| I came all this way to find a place whee I could deliver babies and take care of homeless people and there kinda f aren't a whole lot of places where you can do that, which makes me wonder not so much why that's the case-- malpractice insurance premiums being so high and all for deliveries kinda drives down the number of deliverers you want to hire, and homeless people are not a lucrative market share: my preferences are expensive, fine-- but what exactly ties these two things together for me when they seem like such an odd pair to everyone else. I think it's the way a whole life comes out at you and lands in your hands-- the amount of trust you have to have to let that happen. In the delivery room, it's pretty literal. But it was literal, too, on the picnic table behind the Salvation Army last night. I had put together a social history questionnaire for the undergraduates to use. (I have yet to recruit them, but there are so many things we don't have that we really need-- I just sort of assumed they would show up, being all Pre-med and gung ho). I had spent kind of a lot of time putting in questions about strengths and background and home and family, education and skills to balance out the drugs and arrests and incarcerations that it was also designed to dredge up. It is an attempt to write a biography, right there on the spot, and in so doing to connect the imaginary undergraduate and the person sitting next to them on a stoop somewhere in my mind. They would bond and hug and be changed forever. Okay, I admit, this is a lot of ask of a questionnaire. Last night I test drove it... |
I needed it desperately. There was a blind lady on the street that I have to house. We have to house her, guys, she's perfect. You look at her face and the face of a woman who could run the clinic is looking back at you. She's like the kid with the chocolates last night-- she has the gift. Smart enough to run the place, kind enough to want to, compassionate and patient, welcoming and trusting: the woman is indestructible. And we have to house her. Then we have to hire her. But first things first.
No wait, I want to tell you a story... James at homeless health care tells his story and lets people share it. He runs the needle exchange on 4th and Crocker where I used to work. He is a kind man In his 50s who used to be a client. A lot of the staff used to be clients there, they'll tell you. I used to ask my patients if they were still getting high when they shot up, my way of figuring out if it was okay to talk about stopping. The younger ones were still getting high but the older ones were just using to keep from getting sick. They would ask me but if I stopped using what would I do? I'm fifty years old. 8've been on the street since I was 17. I've got a record. No one is going to hire me. And I would say you could be my boss. I loved the look on their faces when they got that. And I would send them to James and his soft smile. It doesn't have to be today. You don't have to stop today. When you're ready, when you're ready. I carry James around with me when I'm on the street. There is always a little part of me looking for him-- the one who could run the outreach. Guys, she's him.
... I can't tell you her life. The stuff she lived through is not rare enough to identify her, but her location and the eye injury and then all that stuff might be enough. You don't need to hear it anyway. What you needed to do was see her face when I asked about her family, it was like a glacier calving. It took a minute or two for her to recover.
The form worked beautifully, peeling away the layers, revealing hidden strengths and holding them up for us to admire, preserving them like pressed flowers. She got skittish, embarrassed. I held up a collection of her attributes: music, crafting, typing... I added compassion, the kind of person you could open up to. She'd gotten her first job in her teens-- a worker, like me. This is the resume of a teacher, a tutor, a counsellor, an art therapist. I get an idea. I go after the eye again. The good one can count my fingers if I hold them close enough. I ask her to read my form-- too blurry. I give her my glasses: better! I give her my husband's glasses (super strong, he can't see a thing without them) and she reads! Blindness cured! Well, for about two seconds. But we will be back with an old pair of glasses. They won't be perfect but they will help. ....... The second night at the Salvation Army was otherwise very much like the first. No kid tonight, though, but the line was again very organized. We treated one additional patient and then packed up and headed out to the apartment building near Rikki's church. Rikki has long, deep roots in the community, which pay off. One look at her was all it took. Church people!-- one of the kids shouted and we were surrounded, at first hesitantly and then collegially. A pack of about five or six eight year old boys stood in the planter we'd thrown our stuff onto and hawked the vaccines: look, I got mine! It didn't even hurt! People stood in their doorways watching each other get their shots. We did kids, babes in arms, a woman who hadn't had a shot in years. Rikki knew everyone's name. She knew how old the kids were, held a toddler and chatted in the doorway with one of the families while Eddie vaccinated and Sean set up the syringes, the alcohol wipes, the little band aids, and I jotted down the records. One of the kids ran us down the street and dragged his family out of a nearby house to get vaccinated on the street while we were packing up to head out to the park. .... In the park we got briefly separated. We called each other and blinked our flashlights to re-group. I had beautiful gift bags from the office and had appropriated two of them to use a bribery to lure the coughing lady out of her tent-- one for her and one for her man. We also had very cozy blankets and a stash of ibuprofen-- street gold! Everyone out here hurts... I'd run into a carney on the way (which is part of how people get separated, I admit) and had stopped the team to check the knee he'd wrenched a couple weeks ago. Carneys are an infrequent presence in homeless camps and I am kind of a butterfly collector: look, honey, a carney! They have a somewhat different air about them and a distinctive smile that I wanted to teach the students to recognize, not for any particular reason beyond the joy of seeing something and knowing what it is. We gave him some of our ibuprofen and some razors so he would be ready for work tomorrow (he rings bells for the Salvation Army, so, synergy!) and followed the flashlights to the coughing lady, who was out of her tent and fresh from a recent hospitalization for pneumonia. She's been powering through the inhalers during this latest bout and needed re-supply but her recent incapacitation had forced her to give up smoking to our great relief. We talked about the medications and got a good listen to her lungs. I sized her up: no clubbing... worn, like people get on the street, maybe twenty years older than her stated age, maybe more. We treated the guy next to her, handed out our gifts (they were, to be honest, so wonderful as to be a bit overwhelming, which is exactly what you want in a gift, now isn't it...) and wrapped for the night. ------------------------ |
