Esmin Green Tribute

Being abandoned or, even worse, ignored in our time of greatest need.

It’s the reason we can’t turn away from the story of the Esmin Green, who collapsed in the emergency room of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn after waiting almost 24 hours for help.

A surveillance camera captured the scene. She falls, face first on the floor, writhes, then lies unconscious, unattended by the people who surround her. Hospital staff don’t notice or don’t care to respond.  By the time someone checks, she's dead.

It’s a public hospital, by all accounts squalid and under-funded, a place none of us would want to take our final breath, given a choice.

Did Esmin Green have a mother who cuddled her when she was a baby? A brother or sister who played with her on the street? Friends who looked forward to a phone call? A child of her own?

Does anyone deserve to die this way – abandoned by those who might have helped, ignored by those in the grips of their own suffering or the disaffection of boredom?

We watch the video, sickened. How many cries for help are similarly unattended and go un-noticed?

How many lives end this way, in the harsh light of indifference? Have we become so inured to this cruel reality that we no longer care?