Why I Don't Get Out Much Anymore

We have rats in the morgue. 

So when a 12 year-old girl died of something easily prevented and easily cured almost anywhere else in the hemisphere, we put the body in my room so her mother could mourn without our adding to this horror.

That is how I wound up going on a run for a transfusion.  And that is how I realized how much I have been avoiding the streets.  And why. 

More than five months after the earthquake, the devastation is endless.  The many, many bodies still trapped under the rubble have liquefied and no longer smell, but that painful stench has been replaced by an even more painful sight -- the million mile stare of people who have given up any hope that it will ever get better.

I shuddered and began weeping, and had to explain to the guy who was driving me that I was alright.  Sort of.