It’s Sunday morning and Mary is walking down Main Street looking beyond forlorn—beaten down, helpless, hopeless. She tells me she just left the hospital after overdosing in the bathroom of the “The Dunk”. That’s all she remembers. Presumably, someone found her, called 911, and got some Narcan into her. She was discharged from the hospital around 5 am.
I met Mary for the first time when I was sitting with Kenny a few weeks ago. I gave her gas money (See last week's post.) Since then, I have seen her pretty regularly. She always tells me she wasn’t looking for me, it’s just I look like someone she can talk to. I never give her more than a few dollars because I prefer that when I give money to my friends on the street, I can be pretty confident it’s going for food, clothing, shelter, and/or money for fuel that’s going to end up in a car. While I ultimately don’t judge where the money goes, I don’t like feeling I’m being played. And I prefer to buy things than hand out random cash.
This Sunday morning, Mary explains she’s been wandering the streets since the hospital let her go. She’s too mad at her husband to call him and too embarrassed to call her sons. The fact she and her husband are addicts is bad enough. Overdosing would be the last straw. She can’t believe she was that stupid. She always has her batches tested to make sure they’re really heroin and not some unreasonable facsimile. She explains that she didn’t test this time because her husband bought it…she didn’t even do a whole bag…she usually plans better. I’ll say, I laugh. She laughs along with me.
Mary says now she really wants to get cured…that she’s tried before and was down to “a bag a day” again but just couldn’t give up that last one.
She asks me for $10 to pick up some antibiotics and steroids she needs plus her inhaler which she lost last night. She promises me she’s going to go back on methadone. She’ll go to the Clinic first thing Monday morning. I realize where she’s going with this story…i.e., how much it’s going to cost her to get through the next 24 hours without going into withdrawal. I’m not going there.
A bag of heroin is about $10. She might think that she wants it for the prescriptions, but they might end up not being the ones she’s been prescribed. I ask if she has the scrips with her. No, but she’ll call the hospital and have them called in. I hand her my phone instead of the $10. This starts a string of calls to people who explain they don’t just go handing out prescriptions on Sunday morning to whoever calls. Finally, she calls her husband. It turns out he and her sons have been driving around looking for her. They’re waiting in the parking lot.
She asks me to come along because she wants me to meet her son. She’s really proud of him because he kicked the habit and has a good car repair business. She keeps thanking me as we walk to the truck and urges me to go up to the driver’s side to meet him. We shake hands and he looks at me like I’m an enabler.
Two days later, I’m at a coffee shop having breakfast and talking business with a friend. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mary walk by the window, notice me, stop, and come in. She tries to act like she’s looking for a muffin even though it’s pretty clear she’s looking for me. This isn’t the time or place. After a couple of minutes, I turn to her and say, as kindly as I can, “Hey Mary not today.” She starts to say “I wasn’t looking for….” bursts into tears and rushes out down the sidewalk. She looks beyond forlorn—beaten down, helpless, hopeless.
It snowed 3-4” here the other night. The first thing I did when I woke up was look out the window down towards the tracks to see if Jake and Suzanne’s tent had collapsed. It looked OK.
The local shelter is great. But there’s only room for about 40 people. You have to sign up first thing in the morning to see if there’s a place. And you can’t stay if you’re drunk or high. The shelter has given out dozens of tents and sleeping bags and, sometimes vouchers to get warmer clothes at the used clothing store. Still, one way or another, a few dozen people in our relatively small town spend the night outside, fending for themselves.
There was a program during Covid that provided hotel rooms to most everyone who needed shelter. There’s a new program that’s temperature-dependent. As I understand it, rooms are available if the high temperature that night is under 33. Last night the high was 33. But the low was 17. There are other complications. Such as having to walk a mile up the road to the motel and knowing that any possessions you leave behind might be stolen. Regardless, the state and our community are really trying to do whatever they can.
I know some of my friends on the street better than others. Three couples in particular. All in tents. There are, to my surprise, space heaters for tents that work and are safe. You can get a heater and a four-pack of those green Coleman propane tanks for about $100. It costs $70 to get a larger refillable tank but that’s way cheaper in the long run. We [i.e., paid subscribers and I] have bought two of them as well as an expensive connector for another.
I’ve had people thank me for helping them. But I’ve never heard thanks as effusive and heartfelt as the thanks they give me the morning after they have spent a 17-degree night with one of those heaters in their tent.
As long as I keep writing these stories about my friends, I’ll add half of new paid subscriptions to the collection of $5s in my left side pocket. $20s in my left back pocket. And a few singles here and there. Thanks.