Demolition

As I walked to and from the hospital, I watched a demolition crew taking down a building on Army Street. I was amazed how quickly it came apart.

First the roof, then the exterior walls.

For days I’d been able to see directly into eight individual rooms, like looking into the back of a giant dollhouse. A chest of drawers teetered on the edge of one floor and a shelf, with books still on it, hung on the wall. I wondered who’d lived there? And why they’d left their books behind?

When I arrived on the unit a patient was transferred directly from the emergency room with Failure to Thrive. He died within an hour and was quickly cleaned and tagged and wrapped, and Sammy came up from the morgue and took him away before another was admitted.

Over and over in the ward’s twenty rooms the patients came and went. Sent home, sent to rehab, sent to Coming Home Hospice, sent down to the morgue. One man with dementia was discharged to Napa State and was dead within a week. The social workers vowed to never send anyone there again.

I went into the Elizabeth Taylor Lounge where two older patients were watching Oprah. I said hello and poured myself a cup of coffee.

Looking westwards towards Twin Peaks, I could see, in the distance, the demolition crew taking apart the building on Army Street. Floor by floor it had disappeared and I could just begin to see the tips of the tallest trees that grew in Precita Park.

Someday this hospital will come down. First the roof and then the exterior walls, after which the rooms will be exposed to the elements. Pedestrians might walk by and look up and think about the patients who were once here, and the staff who had cared for them, while the residents of the Mission will finally be able to see the treetops on Potrero Hill once again.