Emergency

The short story "Emergency" by Denis Johnson was a little bizarre to me. It is narrated by a man and tells the story of him and a fellow hospital worker, Georgie. The story starts out with Georgie cleaning of the floor of a hospital room covered in blood but we are told that the floors are basically already clean. At first I thought that Georgie was just out of his mind but we find out that he is a druggie along with the narrator. They both steal pills from the hospital. Georgie states, "There's so much goop inside of us, man...and it all wants to get out." This statement was one that reassured me that he had a drug problem but also led me to believe that he may have another problem as well. He may be trying to escape life with the drugs. This is ironic because he works in a hospital.

When one patient came in with a knife in his only good eye, Georgie is to prep him for surgery. When the patient had come in, the doctor stated,"...we've got to get a team here, An entire team, I want a good eye man, a great eye man...I want a brain surgeon...I'm not touching that head. I'm gonna watch this one. I know my limits. The doctor at the hospital felt that even he couldn't heal the guy. However, when the drugged up Georgie prepped him for surgery, he came back with the knife in hand and the patient could see and walk and move.

The two men continue to do interesting and unrealistic things throughout the story. I came to the conclusion that the reader was looking through the eyes of the drugged up person rather than what was really going on in Georgie and the narrators lives. The patient with the knife in his head could have actually died from having the knife removed, but in the eyes of Georgie and the narrator he may have been alive. It was almost like a dream reading through the story with its bizarre events.

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