The Jordan Neely Challenge

‘T hree times a day,” I’m going to visit you, Michael Brescia, M.D., promised Angela, a woman who had been found under the FDR Drive in Manhattan. Dr. Brescia, who died late last month, was the executive medical director and co-founder of Calvary Hospital, a trailblazer in palliative care. Angela was but one example of the beauty of human life, about which he would tell anyone who would listen. He was trying to love — building an institution whose mission is to do the same — and he was looking at a culture that seems to have forgotten love for neighbor and stranger.

Calvary had gotten a call about Angela from another hospital in the city that didn’t want to take Angela because of how bad off she was. “She had no family, she wasn’t speaking. She was filthy,” Dr. Brescia recounted years later. He was leaving for a meeting in Washington, D.C., as she was coming in through the lobby. “She had a big tumor coming out of her back. She had chopped red hair, no teeth, little dentures here that were stuck, couldn’t get them out.” She had AIDS. And hepatitis. She needed a deep clean. The cancer-care technicians loved her back into life, restored her dignity. They even did her nails. Upon his return, Dr. Brescia was amazed by Angela’s transformation.

Six months later, he had more depressing meetings in D.C. They were partially about the push for physician-assisted suicide instead of the health care for which Calvary existed: health care for patients in grave situations. When he got back to New York, Dr. Brescia considered waiting until the morning to see Angela. He thought better of it, knowing he would feel miserable all night if he didn’t see her. As it happened, she was dying. He started talking to her, not knowing whether she understood — she had never said anything to him.

“Angela, she was laying on her right side, and I took her hand and put in on my cheek.” Sometimes, he confessed, when he was talking with a patient who was dying, he was often “asking for favors.” Primarily: to greet his late wife, Monica, and to tell her he was trying to be good. He was confident she would welcome them first, putting her arms around them. Being in the rooms of so many dying patients, he so longed to know what Heaven was like.

Ninety minutes later, he recalled, Angela said his name with great love: “Dr. Michael. Dr. Michael.” “I couldn’t believe my ears,” he said. (I’m quoting from an unedited transcript of an interview he did with the Sisters of Life in 2019, but I have heard the story many times.)

Angela then said to him, in the excitement: “Tonight, in a few hours, I’ll speak your name to God.” Dr. Brescia wanted to know so much more. Who was Angela? What got her to the point of being on the FDR Drive? Who did all these things to her that she had to be cleansed of? And was she speaking to God? But there would be no more words. Angela said good-bye and closed her eyes.

You’ve no doubt heard about Jordan Neely, a homeless man killed on the subway, also in New York City, after he threatened passengers. There seem to be two predominant responses: The governor says Neely was murdered for simply riding the subway; others defend Daniel Penny, the 24-year-old Marine veteran who was one of the men who restrained Neely. But Neely, in life and in death, deserved better, as do all the people of the city.

Neely was schizophrenic, and he had a long and overwhelming criminal record stemming from his mental illness. “Neely deserved to be helped before it was too late,” Carolyn D. Gorman from the Manhattan Institute recently wrote. “The public deserve to feel safe. These are not separate ends, and accountability is the solution for both.”

“What’s lacking is a continuum of care for seriously mentally ill individuals before, during, and after crisis,” Gorman said. The city needs beds in hospitals, including “standalone psychiatric hospitals.” She continued:

For those like Neely who can’t stay stable nor avoid violence without intensive care and oversight, longer-term inpatient care is likely the most appropriate and humane setting. Without it, Neely was institutionalized in a punitive, cross-system setting of jails and streets.

Angela could have died on the streets alone. I omitted some of the details — her body wore the scars of the most intimate and violent use and abuse. She could easily have been killed by one wrong move or one violent actor. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was mentally ill, too. I know parents who are beside themselves with agonizing fear of the day they might find out that their adult child with schizophrenia died on a street because he was off his meds and not in control of his thoughts or actions.

Dr. Brescia was 90, but I was still stunned by his death, even though I hadn’t heard from him recently and suspected that the end might be near for him. We need him — we need fighters for restoring human dignity. He always emphasized how important human touch is — and he demonstrated this with the person closest to him. I’m thinking of him as a patron saint for peace among strangers in the strangest situations, so that we might be better neighbors in policy and in daily life.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.