Denis Johnson Emergency

Emergency Analysis
The book by Denis Johnson entitled Jesus’ Son follows a drug addicted narrator through a series of short stories. Over the course of the book, many characters come and go, and few other than the narrator are constantly in it. Some of these secondary characters are also drug users, while others are morally questionable in different ways. One of the more interesting secondary characters appears in the story Emergency, Georgie. Georgie is the hospital orderly who happens to steal the occasional handful of pills to eat while on the clock. Most of us would find this action despicable – getting intoxicated while working on emergency room patients, even if he is just the orderly. In this way, he is not unlike many of the
It is apparent that he has already ingested some of the drugs he stole, since he seems to think there is an absurd amount of blood still on the floor that needs to be mopped when in fact the floor is clean. He also makes some nonsensical statements, like when he says, “There’s so much goop inside of us man, and it all wants to get out.” This phrase seems to mean very little, and sounds like something a stereotypical “stoner” or “druggie” would say, right down to the arbitrary inclusion of the word “man.” So the first impression of Georgie is by no means a positive one. He’s a hospital employee and he is stoned on the job, implying a careless attitude about his service. Even though he is not a doctor, as an orderly he still has a responsibility to prep patients and doing this while on drugs can easily be called negligent. As the story continues, a man walks in with a hunting knife lodged in his eye, and the nurses and present doctor are deliberating on what actions to take since the doctor was unqualified for this sort of thing and nervous about it. While this is going on, Georgie is supposed to be prepping him but returns with the knife that was stuck in the man’s eye. In his drug-fueled stupor, he had apparently just yanked the knife out of the man’s eye, causing no damage in the process. When everyone asked him where he got the knife, he didn’t even say
After he and the narrator catch up, it is revealed that the hitchhiker, Hardee, has recently been drafted. Unwilling to fight, he goes AWOL and tells the pair that he has to get to Canada somehow. Even though Georgie had never met this man prior to this incident, he volunteers to drive him to Canada, declaring that he might know some people up there. Some time after this, Hardee asks Georgie what he does for a living, to which he replies, “I save lives.” I think this is the strongest display of his moral fiber because of the fact that this is a human he has never met before, yet he volunteers for the tough task of getting this AWOL draftee to freedom. I think he also has a sense of accomplishment, after attempting to save those bunnies even though he failed, which is why he declared that he saves lives for a living. Perhaps he also came to remember the knife he pulled out of the man, since he still had it, although the fact he was high at that time could mean the opposite. Either way, the last line is a testament to the self-satisfaction he feels from these displays of