Every day on my way to work, I walk through one of the most famous and historic LGBT-friendly neighborhoods in the U.S. This past Saturday, my walk back home from the hospital was a particularly entertaining one. It was Pride weekend. People were celebrating, the sun was shining, the rainbows painted on the street seemed brighter. Even though I had worked a long day, my walk back home left me with a smile on my face.
The next day, everything changed. The following morning, I awoke to a breaking news notification that made my heart sink. “Shooting at Popular Gay Club in Orlando.” I walked to work down the same street I always do, but the air felt different than it did the afternoon before. There was an eerie silence; the street seemed gray with trash strewn about. There were no smiles; no one was around. Of course, it was early, but the tension related to the shootings was somehow palpable. Yet again, lives were ended at the hands of a murderer holding a gun.
Later in the morning, as I made rounds on my own patients, I learned of the magnitude of the events from the night before. Fifty lives were lost from gun violence. Scores more were left injured. Thousands of friends and families lives would be fundamentally changed. As I made rounds on my patients, I thought back on all of the mass shootings I had witnessed growing up.
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