If you could only see yourself in the mirror

It's sometimes the strangest things that re-ignite one's compassion for other people. I think it's awfully easy to wander most of the time with a rather apathetic attitude towards most people one encounters. Indifferent, at best, apathy, most likely.
Last night, a young girl came in, after injecting some junk into her veins that she had been told was meth, but was evidently not once it got in her. She started developing an anaphylactic reaction, which being scary enough, she then got dumped off at the doors of the ER while her "friends" drove away, leaving her on the pavement. She had to get her way to the doors of the emergency room before anyone saw she was there. She was understandably frantic, and we went about our routine work to get her to settle down, which she thankfully did, and then we ultimately transferred her to a more appropriate hospital for care.
However, the poor thing was clearly ravaged by years of drug abuse - you could tell that without the drugs, she could've been a great beauty, but her haggard face and body made her look twice her age. In between her crying episodes and declarations she was going to get off (noble, but unlikely: meth is the worst for most drugs for addictive potential, killing most of its lovers), she said she started when she was only 14, and that her boyfriend was her dealer (so who knows how that relationship benefits her). A sad life, as she lay, half-clothed on our gurney, with her poorly-applied mascara streaming unattractively across her face, an obvious meth mouth where there should've been a set of beautiful young teeth...