A light mist falls at 5:30 a.m. Compton is dark, but the streets are busy.  Lost in the cold, two wild dogs suddenly dart into traffic. Only one makes it across safely. 

Just down the road, Antonio Granados waits. 

St. John’s Well Child & Family Center will open to patients at 8 a.m., but the line has already started. Granados arrived at 4:30 a.m. and is first. He’s swaddled in a blanket, hunched in a camp chair, and determined to not be ignored. He is kept company by three others.

In a neighborhood severely underserved by healthcare, where there is no nearby hospital, local clinics pick up the slack since Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center closed its doors in 2007.

The clinic lines were always long. Now, some say they’re unbearable — especially at St. John’s in Compton, where patients seek free treatment, and where more than half of the patients are uninsured. 

At St. John’s, healthcare can be free, but you’ll have to wait. 

Monday morning is the busiest time of the week, so Granados swore to his wife he’d be first. When the doors swing open in a couple hours, he expects to wait only 15 minutes before seeing a doctor.

Camping Out

Long lines are typical for most of the 10 federally qualified health centers that St. John’s runs throughout South Los Angeles. The centers operate on a sliding pay scale, which means most patients receive free treatment. 

Depending on the day, St. John’s in Compton might only have one or two doctors, and only see a small fraction of the hopefuls waiting in line. Today, three doctors are working, including a pediatrician. 

Behind Tony, the line slowly grows as dawn appears. All are “walk-ins” without appointments.

At 6:30 a.m., 12 now brave the weather, including Josue Lopez, 19, and his pregnant girlfriend, who is 17 years old. They’ve known each for about a year, and she’s seven months pregnant. 

“I want it now,” Lopez says. “If I get an appointment, it could take two to three weeks.”

Later, Marvin Atilano, the head receptionist who runs the daily morning circus, will repeatedly tell patients that the next available appointment is more than a month away — “for anything.”

The line awaits his arrival. 

Lopez is young and energetic, but quiet and reserved, giggling privately with the girl he’ll soon live with behind his parent’s home. She’s keeping him company today. 

The rest of the line waits silently as Lopez jokes, “ We have to be here early, it’s like there are people outside, camping and everything. Let’s have a fire, and marshmallows.”

‘It’s Not Our Food’

Jesus Rios, who is 59, is early too; he’s run out of his diabetes medicine. Sometimes he gets his drugs in Mexico, where they’re much cheaper, but he's hoping for a free refill today. If not, a month’s supply will cost around $200 to $250. 

“When you don’t got anything to do, when you don’t got money, you have to sleep in the line,” he says.

“Sometimes some people make an appointment, but I don't know how they do it ... sometimes they can only take 15 or 10 people.” 

If he can’t get medicine today, he’ll try his friends. 

“You go home and try to find medicine with your friends,” he says. 

And if the line forming for the diabetes doctor is any indication, lots of people in this South L.A. community suffer from diabetes.

“You go to Mexico you don’t find many people with diabetes over there. But you come over here, it’s because of the food. We got hamburgers and other things. It’s not our food,” Rios says.

“Me, I work on the freeway, you know. I have to see who is on the side of the road — Jack in the Box, McDonalds, and other things...” he shrugs. 

Rios’ eyesight started degrading about a year ago, a complication of his diabetes, putting him out of work as a truck driver. Without Medi-Cal, he’s had to join the long list of uninsured patients trying to see specialists. Last March, St. John’s referral specialist made him an appointment for a year later. He plans to fight for Medi-Cal in court. 

Away from the line

Nearly three hours after Granados arrived, Melvin Richardson hobbles to the clinic believing he’s late for his appointment. He avoids the line, gingerly sitting alone on a nearby bench.

“I’m an unpatient person,” he says. “They don’t have to tell me anything. I will get up out my seat and find the nurse.”

Richardson has a hernia, and no job. He does have Medi-Cal, however, and the recent recollection of an “unbearable” wait at the St. Francis Medical Center Emergency Room. 

“It’s an 8-hour wait, minimum,” he says. “When I went for this one, I did about 10 ½ hours… With a hernia.”

Today, Richardson, who was a manager for a trucking company for 6 ½ years before getting laid off 90 days ago, is in for an X-ray as prep for surgery on Friday. Unlike those in line, he has an appointment. At least, he thinks he does.

Open for business

Swoosh! Promptly at 8 a.m., Atilano, the receptionist, opens the door. The line is 35 strong. Granados wipes the sleep from his eyes. Rios rubs his hands into his face. Richardson, who’s now joined the line, rocks impatiently behind them. There is no sound, just leering eyes. Five wait inside, the rest still outside as Atilano attends to other work behind the partition.

A second receptionist walks in guzzling a Monster energy drink. 

“Sorry I’m late,” says a nurse who rushes in. 

Rush hour

At 8:30 a.m., as Lopez reaches the window, Richardson’s had enough. He leaves the line, lamely approaching the second receptionist. 

“Fuck man! I don’t want to wait,” he says. 

“I’m so grateful when patients are patient,” Atilano later explains.

At 8:35 a.m., Atiliano scurries back into the reception room with a heap of stacked patient folders. 

“It’s overwhelming,” he says. 

The clinic will go electronic by the end of the year, but for now the staff must wade through a nightmarish body of folders. The adult files are housed in a completely different building, because the children’s files take up all the space in the reception room. Most of the patients are unannounced, making for a daily scavenger hunt. 

If the patient is fairly new, “the file could be located in four different places throughout the clinic,” Atilano says.

Soon, receptionists and nurses will be on their hands and knees, frantically pouring through files strewn about the floor. 

At 8:45 a.m., there are 40 inside a room with only 24 chairs — 17 more are outside. The chatter of children breaks the silence.

“Excuse me!”

The benefits manager moves past two toddlers playing on the floor, in front of heavy doors swinging open and shut, leading to the doctor’s offices. Two moms sit next to each other in the corner, filling out forms.

“How am I supposed to calm down when I have an operation Friday!” Richardson yells at the receptionist. 

Kids watch the movie “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” as Richardson exclaims, “If they can’t run a clinic, they should just fuckin’ shut it down!”

They don’t have him down for an appointment. He’s just like everyone else now.

Waiting… waiting… waiting…

It’s 9 a.m. Lopez jokes about his pregnant girlfriend leaving him to wait in the car. 

“She’s lazy,” he says as he plays on his cell phone. Lopez expects to be there until noon. 

Granados, who was, he’ll remind you, first in line, is aghast. They’ve lost his folder.

“What the fuck!” he says. “You don’t got nothing, you have to wait.”

While he waits, Richardson smokes a cigarette along a fence outside, talking with the clinic security guard.

“I went from having an appointment to being a walk-in,” he says. “That’s why I had to get loud. That walk-in would have taken me all day. … I think they’re going to rush me on, because I WILL get loud again. I hate to say it, but sometimes it takes that.”

The security guard tries to explain the system to Richardson.

“I’m the patient. It’s like the grocery store, the patient’s always right,” he says. “No matter what. Free or not.”

Later, after the doctor sees Richardson, he will walk across the parking lot to another building, where he will see the referral specialist, Gladys Uraga. Because he’s on Medi-Cal, he’ll see a specialist soon. 

For those uninsured, the typical wait for an appointment with a specialist is four to six months. In all, due to the acuteness of his hernia, his Medi-Cal insurance and his persistence, the entire process will take about one month.

Done for the day

Between 9:30 and 10 a.m., the line stays steady, both at the main clinic and at the diabetes center. 

At 10:30 a.m., Rios emerges from the clinic. He has his diabetes medicine, but a whole new set of problems.  

The list for receiving a flu shot was too long. He’ll have to come back.

By close to 11 a.m., as he predicted, Lopez is still being seen by the doctor. 

Richardson has just wrapped up his time at St. John’s, but is now on his way to get the long-awaited X-ray at St. Francis. 

“Any other day, I probably wouldn’t have got the X-ray,” he says. “I guess I got loud enough for them.” He leaves for his car.

Just as the clock strikes 11, Granados walks out the front door.

It’s been 6 ½ hours since he first arrived in the rain. 

“Yeah, it was worth it with the money I saved,” he says. “It’s a lot of money. That’s why you wait a long time.”

He has his medicine, and an empty stomach. “I got to go,” he says. “I’m hungry.”

By the end of the day, St. John’s of Compton will have checked in 85 patients.