Free Write: "Emergency" by Denis Johnson

"Emergency" is a story that leaves you wondering what it is that you are actually reading, Is this a story that is actually happening?  Is this a flawed interpretation due to a drug induced self exploration?  It is hard to tell at points, but I have to say that it was a fun read, following the misadventures of two drug users that are comical, but seems to be leading to a dark ending.

The character of the narrator is definitely an unreliable narrator indeed.  The fact of the matter that he is a person who is an avid pill popper by his own admission, his inability to remember what is truly going on and what he is really witnessing makes you question the events that are happening in the story.  Although, he does sound like he may be in better shape than his friend Georgie, but I get the feeling that was the intention of the whole story to begin with.

The title seems like a good one just because of the series of events that go on throughout the entire story.  In their own strange little drug induced world, they are beset upon by crisis after crisis, emergency after emergency:  The stabbing of Terence Webber, the squishy shoes, looking for pills, rabbits, snow storms, AWOL friends, and what not.  It is somewhat comical and also a sad state of affairs to find yourself in.

Georgie is a character that seems like he is headed to hard and fast burnout, a story of an ending that will be just as comical as it is tragic.  In my opinion, he seems like someone who sees what he is doing with his life as saving lives with every mishap he either creates or is a part of.

The language of this piece is a bit more on the poetic side of things and there is nothing wrong with that in my opinion.  But it is a bit flowery for coming from an avid drug user who loses track of when and how the events of the story take place.  I personally couldn’t think of a better way of saying things, as I often find my own work a bit more flowery than some might expect given what my topic may be.

On the other hand, the dialogue of this story was captured a bit more in the realm of believable.  The dialogue seemed like what it would sound like in a casual conversation, I have been known on multiple if not excessively, for using profanity and swearing when talking to my friends about mine or their problems.  I think that a lot of stories lack that simple form of conversation, straight forward and honest to how we speak.

I have to be honest on this one, I kind of got lost in the timeline after Georgie pulled the knife from Terrence Webber's eye.  Although I kind of got the feeling that this was meant to be that way.  I feel like that you are supposed to lose track of where you are and get lost along with the characters in the story.

The first line of the story makes it seem like that the narrator is either a: kind of lost, or b: just really does not care to be specific.  The last line of the piece comes from Georgie, it seems to be that he truly believes that he is a savior of lives, and this will lead all involved down a strange somewhat comical and somewhat tragic path of misshapen adventures.

There are a lot of themes in this piece about blindness and vision.  Take Georgie seeing blood when no one else can, while part of this may be due to his passion of chewing on pill; he is in the middle of an O.R. and the chances of there being blood on the floor are great. Perhaps Georgie always sees a bloody room when he goes into an O.R.  Then there is the part of Terrence Webber being stabbed in the eye: He was caught looking at something that was a considered forbidden, and when he was unable to see it coming, his wife stabs him to punish him for it.  There is also the lack of head lights on Georgie’s truck, which results in them getting lost in a blizzard, despite the fact that there are only a few miles from home.  And it seems, in this story, when you lose sight of something there is a dramatic change of events concerning that something.  Georgie disappears to prep Mr. Webber, and returns having removed the knife from Mr. Webbers eye, restoring his vision.  Georgie does not see the rabbit and runs it over, but as he is cutting it open to make a meal of it, he finds the baby rabbits inside their dead mother, thus saving them from death.  However when the narrator loses track of the baby rabbits, they die under his weight crushing them in his sleep.

Overall this story was a funny and morbid piece as we see the happenings of the world through the eyes of a drug user Narrator and his equally dope fiend of friend.  It is poetic in its language and vivid in its imagery, however this story seems to be a classic example of what not to do in you spare time in the 1970's while working in an emergency room with your best friend who has no headlights in his truck, while working in an ER.