This story was part of Healthbeat’s live storytelling event, “Aha Moments in Public Health,” held Nov. 3 at Manuel’s Tavern in Atlanta. Watch the full show here. Sign up to receive Healthbeat’s free Atlanta newsletter here.
“Grady Unit 695, respond to Metropolitan Parkway …”
When it comes to emergency medicine, unpredictability is part of the job. You never know if the next call will be a heart attack, a car crash, or a cry for help that no one else knows how to answer.
That morning, the radio crackled with a call that seemed routine enough: “52-year-old female off her medication, flashing drivers, walking in and out of traffic.”
It was my third hour into a 13-hour shift at Grady, one of the largest public hospitals in the South. My partner and I had a system: He drove, I handled behavioral emergencies. That division wasn’t random — it was personal.
My mother had lived with schizophrenia until her death at 42. In the 1980s, no one spoke openly about depression or psychosis. People just said my mother was “crazy.” I still remember her walking down Albany Avenue in Hartford wearing a pink tutu and white leotard, smiling at strangers who didn’t understand. I was too young to see that she wasn’t dangerous — she was sick, and society didn’t know what to do with her.
On the way to Metropolitan Parkway, all I could think was: Please, don’t let this woman be wearing a tutu.
Meeting Ms. Mary
When we arrived, Ms. Mary stood near a weathered Cutlass Supreme, her yellow sundress dancing in the breeze. She was poised, articulate, and surprisingly self-aware. “My daughter’s getting on my nerves,” she told us. “I need to go to Georgia Regional for 30 days.” Her honesty made me smile.
I invited her into the back of the ambulance, where it was cooler. As I checked her pulse, she explained that she had schizophrenia, high blood pressure, and borderline diabetes. She’d stopped taking her medication because it made her feel off-balance — something I’d heard before, and something I understood.
Then, with the blunt curiosity that often comes with familiarity, she looked me up and down and asked a question about my sexuality — one that could have stung in another setting. But her tone wasn’t cruel; it was matter-of-fact. Before I could respond, she added, “My grandson’s gay, too. And I love him. When we walk down the street, he holds my hand. Don’t let these folks bother you, baby. You just be yourself.”
The tension in that ambulance dissolved into something like grace.
A mirror in the back of the ambulance
Ms. Mary didn’t know she was speaking to someone who had spent a lifetime wrestling with identity. I’d always been aware of my otherness — the way I walked, talked, and carried myself. At 6 years old, a cousin once asked, “Why do you walk like that? You walk like a girl.” Later, my grandmother, whom I loved deeply, told me I had “a spirit” inside me — one I should pray for God to take away. I didn’t understand then what that spirit was, only that it seemed to make people uneasy.
Her words filled me with confusion. How could I pray away something that felt natural? Something that was, in fact, me? Years later, in the back of that ambulance, Ms. Mary unknowingly answered my grandmother’s question. She told me, without apology or hesitation, to live in my truth. Her message — “You just be yourself” — felt like the permission I’d been waiting my whole life to receive.
Beyond the emergency
After that call, I couldn’t stop thinking about the deeper patterns I saw every day. So many people like Ms. Mary were cycling in and out of emergency rooms, never getting the long-term care they needed. So many families, like mine, were left to cope alone. Too many conversations about health stopped at the body and ignored the mind — and the structural issues that shape both.
Being an EMT taught me to treat the crisis in front of me. But I began to realize that the bigger work lay in preventing the crisis before it started. That’s when I found my way to public health. Public health asked the questions that had been haunting me all along: Why do people like Ms. Mary fall through the cracks? Why don’t families like mine get the help they deserve? Why do stigma and silence still have such power over who gets well — and who doesn’t? I wanted to do more than respond to emergencies. I wanted to change the conditions that caused them.
‘You’ve got work to do’
Months later, I saw Ms. Mary again. I was sitting at a red light in Atlanta’s West End when I spotted her — black mini-skirt, red sandals, same confident stride. I rolled down my window, waved, and called out to her. She turned, met my eyes, and said with a knowing smile: “Don’t be late, baby. You’ve got work to do.”
Then she kept walking. Her words have stayed with me. Because she was right — I do have work to do. Work that honors my mother. Work that lifts people like Ms. Mary. Work that challenges the systems that silence the vulnerable and stigmatize the misunderstood.
That single 911 call didn’t just change a shift — it changed my purpose. That’s why I chose public health: not for the prestige, but for the people. For those who walk through the world labeled as problems when, really, they are prophets — reminding us all what care should look like.
Anaré V. Holmes is a firefighter with the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department and an award-winning journalist. He has been honored by the state of Georgia for excellence in trauma care.