Two nights before last a car ran over Billie Jo.
Billie Jo is a 70+-year-old woman who makes her home on the DART bench in front of the 7-Eleven at Gaston and Haskell here in our east Dallas neighborhood on the edge of Downtown Dallas. She makes a "closet" out of the space beneath the bench where she stores all of her belongings.
I've know her for over 10 years.
I've watched her sad slide deeper and deeper into mental illness, isolation and ill-health.
Billie Jo and her predicament personify the frustrations of deep, unyielding poverty, coupled with homelessness, neglect and a deepening, at times self-imposed, mental illness resulting from inattention and her own inability to simply medicate herself properly.
Over the years I've begged, pleaded, called the police, consulted with Adult Protective Services, prayed, cajoled, advocated and basically driven her really crazy trying to get her to agree to move into an apartment that we have offered to provide. And, I'm not the only one!
Billy Jo has trust issues.
Sometime Tuesday evening, Billy Jo got in the way of an oncoming car. Whether the car hit her head-on or backed over her is unclear. She came out of the encounter with a broken leg and a fractured shoulder. She was lucky to be alive.
When quizzed by attending physicians, she didn't remember what happened to her. She was taken to the Baylor University Medical Center just down the street from her accident.
Wednesday morning we received a call from a local rehab hospital that was trying to decide whether or not to admit her from Baylor. Even though we guaranteed that an apartment would be waiting for her upon discharge and even though she has Medicaid coverage, the rehab hospital decided not to admit her.
Health care as a commodity just doesn't work for everyone, especially the poor.
Thankfully, our loyal partners at the Baylor Health Care System came through again and admitted her to the hospital.
I know we will be able to work out a rehab facility for her and we will finally get her back into a permanent housing situation. We will be able to help her get back on her meds. She will most likely stabilize and do much better.
I'm not sure how she has survived the weather alone over the past 12 months. Bitter cold. Searing heat. Rain, ice, loneliness.
Ironically, her misfortune may have added a few years to her life!
She is a stubborn, willful, crotchety, at times sweet, old lady!
She is a real hoot!
She is a part of our community.
She has worked in our Resource Center.
She has attended the Central Dallas Church off and on for years.
She may be an angel. The city has a way of encouraging belief in such "realities."
I'm glad she has a chance to stay with us for awhile longer. It will be so good to turn the corner at the 7-Eleven and not see her sitting there, day and night, usually all alone and unreachable.
[Visit my post of May 31, 2005 to learn more about Billie Jo's life on the streets.]
What is the right thing to do when you see someone suffering on the street? The other day on my drive home through downtown Dallas I saw a man lying spread-eagled on the street. I called 911 and reported the situation. I was pulling up to my driveway and got a call from the Fire Department ambulance that they couldn't find the man and could I return and find him...OK, I decided I had started this and should see it through. I went back and found him, now he was leaning up on a dumpster a few feet from where I said he was. The ambulance was nowhere...and I called them back. 5 minutes later they drove up, took a look at him and then started questioning me. Did I know him? What happened to him? And finally, "Maam, he's just drunk and needs to sleep it off." I started driving off, then was curious to know what exactly they were going to do, if anything. They saw me watching them and began to question me again, this time with some attitude. I get the feeling they just wished I had driven by and not bothered noticing the man who was obviously in bad shape, and now were annoyed that I was "forcing" them to attend to him. My question again is, What is the right thing to do when you see someone suffering on the street?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, thanks for this post.
ReplyDeleteThanks even more for your heart and your response to the man on the street. Your assessment of the situation from start to finish is correct. Our reality today is the result of people making wrong personal decisions and then getting themselves in trouble. It is also the result of us as a society determining that people like the man you saw is not worth our time or our money to provide resources for recovery and new beginnings. The public servants like you encountered are overwhelmed with people on the street in trouble and there being no resources to support them in their work of helping all of us. Your story is the story of our cities in regard to the problem you describe so well.
To answer your question: keep responding to people with love and compassion. And, figure out how to impact the system with your involvement.