Not One, Not Two

On how we see other people

I revved our little silver rental car up Ocean Boulevard and cut a hard right onto Wilshire, weaving through Sunday afternoon traffic, cutting someone off to zip through a yellow light. Glancing in the rearview mirror at my three-year-old son’s pale, strained face, I said to my wife, who was clutching him in the back seat, “Give him the epi now.”

“I can’t,” she said, so I swung the car over to the curb, turned back and jabbed the auto-injector against Milo’s tiny quad muscle through his sweatpants. I held it there for a ten-count as he wailed. “I’m so sorry, buddy,” I said, turning back to drive. At the green, I accelerated into traffic again.

Another red light at the next block. We were still twenty blocks from the emergency room at St. John’s. There was a massive white Cadillac in front of me, so I pulled right into the bus lane, to cut in front of him.

I edged my car forward and waved at the man, who looked to be mid-fifties, with a silvery brush cut. He grinned darkly at me and waggled his finger, like: No you don’t. The light turned green and he accelerated, boxing me out into a row of parked cars. I swung back behind him, and a short block later, we hit another red light, so I pulled into the bus lane again, alongside him. I waved and honked frantically. 

The guy looked over with a competitive fuck-you smirk, and lowered his window to say something. I yelled, “My kid’s sick! We’re going to the hospital!” 

The man turned back to see Emma and Milo in the rear seats, then looked at me again just as the light turned green. I’ve never seen someone’s face change so quickly. His smirk melted instantly into frightened concern, and he waved me in front of him, looking as worried as if he were family.

Minutes later we were in the ER, docs and nurses swarming Milo while I held his hand. Thanks to epi and IV benadryl, his airway opened up, his breathing returned to normal, and he dozed off. I curled up in the hospital bed next to him, holding him.

In the hours that followed, I thought back on that Cadillac driver. It’s okay, I wanted to tell him. Thank you. In the decade since, I’ve thought occasionally about what transpired in the half-second shift between us. 

I mostly forget. It’s hard to see other people this way, especially driving, or in any context where our safety feels precarious, or even threatened. I want to remember more often.

It took me a while to get used to being an EMT in a small town. I found it jarring at first to see patients from calls in everyday contexts. They don’t recognize me, being that I’m now in street clothes, and because when we previously met, they were in crisis.

Years ago, a person was having dinner a few tables away from where I sat with my family. Less than a year earlier, my partner and I had performed CPR on their loved one while they wept nearby. Now they were talking affably with a dinner companion while they shared calamari. You’d never know, if you saw them like this.

I recognize a cashier from a head-on collision. A woman walking out of the movie theater from a psychiatric emergency¹. On and on.

I’m always happy to see these people back in normal life. It strikes me, though, that our harrowing, unthinkable moments and experiences are of course normal life, too. They happen to all of us, as sure as anything.

If we knew anything of another’s hardest moments, we’d feel nothing but tenderness toward them. Just knowing that might be enough, without even knowing the specifics of what they’ve dealt with, what they’re currently facing, what lies ahead.

I fail constantly, but I’m trying to wonder more about people I encounter, even if it’s after the fact. In See No Stranger, a gorgeous, essential memoir and how-to guide to something she calls “revolutionary love,” activist Valarie Kaur suggests:

When you see faces on the street or screen or subway, say to yourself: “Sister, Brother, Sibling. Aunt. Uncle. My Child.”

You can also say: You are a part of me I do not yet know.

In doing so, you are retraining your eye to see all others as part of you. You are creating an embodied sense of the truth of our interconnectedness. You are training yourself to see no stranger.

I hope you’re doing well, wherever you are.

1. EMS call specifics and identifying details are concealed or changed to maintain patient privacy.