The crime on Abbott, the miracle on Alexander

The car slid through the cold rain on Abbott, and I saw out of the corner of my eye a tall thin man, holding another man's head by the hair, bending over him and punching him repeatedly in the face. In a second, I was past them.

The light turned red. I stopped. I turned. I saw the tall man punch his victim one last time, before he dropped him in the space between two parked cars and walked quickly away. Should I get out and follow him, leaving my 5-year-old to wait for me at the corner of Hastings, I asked myself.

No. It's wet, and cold, and I have a child in my car.

I dug through my purse, searching for my cell phone. I couldn't find it. And then the light changed. In a split second, I made my decision. I took the turn and continued on, marveling that I could simply proceed, leaving a man apparently half dead in the cold rain of a winter night.

As I contemplated the meaning of this, I saw a cop car pull up beside me. I rolled down my window and motioned to the driver. He rolled down his window. I told him what I'd seen, a fight, one man down. He said they would check it out.

They rounded the corner and I continued up Hastings, careful to stay slow in anticipation of the possibility that someone stoned on something would weave in front of the car. Would the police see a guy lying between two parked cars on a dark and cold night?

In my front seat sat a hundred dollars worth of steaks and lamb cuts I'd just bought for my brother, who was healing from a kidney transplant. His miraculous recovery from surgery had me spellbound with gratefulness, so spellbound that the violent scene I witnessed moments before seemed like the hundreds of scenes I'd watched from the comfort of my seat in movie theatres.

I'd never actually seen a guy beat another human being like that.

Not in real life. But countless times in movies or on TV.

I drove past the Chinese market and the rice company and turned onto Alexander, parking my car. My 5-year-old, in the back seat, chattered away happily about scenes from a YouTube video with a dancing cat.

At Windsor Meats, the white headed woman behind the counter, told me her daughter had received a lung transplant two years ago, when I explained why I was buying all the beef and lamb.
"She's doing wonderfully," the woman said. "She was twenty-eight at the time. It saved her life. It was a miracle."

The week of my brother's surgery, I saw the movie Redacted, by Brian DiPalma. The movie tells the story of the gang rape of a 14 year old Iraqi girl by US troops, who then murder her, her younger sister, and her parents. Then they burn the house down.

The feature film ends with a series of real photographs of Iraqi war victims. I wept through this part. The sight of a young boy dying in his father's arms I recalled from the time it happened. The photograph of a pregnant woman mistakenly murdered at a check point was devastating. The film was devastating. I went to the movie with my mother and my friend without knowing what it was we were getting into. There were three other people in the theatre. It was a Saturday night. I left the cinema feeling it should be mandatory for every American to watch this film. I recalled the scene in Clockwork Orange, where the young murderer Alex, must sit with his eyelids forced open watching scene after scene of violence, until the impact of human suffering comes home to him, and the thought of violence makes him physically ill. I felt like Alex.

Miracle
My brother's recovery is a miracle of modern science. So many people are being saved today by transplants. At the kidney clinic at St. Paul's Hospital we sat in a room full of men and women who had all received gifts of new kidneys. They looked normal and healthy. The staff is amazing. My brother received a clean bill of health.

The week before, when my brother was still recovering after the surgery in the hospital, I left late. In the elevator, a male nurse and I got to talking. He was exhausted, he said. He worked on the dialysis ward. In the hospital on the sixth floor, to the right, is the transplant unit and to the right, the unit where people must have their blood cleaned by machines in order to survive, waiting and hoping for kidneys to come to them. Three hundred people remain on kidney waiting lists. It was hard work, the nurse said, watching people suffer. It wore him out, but he’d be back tomorrow. I told him that my father had been on dialysis for six years, how painful it had been to watch him suffer. I told him about the miracle of my brother. The elevator doors opened. We both got out and walked off to our cars.

My brother’s donor is a remarkable woman. As she was recovering from donor surgery, she shared a room with a young Iranian woman who had lost kidney function during childbirth. Her arms were black and blue from the wear and tear of dialysis. Her daughter is three now. “I know I’m going to find her a kidney,” this remarkable woman said. “I’m going to find 300 kidneys,” she said. “If people only knew how wonderful it is to do this, not everybody would, but some would. If they saw people’s faces, and heard their stories.”


The rain fell on the windshield in fat drops, as we rounded onto Alexander and parked. It's turning into snow, I told my son, pointing up at a street light that was spotlighting the fat white flakes. I turned off the car. He yelped with joy.

I helped him out of his car seat and we went up to my brother's. All the way up, my son fantasized about the snowy day we’d wake up to the next morning. The things we would do, slipping, sliding, and lobbing snowballs at each other.


In the warmth of their apartment, my brother’s wife was making salmon patties. She's a vegetarian so I pan fried the steak. As I watched the meat cook, I told them about the man beating up what must have been someone he knew. I speculated that it had to do with drugs and money. They shuddered when I described how the perpetrator had held the victim's head by the hair and pounded away at his face.

It had been dark. I had felt powerless. It had been raining. I had a child with me. And I was on the way to a celebration I didn't wan to miss. But I had seen.

"What would you have done?" I asked.

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