Thread by @TheRealDoctorT

(TW: famine, suicide.)

“All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.”

- excerpt from “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman.

It is 1994.

A man drives out to a field where he used to play as a child. 1/

His name is Kevin Carter. He is an award-winning photographer.

Four months earlier he won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography with one of the most famous, and heart-wrenching, photos ever taken: “The vulture and the little girl.”

He is a haunted man.

He is 33. 2/

In the 1990s, a severe famine is ravaging Sudan. Child malnourishment is estimated at 40%, under age 5. Starvation is killing people every day.

Photojournalists and others are invited by the UN in Operation Lifeline Sudan to report on the conditions.

Kevin is among them. 3/

The things he sees, he can never forget. Famine and violence on a scale he cannot imagine.

He takes photographs, as many as he can.

One day he snaps a photograph of an emaciated little girl slumped over on the road. A vulture lurks behind her.

He chases the vulture away. 4/

The “little girl” actually turns out to be a little boy (and survived after the photograph), but in that moment all Kevin can think of is his own young daughter, Megan.

Eventually he returns home, and “The vulture and the little girl” ends up causing a sensation. 5/

His photograph leads to a significant increase in donations to Sudan relief. He wins the Pulitzer.

But none of this brings relief from the vultures that still linger in his mind, haunting him.

And so he drives out, alone, to a field where he used to play as a child. 6/

He uses tape, and a tube leading to his truck’s exhaust. Then he starts the engine and leaves it running.

He has a note with him.

It says many things.

There are some pains that override every joy. There are some sights that cannot be unseen.

He dies, on July 27th, 1994. 7/

It is 1993.

I am visiting my maternal grandmother in California.

I don’t know it yet, but it will be the last time I will ever get to spend with her. In April of 1994, she will die from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

I am 12 years old, and expect everyone to live forever. 8/

We have many little conversations, that I take for granted. I don’t remember most of them now. I wish I did.

But there is one I remember.

She is asking me about right and wrong. About the boundaries of obligations.

It’s weighty stuff for a kid, but it matters to her. 9/

“If someone is dying in front of you, would you try to help them?”

“Of course grandma!”

“Now what if you KNOW that someone is dying, but it isn’t in front of you, it’s far away. Would you still try to help them?”

“Well grandma... I mean, I guess I would still try.” 10/

“Of course you would try! Because what changed. Distance? No. Nothing changed. You KNOW what’s happening, and what’s right, so never say it’s someone else’s problem.”

I nod, eager to go back to my video games.

Part of me wonders why she is saying all this so fervently. 11/

It’s 2017.

I’m a nephrology fellow, in the final stage of over a decade of training from pre-med to now.

A patient is leaving Against Medical Advice (AMA). They don’t have insurance. They don’t have a stable home environment to go to.

I am filled with a deep unease. 12/

As they wait for their ride from the hospital, I try one last time to talk them into staying longer. To try and arrange some rudimentary framework of care.

They listen to me, but I notice their gaze is distant.

They’re looking over my shoulder, at something far, far away. 13/

The streetlights outside the hospital seem to cast a halo on foggy nights like this. The air smells like freshly fallen rain.

I am getting into my car to drive home when I see the patient who left AMA walking down the street away from me.

I sit in my car and watch. 14/

I know they have nowhere to go. I know they can’t afford to pay for medications or specialists.

I know what’s happening, and it isn’t someone else’s problem. It is mine as well.

The patient vanishes into the night.

The fog descends, and it keeps the vultures out of sight.