For the entirety of 2015, I drove a taxi from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. throughout Providence on behalf of Economy Cab Company. It was a gap job while I formulated my next move, sandwiched between 15 years in hospital security, then 10 years (and counting) on the campus of Brown. Admittedly, taxicabs have enthralled me since I was a boy; something about their nomadic spirit while wooing the public with something as seemingly simple as transportation.
One night during that winter, sometime between 3 and 4 in the morning, I was dispatched to the emergency room of Fatima Hospital in North Providence on what was deemed a “voucher job.” This meant that the fare had no means of paying and that the facility that was looking to unload them would promise to pay with a credit slip.
Outside of the E.R. I would encounter a nurse in pink scrubs alongside an elderly woman seated in a wheelchair. I would soon learn that “Pam,” in the chair, would be my passenger. As I got out and helped Pam into my backseat, I was given a brief backstory by the nurse. Cancer had ravaged Pam over the preceding months and she was in excruciating pain. She had called a rescue earlier that evening when it had become unbearable at home. Doctors, however, could do little for her as she consistently rejected all forms of pain management, chemotherapy, or treatment at all. “Take her to this address in Foster,” the nurse explained, “and just make sure she gets in okay. She lives alone.”
The ride to Foster is eerily desolate at that time in the morning; the town itself is even more isolated, where rural roads are flanked by woodsy side streets. As we drove, Pam elaborated further on her situation. She intended to allow the disease to consume her; her husband had passed some years before, they’d had no kids, and she felt completely alone. She was vulnerable and brutally honest with her anonymous driver; she had no true desire to continue living. She’d turned down the option of hospice care and was given approximately two more weeks before her internal organs would fail.
She lived in a humble, ranch-style home nestled amid trees, with only a few other houses on the street. As I assisted Pam out of the back and onto the unkept lawn, I’d noticed that an old man had emerged and lingered beside us. He didn’t exit the house, but seemed to manifest from the mist-covered shrubs. Neither one of us acknowledged him, and he never once addressed us. Pam was clearly in severe pain while she clutched my arm and we took one slow step at a time towards her front door. I politely asked if I could carry her in; it would be quicker and less excruciating. She gladly agreed. Her tiny frame was fragile, almost skeletal, in my arms. She seemed to nuzzle me like an infant would as we proceeded inside.
The home had clearly been neglected during Pam’s last days. Dirty dishes were piled high everywhere and a sickly cat eyed us lazily. She directed me towards a rear bedroom where I laid her onto an unmade bed while Law and Order was still playing on a nearby television at high volume. I will never forget her thanking me weakly while kissing my cheek before I headed back out to my idling cab. The old man was no longer in sight, not inside or out. Driving away, I couldn’t help but wonder that her deceased husband had made a brief appearance, for whatever reason.