Rough Sleepers

by Tracy Kidder

“Rough sleepers” is a Britishism describing people who mostly sleep outside on the streets, parks, subway tunnels, or wherever. Rough Sleepers is also a wonderful book by Tracy Kidder about Jim O’Connell, an MGH physician who since 1985 has spent his medical career caring for the unsheltered of Boston.

In 1985, Jim was just finishing his residency at the MGH and on the way to an oncology fellowship at the Sloan Kettering. John Potts, his chief, asked him to postpone his departure for a year to work with a new organization, Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, that needed a physician. Jim took the challenge… and  has continued to do so since. Kidder shadowed him for five years, mostly from 2017 to 2019, to produce a picture of a wonderfully caring physician dealing with the enormous social, societal, and health problems of a population of more than 10,000. The program now has 600 workers, a van that goes out onto the streets every night making “house calls,” a residential facility, and multiple clinics throughout the city.

Kidder draws a picture of Jim and his patients. His patients are familiar to us. We look at them every day even if we don’t see them as we walk by the MGH, the Charles Street T station, or to Downtown Crossing. The regulars at Mousey Park, the recently demolished little pocket park next to Finagle a Bagel on Cambridge Street, were his patients. Kidder’s book makes us see those people as individuals doing their best to survive. And there is Jim traveling with them and doing his best as well, a man with great compassion, commitment, and energy who has made a difference in the world.

Bernie Aserkoff