My buddy Ryan’s a nurse at S.F. General, which is just a few blocks from my house in San Francisco’s Mission District. Ryan didn’t intentionally set out to become a nurse, he more fell into it because he needed a job, as his unemployment was running out and his parents refused to loan him any more money.The thing I always admired about Ryan was his ability to fall into all types of strange moral quandaries. Some people are just shit magnets. No matter what they do, bad stuff happens to them. One day they may loose their keys, the next they get a $75 parking ticket, the next day their car won’t start, and the day after that the boss is telling them if they’re late to work one more time, they’re going to get fired… We all know the type… There’s always one in every group of friends. But that wasn’t quite Ryan. Whenever Ryan is presented with a problem, it always ends up being some kind of weird moral dilemma.
For example, a few months back, Ryan was telling me about a new MEDEVAC helicopter company that wanted to build a helipad on his hospital’s roof to transport future highway 101 crash victims.
While it made logical sense to me, it threw Ryan for a loop. You see Ryan rented a bedroom in a three-bedroom house right across the street from the hospital. He told me that even with earplugs the ambulances screaming in and out of the hospital parking lot at all hours keeps him up at nights. The last thing he wanted was a MEDEVAC chopper thumping in and out on top of that.
Ryan ended up signing the neighborhood petition that ultimately blocked construction of the helipad. But what continues to trouble him to this day is the person who will inevitably end up dying in flight because they couldn’t get to the closer hospital? Somehow he said he would always feel somewhat morally responsible for that person’s death.
Ryan stopped by my place the other day for a couple of beers and to share his latest moral dilemma.
As he cracked up Sapporo, Ryan leaned in and said, “This afternoon we got this guy come in… He was a mess… coughing blood… hips displaced from his spinal cord…”
I winced and told him to save the visuals.
“Long story short, he ended up dying in the emergency room about fifteen minutes later.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“That kind of thing doesn’t bother me anymore… As senior nurse on duty, it’s my job to identify the person and immediately alert their significant other and/or next of kin… So, as I’m going through this guy’s pockets looking for his identification, I stumbled upon this …”
Ryan handed a neatly, twice-folded note to me.
“Dude, I don’t want to read some guy’s frickin’ suicide note!” And I handed it back to him.
“No,” Ryan said, “Oddly enough it’s not a suicide note. And herein lies my quandary… You see I’m required by law to turn all of a deceased person’s personal belongings over to the spouse or next of kin… And I’ve always dutifully done so… But in this case, I just can’t bring myself to deliver this letter…”
“What, was the guy having a passionate affair with his secretary and you don’t want his wife to find out about it?... Get over it. She’s got a right to know.”
Ryan then handed the letter again, which I reluctantly opened.
Dear Omani,
If you are reading this, then there’s a good chance I’m either dead or grievously injured… And you need to know that if that is the case, you are one hundred percent to blame for the misfortune that has befallen me…
Your friends will comfort you by saying, “It’s not your fault… There’s nothing you could have done…” But, alas, it will not be true in this particular case… Allow me to explain.
You must understand that I ALWAYS take the 12 Folsom bus home from work… I leave the office at 4:30 p.m. and arrive home by 5:30 p.m. (unless there’s a ball game, in which case I don’t get home until 5:45 p.m. because of the extra street traffic). You could set your watch to it. People say you can’t predict the future, but you could predict that on any given weekday that I would be walking out of my office at 4:30 p.m. and walking in my front door by 5:30 p.m. with a 99.9 % accuracy.
But then you called me at lunch today. You said that if I walked down Montgomery St. to Market and caught the BART to 24th St., I could cut my commute time by 15 minutes AND get more exercise in the process. I remember vividly telling you that I’m perfectly happy with my current route home, but you INSISTED that I give it a try.
You said, “What have you got to lose?... Just try it!”
So here I am sitting on BART writing this letter to you. I want you to know that I am NOT here on my own free will, but because you asked me.
If anything should happen to me now between work and home, you will know that it was entirely your doing, and you will need to live with this for the rest of your life…
Your friends will say things like, “Maybe it was destiny…”
To which I say, “No, it is not. Destiny would be me taking the bus home like I had originally planned. Had I died in route while taking my usual planned route, that would be destiny. By forcing me (albeit through verbal argument) to change my path, you have effectively altered my destiny.
Your friends can say, “But he was the one who ultimately decided to try this new route home… No one bound his hands, put a gun to his head and demanded that he change his course today.”
But that’s not the point here. The point is that you asked me to do something that I didn’t want to do, and it ultimately changed the course of my life.
And now look at me… or what’s left of me. If anything, I hope this letter makes you think twice before ever suggesting that someone alters his or her destiny for you.
Love,
Robert
