The Beauty in Breaking

Harper describes her next career stop, landing at Montefiore Hospital in North Philadelphia, which she found similar in many ways to Mercy Hospital. At Montefiore, her role as an assistant medical director required effective leadership and administration. She remembers treating teens, such as 13-year-old Gabriel, who was trying to navigate the complex code of ethics in his urban neighborhood. He fell unconscious on the way home after being threatened in a parking lot. Harper had no previous experience talking to patients who dealt with this kind of violence: “Public violence was new to me. I hadn’t grown up with the reality of being unsafe outside the home, of not knowing whether you can walk to the store without being attacked or go to school without being shot” (124). Despite her medical expertise, she was unsure of how to get through to patients whose upbringing was so different from hers.

She then remembers Jeremiah, a man in his 20s whom she treated after he incurred a gunshot wound to the head during a violent gang incident. Harper did all she could do to save his life as he pled with her to do anything to keep him alive. Jeremiah was desperate to survive, even as he wept “from a place of pain that hurt more than having bits of skull shot off and lying on the sidewalk” (133). A short while later, despite Harper’s best efforts, Jeremiah died on the operating table after calling out for his mother. Harper reflects on what she learned from both Gabriel’s and Jeremiah’s stories: “In our final moments, everyone we’ve honored or betrayed is, ultimately, not with us. We lie there alone, flesh and bone, soon to be only spirit” (136). However, she adds that we all have basic human needs, including the need to “speak and be heard and be touched” (137).