A Lost City

I work in one of the most dangerous cities in the United States. Its crazy actually saying something like that. The city never use to be like this, it was once a place where people from the suburbs would buy homes to spend their summers. It was once a place that you could put on the back of a post card and call it the place to be. Now the entire city is in shambles, a city full of drug dealers, gang members, rapists and killers. A city where there is not one block that doesn't have bombed out houses.  Poverty is at its worst in this city, possibly the worst it could be without calling the place a giant shanty town. The homeless set up camps all throughout the city, in parks and woods. They call them tent cities, the homeless have actually started there own community.

Last night there was a sixteen year old crisis patient. She arrived with her mother and two little sisters ages fourteen and twelve. I didn't see too much of the patient but did happen to notice the mother frantically wandering around with two daughters. The mother had to stay until her daughter was seen by the crisis unit. Angry with the situation she felt that it was her duty to let us know repeatedly that she needed to get her kids to school so that DYFS would stop calling her and leave her alone. Or as she liked to put it "so they get off my junk ". As the night goes on she continues to walk in and out of the the ER. At one point we realize that the fourteen year old daughter is missing. When we confronted the mother and asked her what had happened, she says " she mad and went home ". Completely clueless to the fact of how wrong this entire situation was. A woman let her fourteen year old daughter walk home at 3:00 o'clock in the morning through the very same streets I described to you in the first paragraph. A fourteen year old girl at that time of night in this city has a 50% chance of survival. This is a city where grown men are pistol whipped daily by children between the ages ten and fifteen. I can only hope that she made it home ok. Needless to say we contacted DYFS and hopefully Ms. Trash bag never gets to see her children again.