9/19/08 St.Stephens bench on lawn

Friday we all took a 30-minute silent walk down the street, and on the way back Abel pointed and motioned at something cross the street and darted across to the other side. I followed him and it turns out that he was wanting to help out this guy who was asleep on the sidewalk.
Every day I see people sleeping on the sidewalk and if you didn't know better you would think it was because they were all destitute. But then you realize that everyone takes naps around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. I've seen men in nice cloths sleeping on the sidewalk, it really doesn’t define you. So I had seen this guy from across the wide street, and figured he was just another rick shaw driver or beggar taking a nap. When we got closer I realized that there was something wrong.
The first indication was that he had a legion of flies covering his whole body laying eggs in the cuts in between his toes and in his eye lids, and aside from that...he was shockingly thin. He had no fat on him, and no recognizable muscle. He was a walking skeleton.... well except that he couldn't walk. Abel and I bought some food, a coke and water and brought it to him. He didn't have enough strength to tear thru the thin plastic wrapping that held his sandwich. He ate a small bite of the sandwich and looked at us and shook his head back and fourth and put it back in the bag. He was babbling, and the only thing Abel could understand was that he had not eaten in 20 to 30 days, and had no strength to walk. He was incredibly excepting of the flies that covered him. We realized that he was starving to death, wasn't physically capable of eating and that if we left him there he would die.
We then realized that there was a government hospital right across the street that I hadn't noticed before. We called a rickshaw and helped the man to it and then pushed it across the street. He didn't even have the strength to sit up. Abel helped him into the hospital, and when we had him sit down on this metal chair. He didn't have the strength to ease himself down, so he came down on the chair with a loud "THUNK" made by his protruding tailbone hitting the metal with great force, and with no fat or muscle to cousin his fall.
We went into the office to talk to the doctors. They had us bring him in, and after noticing he was homeless asked "Who is this man? Where did you find him?" Abel, not startled enough to loose his odd sense of humor said "Thailand!" ...."really?".... "no, actually he was dying right in front of your hospital. He hasn't eaten in 20 days, is no longer capable of eating, and doesn’t have the strength to walk or talk"..."well what are we supposed to do about it?"....."Why are you asking us? you're the doctors! He's not capable of eating, feed him intravenously"..... "sorry we can't do that, as soon as we give him any treatment we are legally responsible. The man said his whole family is dead, so who will take his body in the unfortunate event that he dies? If he has no family to claim responsibility we won't do anything".
We convinced them to take a blood test, and when the results came back they said "He doesn’t have any disease, so we can't admit him. He's malnourished... that’s all. If he eats he'll be fine" and so we said "well... he CAN'T eat... that's the reason he's starving to death! he needs to be hooked up to an IV!" and we had this back and fourth argument with the doctors. After Abel said he would take full responsibility for him. the doctors said "We can do some tests, but we won't admit him unless we see a clear problem. But we will only do the tests if someone stays with him the whole time. We don't know how long it will be till anyone sees him. Do you REALLY want to wait around all day? ".... "Actually we'd be happy to!". They were a little taken back, and then they said "why? he is a beggar. He starves because he is lazy. What if we help him? He'll just go back on the street doing nothing. These kinds of people don't like to work. Why waste the time?"....... "just make him well, give him some strength, get his appetite back, then he can decide for himself whether or not he wants to work" but they kept trying to talk us out of it.
after waiting 30 minutes in the waiting room they said "okay take him up to the 3rd floor for an X-ray".... "Can we get a wheelchair?"...."why?"....."umm, because he can't walk". So they gave us the worst wheelchair they had, with one small front wheel that didn't turn properly. So we spent a few hours running him around the hospital in this piece of s--- wheelchair getting tests done.
One thing I forgot to mention.... this guy smelled like had been taking baths in cow piss for a month.. and he stunk up any room he was brought into. When we had an X-ray done, we helped him out of his shirt and then threw it away because it was so rancid. Abel then quite literally gave this man the shirt off his own back.... and a pair of his underwear (sounds odd... but he needed it).
This guy seemed incredibly familiar, and I thought I had seen him before. I realized that he reminded me of pictures I had seen of holocaust victims. He also bears a strange resemblance to Abraham Lincoln.
After the tests where done and they said we'd have to wait, Abel had to leave and yuvraj (who had come over when he heard what we were dealing with) had to teach in a slum, so I volunteered to wait. After waiting by myself in the waiting room for an hour or two I think they realized that we were seriously committed to helping this guy, and we wouldn't stop being a major pain in the ass until Ravedra (the mans name btw) got the help he needed. They came out "you can leave. We're treating him now and you don't have to be here anymore". I got the doctors phone number and made sure they were actually treating him and not just BSing, then assured the doctors that we would be back to visit him often (to ensure some accountability) and then I left for Amy’s house, where we watched Dumb and Dumber in Hindi.
When they were trying to talk us out of taking responsibility for Ravendra, they kept saying "people like this come in all the time"... well something tells me that if that’s true, they kick they're starving butts back out on the street to die (unless a couple pesky lads from California and monipore badger them into it).
He's doing better now, though he still doesn’t have much of an appetite, he is being fed thru an IV and can now sit up, walk, talk, and bathe by himself. Mayang helped give him a bath last nigh, which was not a pleasant experience for him. He has a sensitivity to smell similar to Aaron’s, and he left that hospital with the look of "I'm going to go home and scrub my skin with steel wool until I have shed my first 3 layers"
There was a man in the hospital that I could tell from his screaming and moaning that he had appendicitis. I asked "appendix?" and he got silent, nodded, then went back to screaming and moaning. I almost told him "yeah the first times the worst" forgetting that it's only suppose to happen once. Then I thought to myself "Lucky skunk gets to have his appendix taken out!"