The Woman Who Died in the Waiting Room

For Green, such was the final, flimsy safety net. By early June, she had lost her job and her apartment, and was staying with a friend not far from the church. On June 18 she woke at about 2 a.m., after sleeping only an hour, and paced silently through the apartment's small rooms. At 4 a.m. she headed out into the muggy predawn in search of Pastor Johnson. Forty minutes later she knocked on the pastor's door. "Oh, Pastor, my soul is in trouble," she said. "I need forgiveness before I die, or I will have no mercy." Both the church's bishop and Johnson's sister Babs had recently suffered strokes, and Johnson had begun to feel the strain of helping them through recovery. She quickly offered Green forgiveness, but it was not enough to calm her. Green continued to bemoan the condition of her soul, working herself into a frenzy as she repeated the same refrain over and over, her voice rising each time, "Oh, my soul is in trouble, and I need forgiveness before I die."

By the time she reached full volume, the neighbors were awake and Johnson had sneaked back inside to call 911. "I had to tell her I was going to change my clothes, so she wouldn't get even more upset," says Johnson. "When Sister Green gets like this, she has the strength of 12 men." Before long, the police arrived, along with an emergency-services van. The sight of them quieted Green instantly. "It was like a switch went off," says Johnson. One officer ordered Johnson and her husband to go inside and close the door, while another escorted Green toward the emergency van. Johnson did not bother to protest—she knew from previous experience that even if she had followed Green to the G Building, she would not have been allowed to wait with her. "It's not like a regular emergency room; you can't just walk in with the patient and sit there," she says. "Once you turn them over, they go to a separate area and that's it." Before turning into the house, Johnson saw Green tap the side of her head three times and look up at the sky. It was something she did often, and Johnson knew she was saying, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." It was the last time she would see her friend alive.

Green's funeral filled the church. In the weeks that followed her death, footage of the incident had made its way through cyberspace, and as hundreds of mourners spilled into the street and crowded around windows to pray and sing, local politicians, immigrants' rights groups and mental-health advocates expressed outrage and demanded change.

For what some say is the first time, Kings County has responded. Six staff members, including the director of psychiatry and the four employees who saw and ignored Green on the floor, were terminated. The hospital has also agreed to check on patients every 15 minutes, and to keep the number of patients in the waiting rooms down to 25.

Those changes bring a small measure of peace to Marilyn Johnson. The pastor has faced the ire of many in her community who fault her for not accompanying Green to the hospital. As the small brick church began to empty and mourners made their way through the darkening streets, Johnson stood alone. "I'm sorry," she said to more than one straggling parishioner. "I did the best I could for your friend. There was nothing more I could have done." The health-care system charged with Green's care cannot say the same.

With Karen Springen

© 2008