Dr. Maralyssa Bann works the night shift at Harborview Medical Center, where she treats patients with general medical issues. On Tuesday, she published a piece in the Atlantic on what it means when her patients with chronic illnesses are homeless.

In a clinician's economical language, Bann walks her readers through what happened when she tried to convince one of her patients, a woman "who had been homeless for several years, ever since escaping a domestic partner who beat her so brutally that she still walked with a limp" to stay in the hospital for a course of antibiotics. She had been suffering a long time, and wanted to leave to visit her daughter.

As I tried to reason with her to stay, thinking I had the ultimate trump card, I announced authoritatively: “But you could die!” Puzzled for a moment, she stared back at me and calmly replied: “Well, of course. That’s why I want to visit her now.”

Another of Bann's patients had diabetes, but couldn't take his insulin because he couldn't hold onto needles at the shelter where he was staying.

Living with chronic illness while homeless, Bann writes, is "ongoing brutality."

The whole piece is worth reading. People are dying, have been dying, on the streets for a long time. Shootings, like the one that took place at The Jungle, are not even the most common, lethal consequences of living without access to permanent housing.