People

The human enterprise is messy. History is full of evidence for this. So is daily experience. Our species can demonstrate amazing compassion and selflessness. We can also be guilty of deplorable acts of cowardice and brutality. Somewhere, in the deep expanse of being that is beyond our simple three dimensional experience, there is a semblance of a scorecard about the human race and its progress on the planet we call earth. And on that scorecard, in the place of letter grades or numbers summarizing the status of human existence, there are written, perhaps, single words. Such as unfinished. Uncertain. Meandering. Messy.

Last Thursday, I was walking through a line of cars at a mass vaccination site in Phoenix. All the vehicles, thousands during the course of a day, contained people who had just received the COVID 19 vaccine and were awaiting receipt of follow-up appointments for 2nd doses, or the documentation on their vaccine medical cards that they had completed the two shot vaccines series. Most importantly, they are idling in lines to be sure that none had the rare yet still real reaction known as anaphylaxis. Having just checked in with colleagues who were overseeing this station, I was on my way back to the station that preceded this one, the location where cars entered tents, people rolled up sleeves, and vaccines were administered.

“I need to change lanes!”

Two car lines to the east, a solitary man in an older sedan, his car window down and his mask misplaced, was wildly swinging a left arm into the air while hollering to someone, anyone who might listen, that he was in the wrong lane. He needed to change.

No one seemed to hear the poor fellow. Not that I can blame them. Most of the people working the lines were volunteers, many younger in age. Their role was to make appointments, guide cars forward, and signal for help for the occasional circumstance when someone who had been vaccinated was possibly having a reaction.

In the normal world, if you are walking along a busy city street during rush hour and some guy is yelling out his car window about traffic, common sense and basic survival skills guide you away from the situation, not toward it. This not being a normal world, and the situation anything but a busy city street, I decided that someone should figure out why this fellow felt the need to change lanes. That someone was, apparently, me.

“Good morning, sir. What seems to be the problem?”

In my defense, it was a good morning. The previous afternoon had been windy; many of us were still finding dirt and desert sand inside our hair and ears. Today though was sunny, calm, and spring-like. It was a morning that seemed ready to wrap the world’s inhabitants in reassurance – except, it seemed, this bearded, unmasked, and tending-towards-unhinged-status man in a white t-shirt.

“Look at this!” he gestured. “They’re all moving and I’m stuck! I need to change lanes! I have to get out of here!”

There was nothing subtle about the man’s frustration. His hands gripped the wheel like he was ready to spin it counter-clockwise, turn the car left, and leave tire tracks over my toes.

“How are you feeling?” I asked. “Are you doing ok after your shot?”

Please don’t laugh: it was a reasonable question. He had, after all, just received a vaccine. I needed to check to see that he was aware of his general circumstances and was not experiencing a reaction, either from the vaccine or an underlying conditions. That was, after all, the main reason why he was sitting in a line of cars.

He was clearly oriented to place and time. But the question did help – if only a bit. “Well, yeah, fine. I feel fine. But look! It’s past my fifteen minutes!” He pointed dual index fingers at his windshield, on which the time of his vaccination had been written in impermanent Expo. “And I need to get to work! I haven’t had a shower and I need to get home so I can change and get to work!”.

Ah. A person who was worried that his wise decision to get a vaccine might cost him his practical job. Now I understood the reason for the traffic-type rage. I confirmed from the time on his windshield that he was indeed past his allotted waiting time. Then I surveyed the four cars in front of him, the orange cones to the right and left of his car, the cars inside the lanes on the other sides of those cones. Yep, he was stuck. And I knew the reason: there was an information technology problem that was holding up the car at the head of his line. I started to explain this to him but that’s a bit like telling someone who needs oxygen that a tank has been ordered from the warehouse and should be delivered soon. So we embarked on a different course.

“Tell you what,” I offered. “If I can safely get you out of here in a few minutes, will that work for your schedule?”

It was a bold bet. The guy’s hands relaxed their grip on the steering wheel and he took the bargain. “I doubt you can get it done,” he said, resting his forehead on the knuckles still holding the wheel. “But go ahead and try. I’ll be watching you though.”

Behind my KN-95 mask and baseball cap, I laughed. “Ok, fair enough! Let’s see what can happen.”

People who work together for a common goal can get a lot done. When the volunteers and staff working in the area observed that I had survived the close encounter with the melt-down in the middle of line seven, they were more than happy to help make my plan successful. The universe did its part as well, allowing a rebooted iPad to connect to the information system that resolved the delay for the car sitting at the front of the line. Appointments were swiftly finalized. All in the four vehicles were well following their recommended fifteen minute waiting period. And so, in less than five minutes, these cars and their occupants safely exited the wellness area, each off towards the next part of their day and hopefully immune protection from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

That brought my new friend to the first position in line. I cleaned the numbers off his windshield. Like a plane authorized for take-off from the tower, he was released. The man had replaced his mask. His shoulders and entire demeanor had relaxed. He made a congratulatory fist and offered a single phrase as you slowly departed: “God bless you all.”

I’ve never seen myself much as a people person. Shy by nature, I don’t seek opportunities to meet people, especially those who seem intense. But a career in medicine, and a year in social isolation, have helped me realize just how interesting, thoughtful, and surprisingly cooperative and caring many people can be. It is not easy to work ten hour shifts in mass vaccination sites. There is plenty of cause for fatigue. The engagement with hundreds of people, however, buoys and boosts the spirit. Even when they are anxious or impatient or angry, most people are not looking for separation. They are seeking a sense of connectedness. A reason for tomorrow. Even the joy that comes with having breath.

The man in the car who needed to get to work, and the scores of others who opened small windows last week into the experience of their lives, reminded me how much I still like people. Despite the acrimony and bitterness awash in our current world, notwithstanding the ugliness of bigotry and the sometimes diabolical division deliberately sown across the human field by those who would see a tolerant society fail, we are still a species with possibility. The human enterprise is indeed messy. Yet people themselves can, even if just occasionally, open the glimpse of the marvelous.