Living and Dying in Brick City (29 page)

Maybe someone would tell the story of the afternoon when I strolled onto the bike path at Weequahic Park and collided with a bike rider, whose handlebars knocked out my front baby teeth. And back to Beth we went. And, of course, there was the night in high school when I stumbled around outside the emergency room ambulance bay with my friends after one of them smoked marijuana for the first time and thought he was dying. The audience would get a good laugh, knowing all had ended well. The accident-prone, mischievous boy who’d grown into a troubled teenager had returned home to Beth as a doctor, and spent his life there trying to save others. The end.

That’s the storybook finale that had played out many times in my head.

It wasn’t supposed to change abruptly on an ice-cold morning in January 2005, just six years into my career at Beth, with me sitting in Dr. B’s office, silently rehearsing how I’d break the news that it was time for me to leave. When I’d first begun considering my life without Beth, I’d reached out to the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark and even got close to an
agreement to work as an E.R. doctor there. Like Beth, it was familiar, and that was comforting. I’d spent countless hours doing trauma rotations there during residency. Its reputation for saving lives after a trauma was unmatched in our area. If you had eight minutes to live and were five minutes from another hospital and ten minutes from University, you would want to take the gamble to try to get to University. The place was just that good. It’s funny, though, that during my childhood we always joked that “UMDNJ” stood for U Most Die in New Jersey. Perhaps that was because many of the gunshot victims from the neighborhood were taken there, and many never made it out. I suppose it was just easier to joke about the perceived inadequacies of the hospital rather than face the difficult truth about why so many black boys never made it home. But I saw close-up that University had the staff, the know-how, and the equipment to mobilize like nowhere else when a life was on the line. The thing that concerned me, though, was that there was no structured community outreach program at University, and while the hospital’s administrators said all the right things to woo me, I feared I would end up in the same situation I’d found at Beth.

So there I was before Dr. B, and it was showtime. When I finally said aloud the words I’d rehearsed to myself, they didn’t come as a huge shock to him. From our earlier talks, he’d gauged that I was unhappy. He and I both knew it was time for me to move on. As I stood to leave, Dr. B walked from behind his oversized desk and gave me a hug. He said he understood my decision and knew it had been a tough one for me. He wished me well. A few days later, I sent in the official letter of resignation, but I kept my leaving quiet, telling only my closest associates and swearing them to secrecy. Walking away would be tough enough. I didn’t want any prolonged good-byes.

The three months seemed to rush past, and as the time wound
down, I found myself thinking about the lives I’d saved, the many I’d lost, the laughs, the learning, the frustrations, the joy, the tears I’d shared with so many within these walls. The day before my last shift, I was sitting at the desk typing a note about a patient when an EMS worker rolled in with a man who had been found wandering the Newark airport. The patient carried no bags, had no personal belongings, and appeared to be in a confused stupor. The only items that emergency workers had found in his pockets were a ticket to Mexico and some local telephone numbers. One of the residents that I was supervising picked up the man’s chart while I talked to the emergency crew.

“Dr. Davis, I can’t believe you’re leaving,” Rob, one of the emergency technicians, said. “We need you to stay.”

The word was out.

I thought about my mother, who had told me many times throughout my life that I should always grow, reach new heights, and never hold myself back. I often drew inspiration from her. She rarely addressed an issue directly—as in, “Yes, son, it’s a good idea for you to leave,” or “No, son, I think you should stay.” She’d just throw out one of her sayings and leave it to me to extract the meaning. I was stepping into the unknown, but I knew I shouldn’t be afraid to grow.

The resident approached our airport patient and completed a medical history and a physical. She was now ready to explain her findings to me. In her confident second-year voice, the young doctor presented her case. The patient was confused and appeared to have an altered mental status. His vital signs were normal, but he had some abrasions on his head and scalp swelling. Otherwise, his exam was benign. I listened, and then asked for her diagnosis before chiming in. She named five possible medical conditions. Then she added that she wanted to call the telephone numbers found in the patient’s pocket. I smiled. This was a simple but key step that
set apart the great clinicians. One extra step could go a long way in figuring out a case. She had learned well, and I would miss this part of my job.

I had told no one in the department when my final day would be, and so I was surprised to see my co-workers appear with a cake in my final moments. We then gathered in the break room to say our good-byes. They had taught me so much, and I was grateful. There is no harder-working, more talented group of people anywhere. But I felt none of the sadness and emotion that I’d experienced when the decision was new. I felt only peace. I packed my things, slid on my leather jacket, pulled my bag onto my shoulder, and waved one last farewell. As I stepped into the parking lot, there were no fireworks, just the nippy air and a knowing in my soul:

Beth would be fine. And so would I.

M
y work at the Violence Prevention Institute put me right where I wanted to be: in kids’ faces with the truth. And there was no better partner than my colleague Hashim Garrett, a former gang member who was fifteen years old in May 1990, when he learned firsthand what it was like to get shot. Hashim, partially paralyzed from the waist down, would make his way to the front of a room slowly, using metal crutches strapped across his wrists. Then he’d share his spellbinding story: How six bullets from a Tec-9 semi-automatic handgun tore through his flesh, striking his spinal cord, leaving him unable to move or control his bodily functions. How he lay under an elevated train track on the streets of Brooklyn for the longest half hour of his life, waiting for help and pleading with God not to let him die. How he spent six grueling months in the hospital, unable at first even to go to the bathroom without help.

Then I’d feed off Hashim, pull from my medical bag the tools of emergency medicine, including a scary-looking scalpel and a gigantic “rib spreader,” which is used to crack open the chest during surgery. I’d describe how a Foley catheter is inserted to drain urine from the body and how a plastic “poop bag” collects feces outside the body when the intestines no longer work. I’d show pictures of
real gunshot victims, surgical procedures and damaged organs, then reveal how the once-tough drug dealers and gang members, riddled with bullet holes, cried for their mamas and pleaded with me to save their lives once they got to the emergency room.

The Institute’s team included other board-certified emergency medicine physicians, a social worker, and Hashim. Our presentations were explicitly graphic; we got the kids’ attention. I could see it in their eyes and hear it in their torrent of questions. We frightened some of them, too, but in this situation, fear was a good thing. We wanted kids to fear drugs, gangs, and guns enough to stay away from them. We showed our young audiences the real life-altering and deadly consequences of bad choices, but we also provided information and training to help them make smarter ones. From 2005 to 2007, I visited at least eighty elementary, middle, and high schools in Newark, East Orange, West Orange, and Irvington. The work was therapeutic, powerful, and purposeful. Unfortunately, though, it did not last. The program had been funded primarily by a two-year grant from the office of then New Jersey Attorney General Peter C. Harvey, but the funds were not renewed after Harvey left office in 2006. The news was extremely disappointing, especially given that our politicians spend many millions on the back end of violence, treating gunshot victims in hospitals and housing the perpetrators in jails.

It is impossible to provide raw data showing how many students rejected gangs or drug deals or walked away from potentially deadly arguments because of what they’d learned and experienced through the Institute, but I have no doubt that we changed minds and hearts and saved lives. In financial terms, even if we prevented just one child from getting shot, we saved the state of New Jersey tens of thousands of dollars. The medical costs of treating just one serious gunshot patient, including hospitalization, were then an estimated $300,000. Meanwhile, the Institute operated on a
$400,000 grant for two years. After its primary source of financing was eliminated, though, the Institute cut staff and scaled back dramatically.

I left the program in 2007 with tremendous admiration for my former colleagues, particularly Dr. Dyson. He’d responded to the increasing numbers of young people showing up in the emergency room when it was too late by creating the Institute. This book is in part my call to action to the broader health crisis in urban communities.

For five years after my departure from the Institute, I worked under contract at a hospital in central New Jersey and another in Pennsylvania. The commute was exhausting, and I was grateful to return to the Newark area in 2012 to work on the emergency department staffs of two hospitals. In addition to my clinical work, I continue to reach out to young people through The Three Doctors Foundation. People often ask me if George, Rameck, and I are still friends—a question that always puzzles me. The bond that the three of us formed to pull one another up and out of poverty is lifelong, and we cherish the opportunities to get together to do our charity work and speaking engagements and, of course, to socialize. Rameck is a board-certified internist at University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro and an assistant professor of medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, our alma mater. George recently got married and works as an assistant professor of clinical dentistry in the Department of Operative Dentistry at Columbia University College of Dental Medicine.

Since the publication of
The Pact
, the three of us have shared our story in a children’s book,
We Beat the Streets
, and in a book about fatherhood and forgiveness,
The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive and Reconnect with Their Fathers
. By the time we began working on the last book, my father was too ill to participate, and he died before its completion. But I was grateful that
I had a chance to learn all I never knew about him and to grow a bit closer to him. In his final years, he trusted my advice and guidance in making sure he got the appropriate medical care for his prostate cancer and other health ailments. When he closed his eyes for good, I held no more bitterness toward him, just love.

My relationship with my father had for a long time left me somewhat fearful of becoming a father myself. What if I failed? I had friends who had grown up without fathers but became amazing fathers themselves by forging with their children the close bond they wished they’d shared with their own dads. My friends gave me hope that the same was possible for me. When my relationship with Melissa turned serious, we sometimes toyed with the idea of having a child together. I’d occasionally glance in the backseat of my car and wonder what it would be like to have a cooing baby strapped back there, relying on me to help him navigate the world. In October 2007, I was in San Francisco as part of a book tour when Melissa sent me a text message asking me to call her. As soon as I made it back to my hotel room, I sat at the desk and pulled out my phone.

“I have something to tell you,” she said cheerfully. Being a doctor, I’d already noticed subtle changes in her body, and I was pretty sure I knew what she was about to say. Even so, I can’t recall a happier moment in my life than when Melissa confirmed my suspicion: She was pregnant. I stared out the hotel window and allowed the news to sink in:
I was going to be a dad
.

My son, Jaxson Hayes Davis, was born on June 18, 2008. His life has brought even more clarity to my purpose, beyond the love, nurturing, and guidance that fatherhood requires. He makes it easier for me to believe that the safer, saner, healthier world that I envision for all children is possible if we all pitch in. For me, that has largely meant hands-on mentoring, just being there for kids like Malique. He was ten years old when his mother stood up in a
Newark bookstore and introduced him to George, Rameck, and me nearly a decade ago. The three of us have remained close to him ever since.

Malique recently completed his freshman year at Delaware State and is excited about pursuing a career in physical therapy. The two of us talk, text, and email regularly, but one day I was surprised to get a long, emotional letter from him. He seemed hardly able to believe that someone with no biological connection to him has cared enough to stick with him all these years, especially during the tough times. His genuine gratitude deeply moved me. I remember feeling the same sense of wonder and appreciation when I was in college and medical school and strangers who had no compelling reason to help me did. And they expected little in return, just that I do my best to succeed, and then that I remember what it took.

The idea for this book came unexpectedly. One snowy winter evening many years ago, I was out to dinner with a friend and was sharing a medical story that had unfolded in the E.R. earlier that day. My phone rang, and I lost track of the story. When I got off the phone, my friend was still engaged in my story and demanded that I finish it. Right then, it occurred to me that others might have the same reaction, that I could use real-life drama to shine a spotlight on the health crisis in America’s cities and show the potential consequences of bad decisions regarding personal health. We can learn through one another. It is my hope that this book creates ongoing dialogue and sparks a movement that pushes us all to take our fair piece of ownership in helping to heal our homes and communities.