Word: tokenized
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...remember subway tokens? The two-color chunky metal coins cost about a dollar back in 1988,the same year I read Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, a truthful book about the hard social and political realities of New York. I read most of it "on site" in my call room at Harlem Hospital. One night, the phone in that room rang and I was told to come down to the Emergency Room fast. They had a 16-year-old boy there who was bleeding to death; his leg had been run over by a subway train...
...working my mouth and eyes, clearing my throat, feet independently pushing my just-awakened body into the glare of the corridor. I thought I'd probably heard wrong. A "token black" maybe-some gang member pushed off the platform? Or a marijuana smoker (as in Steve Miller's famous line, "I'm a midnight toker")? The jargon varies by hospital and, like all residents, I strove...
...important case was really his right foot; the outcome here would determine the kid's ability to walk. It was a long and tedious case with lots of debridement, our word for cleaning. And it was sad and late at night, so we talked. I eventually asked what exactly "token sucker" meant...
...subway turnstiles opened when you slid a token into a very narrow slot on top. Tens of thousands of dirty New York hands pushed them in all day. You could, apparently, put your lips over that slot and, with a hard inhalation, suck a token back up out of the machine. Then you could ride the subway for free, or sell it to someone for something less than a dollar. This was, of course, illegal. My patient had been spotted doing it. He had run, the cops had chased, and he had crossed the track just in front...
...stinking dollar token? How would the person who chased him feel? My mind went back to another ER I had worked in, this one in Boston...