Life and Death in America

It has been an exhausting few days, full of alternating panic and gratitude, fear and faith, and all of the hairpin turns of days spent in hospital waiting rooms.

On Wednesday, at least three years ago now—or according to my calendar, 3 days—I spent the day glued to my computer watching the proceedings of Georgia Death Row Inmate, Troy Davis. Despite mounting evidence of his innocence, his execution was set for 7pm local time. I watched as hours ticked by, waiting on final word from the US Supreme Court. 7:10, 7:40, 8:15... each moment the tension mounted, each moment greater hope, greater fear among the family members, friends, and supporters gathered outside the prison. Then they announced that the Supreme Court had denied the stay of execution. Davis was going to be killed.

14 minutes pass.

I alternate between pacing in frustration, anger and sadness, and watching the events to continue to unfold on the livestream from Georgia.

Then my phone rings and I am shaken completely from this grieving and plunged into a familiar and unwelcome terror.  It's my father. He's in the hospital. He's had a heart attack, and is going into surgery in the morning.

What follows is a blur, but once the surgery is finished and I see my father again with my own two eyes, my thoughts begin to return to Troy Davis, to see-saw from my presence in the critical care unit to my anger at our communal choices. We, America, killed a likely innocent man. The miscarriage of justice is abominable, the humanitarian considerations are too much for me to even approach in my current state. But our priorities, as a community, as a country, are where my heart goes.

Estimates vary widely, but taxpayers paid from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars to execute Davis.

As my father lies in his hospital bed, recovering from heart surgery, you know what he's worried about? How he'll pay his medical expenses.

Lecture after lecture from the nurses about stress, and he's sent home with prescriptions for drugs he cannot afford, a bill for surgery and hospital stay that's astronomical. And he's not one of the innumerable Americans who's uninsured. No, it's just the above-and-beyond costs, the medications that aren't covered, the deductible, the percentage of costs.

And I am angry. Livid. My mind keeps wanting to get an exact number for how much we've chosen to spend to kill someone, when we won't collectively keep each other well. Punishment is prioritized over wellness; death takes precedence over life.

When we'd rather kill someone in pure vengeance than support the health of our people, pardon my language, but our priorities as a country are royally fucked.