JOURNAL

I took a walk to the store after work today. I have to walk by a hospital's emergency room entrance. An SUV came speeding around a corner and screeched to a halt at the intersection just before the hospital parking lot entrance and a passenger side door opened up. Out fell a young man who landed on his hands and knees. He managed to pull himself up enough to stand on one leg. The other leg he was holding, bent, from touching the ground or taking any of the weight or pressure one usually uses on both legs to stand and walk. Upon a second glance I notice he has a hole in his jeans on his upper right thigh and there's blood everywhere down his right thigh and calf and he proceeds to hop the better part of a block from the intersection he was so uncerimoniously dropped off at into the emergency room entrance.

None of the 20 or 30 people wandering to and from various placees, myself included, bothered to stop or see if he was okay or anything. What's more, seeing this really didn't even phase me until I got home from the store and had a minute to really process it. I'm not sure if it's more messed up that this happened or that none of us who watched intervened or that it really didn't phase me upon seeing it.

I live in a notoriously and legitimately bad part of town where gunshots are a daily and nightly part of the neighbrohood soundtrack and gang activity has only continued to escalate over the years I've lived here - and while I didn't for the time I lived elsewhere. But, man.