Response to "Emergnecy"

"Emergency" by Denis Johnson is a short story that I would have to read several more times before I could wrap my mind around it.  It reminded me of a Hunter S. Thompson story.  There was so much casual drug use it stressed me out, but within every action there seemed to be some sort of important meaning hidden between the lines.

The story was set in 1973, which was the end of the hippie movement, that Hunter S. Thompson actually described as a "high and beautiful wave" that crashed and rolled back in his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  This story seems to show the affects of the movement "crashing."

The narrator is a clerk in the hospital who spends most of his time with Georgie, an orderly, and they are almost always doing drugs.  Georgie seems to be more out of his mind than the narrator.  At one point he cuts open a mother rabbit and "saves" its babies.  It's in this moment where Georgie realizes he should have been a doctor so he could save lives.  When the narrator accidently kills the tiny bunnies, Georgie gets furious with him and scolds him by asking, "Does everything you touch turn to shit?"

This seems to be a form of projection on Georgie's part.  He sees his shortcomings, but subconsciously places them on the narrator's shoulders. Meanwhile, the narrator accepts these accusations, because he seems to think with more sense.  For instance, he begs Georgie to take him home back to town and to forget about the rabbits.

Later in the story, the two heroes pick up a hitch hiker that the narrator knows, named Hardee.  Hardee had been drafted and was trying to flee to Canada.  Georgie accepted responsibility for Hardee and decided to take him to Canada.  When Hardee asked him what he did for a living, Georgie said "I save lives."  Georgie's efforts to assist Hardee's escape from the draft was like redemption to his life choice of not being a doctor.

I liked this story, because drug narratives are fun.  I feel like discussions on it could last for a long time and remain interesting.  However, I feel like there was a lot I didn't understand.