Drunk or Ill?

The other day, at about three-thirty in the afternoon, while my wife and I were traveling by taxi down Seventh Avenue in mid-town Manhattan, she pointed out the body of a man lying in a fetal position on the sidewalk.  We had stopped at a red light, which gave us an opportunity to view the scene.  In the minute or so that we waited for the light to change, we saw at least twenty people walk by the man without stopping or even pausing.  They probably assumed, as I did, that he had passed out from alcohol or drugs, but what if we were wrong?  Perhaps he had had a stroke or a seizure or had fainted from illness.

I remembered the male bodies that littered the main train station in Moscow, when I had the misfortune to spend a couple of days there in 1992.  They were clearly drunk, although I can’t tell you how I knew that.   But then I remembered a man lying on a low stone wall in Calcutta, who seemed to me and my wife to be dying.  How was I to know whether the man on Seventh Avenue was drunk or sick?

I asked my wife what she would do if she were a pedestrian had come across the man on the sidewalk.  She’d call 911, she said.  Why hadn’t any of the passersby done that?  He was poorly dressed, perhaps homeless.  I doubt he would have lain there long if he had been wearing a suit and tie and had been carrying a briefcase.   On the other hand, if he was in fact drunk, and the police arrived in response to a 911 call, he’d most likely be arrested for disorderly behavior. Would that have helped him?  It’s hard to know what’s the right thing to do. On the whole, though, I think that as usual my wife was right.  

As it happened, that morning I read in the Times about an exceedingly rich couple in London who were generous supporters of drug rehabilitation programs.  Recently the wife was found dead at home and at the same time her husband was stopped by the police for driving erratically.  It turns out that both were addicted to drugs.  Earlier, when a large amount of cocaine had been found in their home, they avoided penalties because of their status and their connections.  Had he been found on the street like that man on Seventh Avenue, he would probably have been brought to a hospital and discharged after sobering up.  This couple had "every virtue every grace," to steal from Walter Savage Landor, but in the end their advantages were to no avail.  Life is both unfair and cruel.    

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