She sat outside the local laundromat in a strip mall anchored by the local grocery store chain. I was out babysitting my bicycle, having just run off a guy who just tried to steal my front wheel.
Her name is Tina. She has short messy brunette hair and is wearing purple-framed glasses. She asked me for a light for the short cigarette she had picked up off the sidewalk outside the laundromat. It was her lucky day: I don't smoke anymore but happened to have a lighter in my pocket. I gave it to her and told her to keep it.
I struck up a conversation with Tina. Found out she'd been out on the streets a little over three years in this part of town. She and her brother became homeless during the COVID epidemic. Even rental protections didn't help them. She was working as a veterinarian tech at a 24-hour emergency animal hospital. A job which she so desperately wanted back.
Now she was sleeping under the newly constructed overpass with her brother and his girlfriend. She had a medium-sized tan and white-spotted mongrel dog with her.
I felt bad for her. A few months earlier her brother and his girlfriend tried to steal the $10 cooler handlebar bag off the front of my bike. But I didn't tell her that. She didn't need the stress.
As we talked, I asked about another homeless man I had come to know, Michael Francis. A Marine Corps veteran and serious alcoholic. He disappeared from the spot he would frequent to panhandle. You couldn't miss the gleam in his eye and sly smile. A few months prior, near the time when Tina's brother and girlfriend tried stealing from me, I met Michael Francis and we became fast friends. He had a concerning cough and I knew it was pneumonia and so did he. I insisted he stay at my place and let me treat his pneumonia. I had access to numerous antibiotics and started him on some strong stuff. In about a week, he got better. Giving him the rest of the treatment he promised to take it all. There were only eight pills left to take.
By the time I had met Tina, Michael Francis had disappeared from the area. She knew of him and told me he was taken to the hospital. Although I had given him the right antibiotic treatment which cured the bacterial infection, he had a fungal infection as well.
When she learned I was the man who gave him the antibiotics, she asked me if I was a doctor. I had to tell her no. However, on the streets you might as well call me one.
Her eyes softened and watered as she began to break down with emotion. Michael Francis was a good soul. One of the defenders of the homeless. Like myself.
His lungs didn't hold up so well after decades of smoking, poor nutrition from alcoholism, and a nasty strain of Aspergillus. His final moments spent on a ventilator in a Propofol dream.
Peace be with you, Devil Dog, you're just going to hell to regroup with the other Marines.
I asked a man in a passing truck for a cigarette. I gave it to Tina and sat down next to her. We both were in tears. Her dog licked my face. She had known Michael much longer than I. For years. She told me about all the laughs they had and how much of a ladies man he was.
This happened a month ago. On the mean streets. Where life is fleeting amongst even the best of us.
I've written a few stories about loss of life on the streets, from violence and drug overdose. This one strikes me differently but the same. It hurts to recall any of the people I've lost—Sharon, Pops, and Angel. Every one of them and all who you see on the streets are my family. In all their flaws and hidden beauty, under dirty clothes and unkempt hair, they are my brothers and sisters.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
We are people too. We love. We cry. We hope.
Some of us too much.
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