled out for the man that threatened his life on the courthouse steps, the man was smart, using the card to his advantage and turning the tables on Rafael. Barba felt the color drain from his face, he took a shaky breath as Kelly buried her face into the crook of his neck her hand playing with the hair on the nape of Rafael’s neck, a tick she had developed subconsciously over the years.

“Barba” Liv looked at Rafael after scribbling something on her notepad. “Could this be the man who’s been threatening you?”

Rafael’s body stiffened solid. Kelly’s cries ceased for a moment before she sniffed and pulled away from her husband slowly.

“Wh-What?” Kelly looked between Rafael and Liv, her blue eyes settling on Rafael’s desperate for an answer. “What is she talking about Rafael?”

Barba visibly gulped, his mouth drying as he searched for the right words to explain himself. Liv’s face had blanched considerably seeing the fire she had created. Rafael closed his eyes and took a breath.

“Its been going on about a year” He began “just ridiculous phone calls but a few months ago a man showed up outside the courthouse threatened to bust my head open on the steps. I told him if he really wanted to kill me he should have to come to my house. I never thought he would actually do it so I-I gave him our address.”

A look of horror marred Kelly’s face. Tears spilled over her blue eyes as Rafael tightened his grip on his wife’s wrist desperate for her to stay close to him, a sign that he would read as she forgave him. He could see the distance growing between them just from the look in her eyes.

“Let go of me” she spat forcing her arms out of Barba’s grip.”Estas pero si bien pendejo! (You’re a fucking idiot)” She moved away from him, gathered Gabriella from Sonny’s arms and proceeded through the door to Gabriella’s nursery, the door slamming shut in her wake.

Barba sighed dragging his hands over his face repeatedly, he was emotionally drained. Liv stood from her seat, fumbling with her notepad.

“Barba, I’m sorry I didn’t realize Kelly didn’t know about the threats.”

“No, its my fault.” Barba sighed. “I should have told her. Keep me updated on this?”

Kelly choked back the sobs as she moved back and forth between Gabriella’s dresser and an open bag, she stuffed more clothing and toys into the bag. She held the small child close to her heaving chest as the door opened. Rafael entered the pastel colored room and closed the door before his gaze landed on the partially full bag of clothes and diapers. His shoulders visibly slumped and his eyes widened and clouded over in terror.

“Please don’t leave” he whispered, his voice soft, vulnerable trembling with emotion. “Please don’t take Gabby from me either.”

Kelly didn’t respond, a tearful sob emitting from her mouth. Her chest was heaving, her head swimming a thousand miles a minute. Kelly’s breaths were coming in short, unsuccessful gasps her body began shaking. Rafael recognized the signs and gently approached her and coaxed Gabriella from her arms, placing the baby in her crib. Kelly sat on the sofa futon across from the crib and brought her head to her knees. She buried her face in her hands as she sobbed, her shoulders shaking. Rafael felt his heart clench as he took a seat beside his wife. He gently grasped her wrists and whispered encouraging words.

“Look at me, focus on me carino por favor. Deep breaths.”

Barba chalked it up as a victory when he finally saw her blue eyes. Her chest still shook in uneven sputters but the shaking had lessened.

“How could you keep this from me Rafi? How could you give him our address?” the questions flew from her mouth in a painful spiral. Each question bringing forth more emotion, as Kelly struggled to keep herself from falling back into another attack.

“I didn’t want to worry you.” Rafael confessed. “When it first started I didn’t take it seriously. I had been threatened before and nothing ever came of it I figured why would it now? I had more important things to worry about like preparing for Gabriella to be born.” Rafael paused nodding his head toward the crib. His voice trailed off as he seemed to be lost in thought before he took a ragged breath. “Then at the courthouse we had just had Gabby and I didn’t think he would actually do it.” He turned to face Kelly gently reaching her hands as he spoke “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

“How could you think I’m so weak?” Kelly looked at him properly for the first time. The tears making her blue eyes glisten. “I’m not breakable Rafi! How could you keep this from me? When we got married we said we would never keep things from each other! When are you going to realize its not just you anymore, its not just us, we have a daughter to worry about!”

For once the Harvard educated lawyer was speechless. What could he say to justify an action that didn’t even deserve justifying?

“I would never intentionally put you or Gabby in danger” Rafael said his eyes pleading. “You know that don’t you?”

“I don’t know what to think Rafi.” She whimpered. “I knew you wouldn’t give our address to someone who was threatening you, especially knowing Gabby and I are here alone, but you did. If you’re not going to think about us then I have to. God, Rafael what if he had done something to Gabby?” the mere thought was sickening to her stomach as she clasped a hand over her mouth. Her head was beginning to pound along with her erratic heartbeat.

“Carino please” Rafael pleaded, dropping to his knees before her “You and Gabby are my world! I would do anything for you two. Giving him our address was the biggest mistake of my life; putting you two in danger like this will haunt me until my dying day. I-I thought I was being brave, standing up to him. Please, I know I can’t fix this but please don’t leave. Let me get you and Gabby a protective detail, I have to know the two of you are safe. Por favor, don’t just leave.”

“And what about you?” Kelly asked more calmly staring straight ahead, wiping at her wet cheeks before pushing herself to a standing position pulling her hand from Rafael’s grasp. She walked to the full window and stared down at the busy street below.

“Don’t worry about me” Rafael said softly. “Keeping you two safe is all that matters.”

“Bullshit Rafael!” She snapped turning toward her kneeling husband anger and fire burning in her eyes. “You’re not getting it! Don’t worry about you when there’s someone threatening your life? And you say you don’t want to hurt your family? What if something happened to you? That would destroy us!”

Her sadness and shock was fueling her anger.

“My little girl won’t grow up without a father” She said her face stoic and strong. Determined as the tears continued to slip down her face “and you can’t leave me here alone.” Her voice cracked. “You just can’t do that to us.”

Her voice dropped, emotion thickening her voice as she covered her face again.

Rafael stood and gently pulled her hands away from her face. She whimpered, burying her face into his neck. Rafael wrapped a hand into her lose curls and closed his eyes as he inhaled her scent. How close had he come to losing her, to losing Gabby? The thought made his knees weak and his stomach churn uncomfortably, tears brimming his eyes as he placed kisses into her curls.

“I’m gonna make this right carino” he whispered into her hair.

Kelly pulled back slightly her fingers playing the lapels of his suit jacket before whispering.

“Then come with us. The DA will provide you a security detail too. Gabby and I need you with us. Please Rafael I don’t think I could do this on my own, not knowing what is happening with you. Always worrying..”

“Shhh” Rafael cooed brining Kelly’s face to his and gently pecking her lips, being careful not to disturb the tear in her lip. She dropped her head back to his chest and sighed deeply.

“I’ll go wherever you want me to carino”

An hour later, the small family was packed and dressed surrounded by men in dark suites as the Barba family exited their apartment complex. Rafael secured Gabriela’s car seat as the sleeping baby suckled on her pacifier peacefully. His green eyes looked up at his wife. Kelly’s head rested against the head rest as she stared down at their daughter. Her locks were damp and curling around her face and her skin dewy and rosy from the shower. The bruising was settling in around her eye making the hue darker.

Barba reached across Gabby’s sleeping form and interlocked his hands with Kelly’s. Their eyes met and Kelly offered up the smallest of smiles as she leaned in closer. Rafael met her halfway and connected their lips chastely. As they pulled apart Kelly rested her forehead against his.

#rafael barba #law and order svu #imagine #svu imagine #rafael barba imagine #ada rafael barba #raul esparza #law and order: special victims unit #rafael barba fanfiction

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auraprepsblog · 3 years ago

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5 Places you can Work as an EMT in New York

In the five boroughs of New York City, there is a high demand for people with an Emergency Medical Technician Certification. If you become a New York City EMT, here are a few places you can choose to work full-time or part-time.

Volunteer Agencies — There are volunteer ambulance cores and fire departments located in various places throughout Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Along with this, there are also places to use your New York State EMT License in the greater NYC area including Long Island, Westchester County, and more to get a Specialized Event Response Teams job!

Paid/Full-Time Ambulance — Many different hospitals have private and public ambulance service jobs. Some do private transportation between homes, hospitals, nursing homes, etc. and then there are many that are part of New York City’s 911 System. Some of the popular agencies are:

FDNY (New York City Fire Department) EMS

Northwell Health/North Shore EMS

Jamaica Hospital

Flushing Hospital

New York Presbyterian

Wycoff Hospital & More

Sports Events and Concerts — Venues are required to provide EMS services in New York City. Whether it is a musical concert or a sports game, you can use your NYC EMT certification to work at these events and provide aid on-site.

Emergency Dispatcher

Construction Sites

The New York City EMS System is comprised of over 70 Emergency Medical Service agencies from the Volunteer, Proprietary, Hospital-Based and Municipal Sectors. Demand for an Ems Training New York City is on the rise.

Each sector of EMS serves a unique and important role in the EMS System and operates under the protocols established by the Regional EMS Council of NYC. All EMS operations are overseen by the New York State Department of Health. Below is a listing of New York City EMS Agencies, listed by sector,

#Ems Training New York City

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emttrainingbrooklyn · 7 years ago

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Our EMT training course offered throughout the New York City area and we provide both mixture of lecture-based instruction and practicals. Also, it is important for every student to complete a 12-hour rotation in a hospital emergency room. You can check our website:- http://www.emergencycareny.com

#EMT Training Brooklyn EMT Training NY EMT Training Bronx how to get cpr certified

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pentomic · 8 years ago

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sitra achra

It was a Tuesday when he came for Yosef.

Yosef: 97, stooped, with a bristly white beard and smiling, watery, green eyes. Yosef, who had stormed snow forts in the Bronx and beaches in Normandy. Who had learned particle physics and Gemara, sometimes from the same man,

Yosef, whose children multiplied into grandchildren and then great-grandchildren. Who surrounded himself with family on a Shabbos as they filled his home, his arms, and his heart. Who had taught his children nigunim his grandchildren now sang to their families.

Yosef, whose wife Sara had preceded him into the olam haba five years ago.

Yosef, who struggled to make his mourners’ kaddish heard in his soft and trembling voice.

Yosef, who went to minyan every day, trudging through snow, often alone.

Sometimes out of the corner of his eye he’d see them-- his father, Reb Zalman, a massive hunk of a man, an unlettered shochet who spoke five languages and had trained briefly as a chazzan. His mother, Devorah, who marched with a Yiddish sash for workers’ rights, shouting slogans to the beat of a snare drum.

The walk to the synagogue was longer than he remembered, the air crisp and cold. The sun seemed larger and brighter than ever, reflecting off the snow in a million tiny fragments, each one a glittering memory. He took in trembling breaths of air, trying not to see the ones that would reduce him to tears, a snivelling mess outside for all to see.

Abe Raber, tank commander, with his big fleshy nose and trimmed pencil moustache, who had burned to death dragging a wounded crewman from his Sherman.

Joe Dunaway, his best friend at the aerospace company, who had passed thirteen years ago in a high-speed collision.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sara, now in her lacy, long-sleeved, wedding dress, now in her homemade maternity clothes, now with her aluminum walker and shock of white hair, and each time so breathtakingly beautiful.

The synagogue itself seemed deathly quiet, only the buzzing of the yahrzeit boards breaking the silence. He nodded greetings to the other men, took a siddur, and delved into it. Prayers-- time to thank Hashem, praise Hashem, honour Hashem. To ask for healing and for peace on earth. To pray that his newest great-grandchild, Shimon, would make his way out of the incubator, grow from his low birth rate into a Jewish man, healthy and strong.

Midway through the service, he became aware of a presence behind him. Not quite as insubstantial as the memories that accompanied him on his walk, but not totally physical either. He turned.

The man was a small, dumpy Jew, with a big black velvet kipa and a pleasant face. He had a short, scratchy beard, and he would often look up from his siddur to stare squarely at Yosef’s back. They made eye contact once, briefly; Yosef suddenly felt as if he were falling into a pool of quiet emptiness, and the man looked away in apparent shame.

Yosef thought of trying to draw someone else’s attention to this Jew, who he had never seen before, but he also thought better of it. Something, a sort of primal relief deep in his chest, told him that he knew this man, not well but not vaguely either, that this man is a man whom every Jew on earth will at some time come to know.

The man followed Yosef out of the synagogue, as the feeling of relief in his chest-- the left side, near the heart-- blossomed and deepened into an all-encompassing pain, and in the harsh light of the winter’s day, as they exited the synagogue, Yosef saw how the man’s body was covered-- covered-- in dark, impassive, eyes, and his suit was too, and every eye regarded Yosef with a cool, detached interest.

This was when Yosef knew the man for what he was.

The man stepped up and introduced himself, and suggested they walk for a while together, and through the pain, Yosef nodded. They walked. He did not stumble. Yet they had barely gotten one hundred paces from the shul when Yosef’s breath suddenly ran out, and he leaned against a car. His heart felt like it was going to burst-- he could almost feel it twitching, skipping beats, and the pain grew, and in his narrowing vision the small man grew larger and blacker and more all-encompassing, and then everything stopped.

When he opened his eyes, Yosef was still standing next to the car. There was no pain. Nothing, seemingly, had changed.

The angel of death regarded him dispassionately, a small smile on its face.

“Nu, look at your reflection in that car window” it said.

So Yosef did, and found to his surprise that he was twenty-nine again, and he was tall and strong, wearing a full black beard and his Shabbos best, with a brand-new hat. In his hand was his old tallis bag, but now it too was new.

“You’ll need that” said the angel of death “and your siddur too.”

So Yosef checked his tallis bag, and found he had a brand-new siddur, in a new and complex nusach he did not understand. He would, however, have eternity to try and understand it-- and somehow, he figured that sooner or later he would.

He looked up from the siddur and there stood Abe Raber, dressed to the nines in his Class As, his wedding ring sparkling, grinning like he had just won the million-dollar prize.

“Hey Joe” said Abe “fancy seein’ you here.”

Yosef grinned.

“It’s been too long” said Abe. “I missed ya, buddy-- we’ve got a lotta catching up to do.”

Yosef found there were tears of joy in his eyes, but as he wrung Abe’s hand a strange panic descended on him.

“My wife” he said “is she--”

“She’s waiting” said Abe. “And so is Joe, Henri, Mendy, and all the rest. We’ve got an amazing welcome shindig planned-- and wait’ll you see the rabbis we have, and the library we have!”

Yosef found himself laughing, in his deep bass twenty-nine-old voice, right there on the street, with his dead friend, so caught up in the moment he did not see the ambulance, the EMTs, the frantic defibrillation.

The angel of death reached an unfathomable hand into an unfathomable pocket and retrieved a watch that hurt Yosef’s head to look at.

“Nu, I hate to break up the reunion” it said “but yourself and Abe will have much time to catch up, and we have got to get moving.” It reached into empty space and opened a door, behind which stood a well-lit, wood-panelled hallway, like the inside of one of those gigantic wooden synagogues they used to have in Poland.

“Just keep walking until you reach your door” said the angel of death “they’ll be going right into your trial.”

So Abe motioned Yosef in, and Yosef motioned Abe in, and they motioned each other in until they collapsed in laughter, just like back in ‘42 at the Fort Benning NCO Club. They walked in, and the angel of death closed the door, sighed, straightened its jacket, and walked off, for the work of the angel of death is not yet done, and will not be done for a while.

Behind the door, as mentioned, was a hallway, and in that hallway was a door, and behind that door was a courtroom, and in that courtroom was a jolly, muscular fellow with glasses and a bright pink beard, who shook Yosef’s hand and introduced himself as “the Adversary. Yes, that one” and there was a short (nine feet) pugnacious seraph who is “your lawyer-- pretty new, as these things go, but I’ve been reviewing your file and I’m confident we’ll get you off easy” and there was a presence Yosef couldn’t look at, but filled him with celestial joy and peace.

And there were three gruelling months in hell (which is too terrible to describe, yet not important enough to warrant description) and there was Sara, and when he saw her he buried his face in her soft neck, and she was so beautiful, and they cried together for a while. And there were rabbis (R’Akiva: kind and boisterous with stonecutter’s biceps, the Rambam, crotchety and logical but never ill-meaning, the Ralbag, terribly smart about everything and very long-winded), and there was learning, and there were great celebrations with delicious food, and he could dance for hours now and never tire.

And there was Sara, and they were each other’s worlds, and every time he looked at her she grew more beautiful, and often they would sit on the hills and watch the angels moving the earth, as he whispered sweet things into her hair.

And so it was, and so shall it be, until the time of the Moshiach, when Levyatan is slain, the dead are resurrected, and Hashem’s kingship embraces the whole world, l’olam va’ed, amen v’amen v’amen.

But that, my friends, is another story, for another time.

#my writing #judiasm #the jewish experience tag

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newyorktheater · 4 years ago

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Watch “The Line” below.

Alison Pill as Jennifer, a first-year intern in emergency medicine at a hospital in Brooklyn, explains that she chose her profession after listening to the war stories from her Czech grandparents, who lived through two World Wars and an invasion. “I wanted to have a skill that I could trade for food or money, to protect my family. I always had a kind of apocalyptic view of the world. Everyone laughed at me. And here we are.” She is one of the seven frontline medical workers – two doctors, three nurses, an Emergency Medical Technician and a paramedic — who tell their own wartime stories of dealing with COVID-19 in “The Line,” available for free on the Public Theater’s YouTube channel through August 4. It is the latest documentary play by the team that produced “The Exonerated” and “Coal Country.” Although their names have been changed to preserve their anonymity, as we’re told at the beginning of the hour-long video, none of the characters are composites. The concrete details of their lives and the stories they tell, performed by a spot-on cast, help make this play so devastating. In alternating short monologues, the characters first introduce themselves, explaining why they went into their field; describe how they first heard about the coronavirus; and then take us through their experiences over the last few months. David (Santino Fontana), who grew up on Long Island, had been a professional actor, but then his mother was hospitalized, and after talking to the nurses, he thought nursing would be “a great side-job.” His very first shift changed his mind. “They always told us in acting school, ‘If you can find something else that you love, do it.’ And I didn’t think I would, but I did.” (It’s fascinating to hear how his acting training helps him as a nurse.) In what turns out to be a bit of foreshadowing, he explains how his uncle saw him portray Moonlight Martin in “Anything Goes” and every time they saw each other after that, his uncle would parrot back the lyric sung in Brooklynese: “There’s something wrong here.” As the pandemic intensifies, David must deal not only with strangers who get sick, but also with that same uncle who contracts the virus. Sharon (Lorraine Toussaint), a no-nonsense nurse in a nursing home, gets COVID herself. Her son, who is a security guard in a hospital, also gets it, after being given inadequate protection. The hospital is so overcrowded, she has to beg to be admitted. “I’ve never been that sick in my life. But I made it. And then I come back to work and find out that half of my population is gone. Wiped out.” Vikram (Arjun Gupta), an emergency room physician, also contracts the disease, and after he recovers, volunteers to work at a hospital in the Bronx. “From the moment I got there it was utter chaos,” with a third of the doctors out sick, and 16-hour days. If he was struck by the “shared vulnerability” worldwide, which only “certain communities could escape.” The video of George Floyd being killed, Vikram observes, “woke up millions of people. Right? But with medicine there is no video; there’s no way to show people the racism that’s caused these disparate outcomes with COVID.” The stories they tell drive home how overwhelmed the system, how inadequate the support, and how distressing the experience. “We just started hearing cardiac arrest, cardiac arrest, cardiac arrest,” says Oscar (John Ortiz), an EMT. “Like ‘Oh my God, that’s the fifth one in an hour?’ Just back to back to back. Before Covid I had maybe 10-15 cardiac arrests for the whole year. But one week I had 13 deaths that week.” Oscar explains how when a patient died in his ambulance, he waited to transport the body to the morgue whenever possible, to allow the family to go in the back and say their goodbye. “There were no funerals.” If as veteran paramedic Ed (Jamey Sheridan) says, “we were all scared, so just coming to work was an act of — heroism, whatever that means,” none of the people who speak in “The Line” like being called a hero. “Everyone talks about the ‘healthcare heroes,’ the nurses and the doctors and professional staff,” says Dwight (Nicholas Pinnock), an oncology nurse “But environmental services, they had to come in. Food services, they had to come in. The security guards had to come in. Cleaning people. And they are just forgotten.” “NOW we’re heroes,” David says, annoyed. “What the fuck do you think we were doing before all of this? All of a sudden, because we can die, now we’re heroes?”

youtube

The Line Written by Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen Directed by Jessica Blank Original music composition by Aimee Mann and Jonathan Coulton Cast: Santino Fontana (David), Arjun Gupta (Vikram), John Ortiz (Oscar), Alison Pill (Jennifer), Nicholas Pinnock (Dwight), Jamey Sheridan (Ed), and Lorraine Toussaint (Sharon).

CONSIDER SUPPORTING OUR HEALTH CARE PARTNERS:

The Physician Affiliate Group of New York (PAGNY) is one of the largest physicians group in the nation. PAGNY and its Health & Research Foundation created the PAGNY COVID Relief Fund to provide frontline workers with help and continuing emotional health supports. Learn more and consider providing support: https://www.pagny.org/donation/

Health disparities among New Yorkers are large, persistent, and increasing. Public Health Solutions (PHS) exists to change that trajectory and support vulnerable New York City families in living their healthiest lives. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented number of New Yorkers turning to PHS for basic necessities such as food and health insurance support. Learn more and consider providing support: https://www.healthsolutions.org/get-involved/events/.

The Line Review: A devastating look at frontline medical workers Watch "The Line" below. Alison Pill as Jennifer, a first-year intern in emergency medicine at a hospital in Brooklyn, explains that she chose her profession after listening to the war stories from her Czech grandparents, who lived through two World Wars and an invasion.

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whimsically-ominously-auspice · 4 years ago

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Jack: everyone on the internet calls it a miracle that,we're alive

Me: really?

Jack: babe. Remember how I said earlier that sometimes you just look really stupid?

Me: it didn't seem like a miracle to me...

FBI: Well you should ask one of the cops then. Cause I ain't ever seen anyone deader or a room more filled with natural gas to the point where ee could not see for over two hours. We had to feel along the walls with a hope and a prayer we were doing it right to get them off the wall, using night vision goggles on our gas masks.

Me: well I don't have access to the tv channels... That's how I do it every day... Blind..

FBI: what did you do that day any way besides listen to their hearts to see if they would live?

Me: that was all... Well i burped at one of them... Sometimes they don't like to just be living they like something funny. I only did 2 tho... Brian was already awoke.

FBI: yeah he did that on his own. But Sabrina they didn't need any medical treatment. They just came back to life but how?

Me: some dead hang around their body until it's safer to get back in. Some that have had training.

Jack: IDK what I did baby but I was just there

Me: you remember where you were before?

Jack: the wall. Then just watching you but out of body like I sometimes do when I'm sleep but that was all. I seen you go to the store and I tried handing you your purse but you didn't seem to notice

Me: well I didn't know you were dead in the car

Jack: well you didn't even say thank you but you seemed to notice i was there when you got down. You said "well that was weird but not so much. It will be better when you get done being an ass hole and actually get the nerve to come see me. But let's go jn the store." I think. Did you?

Me: probably when I shut the door. I say it so much.. I don't really notice.

FBI: So what about the other 4?

Dinah Julie. My dead mom: i did. This momma. I said "well let's get back in now. Your girls are waiting." She knows how i do it. just gently glide over and shove them in at the light of speed.

My dad: so you just shove them in huh?

My mom: well they don't go. She just listens to their hearts. Oddly they took D down first and she just happened to go down and she knew he was on the floor and that was that.

Me: its weird that i didn't know it was him.

My mom: well shit you should had you seen his whole torso and all

Me: i just wasn't expecting him. I think i would wanted to know why he was there and

My mom: wanted to control

Me: cause a scene more... Get in the way. I Just shut up and work around things that I dont realize... That aren't that important... At that moment... Like i would had mommed out and been all why the Hell did this happen this way and WTF. Not control but know and then people will have to stop and deal with my drama and it causes more of a mess.. Because had i realized i would been upset. I knew there was a certain set of people up to 6... But the extra 2 i was not aware of

Jack: so excuse me ma'am

Me: i was mad at yoh.

Jack: haha.

Me: apparently for getting kidnapped!.

FBI: i don't wanna laugh but..

Me: but so the fact that there was more people didn't really matter because they were being taken care of.

Mom: well you didn't even take care of any of the Germans! It was the old guy you burped at!

Me: the people I'm closest to. I know them and i know their soulmates. And i can't watch their soulmates suffer any more because I've watched it a lot and iy hurts me a lot to see it. Not that the other people aren't important or significant but those two impact my life greatly and most often.

Jack: every single time i get kidnapped all you do is get pissed off at me. Time before last you fucking yelled at me "fuck you and your fucking Dali lllama that you rode in on!!" And you were so fucking pissed and your eyes were red, your brown part. And I was all... "Fuck idc what you say. I'm gonna live" and I felt really stupid because I was sure i was gonna die... Because I was shot in my lung and i thought it got ky heart. And you said that. Fuck you and your fucking Dali Llama you rode in on. I never heard that shit in my life. And i just saw a llama all clean and fresh snd i knew i was dead and you said "the whole fucking world seen that! Shut the fuck up! Go to sleep you're on my fucking nerve" next thing i knew I was in an American Chopper... And i said "thank you" and you said "yeah fuck off" and i said "fuck you bitch!!" And i started to cry and you smiled this slick sick smile all sly... Tilting your head so no one around could see it. And i knew. You said "you're welcome" and i started laughing and i said "i hate this bitch. I'm gonna fuck her hard" then about 6 weeks later after i got out of the hospital in Germany I was at Circle K in Belen and I was just got into town the day before and i smelled this girl in line and i was explaining to you "babe this girl ... I haven't smelled you in so long but she smells just like you where did you say you were?" And this girl did like you and reached back and scratched her head and when all uggghbbhh and i thought no way is that you. So i said it again and you flashed your left arm up your back to scratch it. And you said "oh my fucking God I'm going to kill something" and the cashier said "bad day?" And you said "no. Some stinky boy who is about to --" and i had grabbed your hand you had behind Your back and you didn't move or try to kill me or scream or even pull away. And so i stuck my head up next to you and said "she means me"

Me: and you smelt fucking good although your little beard was ragged... And i was all Fuck this goddamed ass hole sniffing chicks and shit like he's a school boy in love so I kissed your fucking face. But i didn't know it was you.

My mom: his point is that she actually saved his life then, too. I gave her his coordinates and she emailed every person she could think of and even posted it public so someone could find him ASAP. And they found him within 15 minutes. Not next to alive. But completely dead. And i told her. "Uh Your soulmate is dead you know" and she said "oh" "reached over metaphysically and shook his foot and said "dead people don't have sex, don't you know?!" And the first thing to come to life was his dick! I swear to you! I even asked him "did you miss your legs jumping into your feet and put both feet into your penis?" And he's still got no blood pumping in his other head and he says "i think she'll like" sick little bastards. Ive seen her walk into a McDonald's and find a shot gun victim shot in the chest and lean down and whisper "hey im gonna get some food. I think they got hot fries" and shoowm they come right back to life! Talk about enticing a fellow! She does that a lot. Just give Some one the thought they left off on is the best way she always says but if you can't figure that out, bribe.

Me: McDonald's is always easy. Food. If that don't work. Shopping. Sometimes its back to work or home but that yoh can usually tell. Most the time in reality it's the hospital... But I remember that one dude. He was all bleeding and all sat down and ate some food he had ordered. A quarter pounder big Mac they had them back then and some fresh medium fries. And a large soft drink. Coke with a small ice. He wanted the ice for a small cup not the large. He had just got off work. See he just got up off the floor all "where my food. Get. Out the way miss" and sat down and ate. Man he needed a transfusion... I wasn't sure what all went down. I just sat down near him whistling and all.. And he wolfed his food down and he said "man i don't feel so good" and fainted. Man i felt bad. He fell in slow motion just halfway... I went to help him sit up and slipped on this puddle of blood... He must had bled out half his blood. Most of the time i didn't go to the hospital with them. But him i did. He died. A lot. He didn't have enough blood. So i stopped the dude cause he kept zapping him. I said "you can't do enough electricity if he don't have enough of the joints -- the jolts are too much you're gonna fry his self and he already ate those fresh. He ain't got no juice in his wires.... I see you're not an electrician.he ain't got no blood!!! See You're gonna need 3 bags of saline for there to be enough liquid in his veins for his heart to even pump. Hes empty. How you gonna run a car without no gas?!" Finally the EMT eyes lit up said "you meant zapping him won't do no good. You called me froggy and i been lost since then Cause you know that ain't my name" "its because your voice. Like you got a frog in your throat. Well juice him up, Vince!" "Man you act like you aint from the Bronx, i swear. You didn't think you would get shot in there?" "You can't shoot an angel my buddy" "well what did he do that was so wrong then?" "That's not what I meant" "but you did get shot and it bounced off" "oh that's just my mom. She's my bullet proof vest"

Jack: how come I didn't get your mom?

My mom: cause you got your own and she saved your. Cranium! That's why you got shot in the lung. But tree said not to save you from it and we got upset! Until you got a boner and we thought it was funny

Jack: you know how i got kidnapped and shot?

Me: checking on a "homeless shelter" and they thought you were an actual kidnapper and they kidnapped you and held you hostage until your time was up and no one saved you so they killed you?

Jack: what the fuck babe

Me: i told you I'd kill your dam horse, too. Did you know that's what happened?

Jack: not until this fucking second "DAD"

Me: I told you all that shit about what he did in Iraq with that barbaric guy. And how he was in on 911 And how he used drones to shoot Iraqis for no fucking reason. I wrote it. I told everyone.

My mom: that's not Jack's fault so why.

Me: he was supposed to know. I wasn't supposed to leave him at Circle k. But who else was there? Alex Laughlin And I couldn't stand the sight of him. I got sick and i had to leave

Jack: well you told me to get the fuck out the car

Me: because I thought you were him! And you got out and every one went over and including Matt Hagan and i was all fuck this shit. I'm not doing this, I'll get myself killed.

Jack: well thanks a lot "dad" for getting me fucking killed and pretending to care

Me: i fucking told you. I hated you Jesse and I meant it. You fuck with me one more fucking time you're gonna eat fucking dirt. Do you understand?

Jesse: no

FBI: Sabrina so you're telling me that Jesse You're always emailing is a terrorist?

Me: yeah why didn't you know that?

FBI: because hes a dam liar. Mother fuckers of God. He calls them homeless shelters. That you run. But you don't do that shit you build them their own houses

Me: exactly. I don't fuck with home less people. They dont want homes. I bought some and then the homeless rented out the houses and moved back oj the streets. They explained to me they prefer to live outside. So i don't fuck with homeless. Take them food. Make sure they got umbrella and plastic sheeting for rain storms and blankets and so on and feed them but don't touch them. Leave them where they be. I teach my daughter that "they are homeless because they want to be" granted that isn't all. Some have other circumstances. But I dont fuck with homeless. They live under the stars. No rules, the truest most free people in the world. I dont fuck with them and it PISSES ME OFF YOUD USE MY NAME on a HOMELESS SHELTER, how fucking dare you. When its KIDNAPPING.

Jesse: well what do you want me to do? I'm here to please you!

Me: choke to death and die. Choke on your lies. And die. What the fuck do yiu think.j

Jesse: no

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