So the memorial outside the library was nearly empty, which was a bit of a rude shock, considering I had two follow-ups scheduled and a couple other people I wanted to see. Rather more worrisome was how sick the follow-ups were: both with hypertensive urgencies. And there was the man I sat and spoke with for half the outreach last week; I was hoping to catch up with him, to begin building the kind of relationship that could lead to trust and hope and housing, the human connection that leads to dignity. But he wasn't there, and neither were my hypertensives. But we had blankets and jackets and we are unstoppable.
One man sat at the foot of the monument. He was silent. He smiled gently and gestured at us-- a blanket, a coat, a toothbrush, toothpaste... No medicines. We prowled the grounds. People are creatures of habit: the follow-ups must be around here somewhere.
It is hunting, in its way, street outreach.
My spider sense was tingling. We followed it to follow-up #1, who had been taking his medicine as directed. #2 wasn't around but had by all accounts been on his medicines and taking his blood pressure. Two more men rolled up their sleeves. High normal, but normal. We found good homes for the rest of the jackets and handed out some more toothpaste, the caravanned to a nearby park.
It is a crapshoot. I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach. A little voice in my head says mean things to me: nobody will be there, it will be a failure, a disaster-- you don't know where you're going, you are leading people nowhere. To my profound relief, two people pushing baby carriages packed with supplies were just visible in the dark as we pulled up. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, allergic rhinitis, and a couple of good leads. Someone deeper back in the gloom was coughing, badly-- everyone it the area was worried about her-- and there was a collection of people holed up back behind a mini mall.
We hiked back into the gloom, stopping to hand out toothpaste and toothbrushes to a couple of men charging a cell phone. They told us about being chased from one park to another, from one side of the city to another, about people referring them to places that won't accept them, about needing birth certificates that cost money to get not enough money to make rent, about going to school and trying rather gamely to put their lives back together. And they pointed us to the woman, coughing in a tent further back in the dark.
The directions were ambiguous: fences, barriers, curving trails that lead nowhere. Eventually, we saw a bit of tarp and heard the cough, wet, deep, and awful. It was a terrible, desperate sound. We worked our way gently toward her; she was hiding, mistrustful. There was a little bowl of dog food outside the dwelling, on a neat rectangle of tarp that served as a porch. We called out to her, plying her with toothpaste. She ended up accepting medicine, too. I gave her three months' supply and put her on my mental follow-up list.
We moved on to the last encampment, directed by the two men with the baby carriages. Again, the pit of the stomach, again the haunting fear: no one will be there, no one. We followed the directions and wandered with our flashlights, calling out hello? hello? Then a figure appeared pushing a cart full of belongings. We stalked him relentlessly, following him off the street and into the dimness. I shone my light on him, calling out hello? He turned, accepted a toothbrush, toothpaste, and while we were talking his girlfriend appeared, cheerful, gregarious, warm and friendly. Alcohol wafted from her breath. Her eyes were bright. She had grown up in a military family, had a brother who worked nearby. She showed me her teeth-- deep caries in the upper molars, deeply plunging gums in the lower incisors. She knew all the local churches, prayed in them. She let us see her faith: deep, pervasive, calm and bright. She told us about fishing with her family, about her uncle, a captain in the army. At one point in the story she was 14 years old, dancing on the deck of the queen mary. In my mind, she shifts back and forth-- a young girl, dancing, a woman, hiding at the edge of a parking lot.
