Lost and Found

I wake up at 5am with a lot of pain in my left wrist. That’s not the arm I fell on yesterday, so it’s just arthritis and whatever other crap. That wrist never fully recovered after surgery a couple of years ago. Muffin, Stephen’s senior cat, is meowing persistently in the hall and Connor, who has come out since its dark, is scratching and kicking like a lunatic. I think he must be in the box but when I turn on the light, I discover that he has attempted to bury the rejected part of his dinner. Checking on Muffin, I see she has food and water and is not stuck anywhere. She has a neurological problem that makes her shake like a human with Parkinson’s and is unable to back up, so if there’s an impediment in front of her she is stuck until rescued, which I have done a couple of times since I’ve been here. Apparently she just wanted to make sure I still exist because once she sees me, the meowing stops. As consciousness dawns, sadness comes flooding in with yesterday’s memory of Saucy dead on the floor, as well as the realization that once again I am waking up in someone else’s bed because my life is such a disaster that I can’t live in my own house, at least not until the burst pipe is capped and the water is back on. Jenna can tell losing Saucy is getting to me. “You have to try to remember the things that go right,” she texts me “the kids that get housing, the kids who get help. It’s not the same, but it’s all we have.” The day goes by in its usual rhythm of clients trying to figure out what is going on with their government benefits, and having problems with their housing, and wanting help getting back into school. Then Robin, who has been answering the red office phone, which I think of as the “homeless youth hotline” comes bustling in to the office to say that we’ve gotten a call from a young man and his mother who are looking for an alternative to the adult men’s shelter. Robin told them to come to the office, so he is just letting me know what to expect. They arrive, M, a 23 year old pansexual guy and his worried mother. M makes it through most of the registration before his mother comes wheezing up our steep stairs, but when I ask about his benefits, all he can tell me is that he doesn’t have food stamps. His mother fills in that he has SSI and Medicaid, a long history of mental health issues, special ed and hospitals. Robin, who has brought them both a hot meal, pauses in the doorway. “I was like that,” he says. “I had a lot of mental issues and I was in and out of jail. Kate saved me from that and now I work here, you can do it too.” Robin actually saved himself, I just held the door open, but the message gets through and M. relaxes a little. Having heard his story, I plot out a plan – the overnight drop-in for tonight, then a full intake for youth shelter tomorrow, and then a TB test, and a psych eval on Sunday with Doug and then we can apply for mental health housing for him. The overnight drop-in doesn’t open until 8pm, but I’m staying until 9pm for the Rise and Resist meeting, so I let them relax and charge their phones until it is time to head over there. City funding applications are due tomorrow, and one page has to be notarized. Our notary didn’t have time to stop by today, and he’s in class until 9pm, so after the meeting I head out to meet him at NYU. I almost miss the C train – the doors are closing just as I reach the platform, but they randomly open again and I get on. At the next stop, a young woman with hair colored red and drawings on her pale arms lands in the seat next to me. I’m looking at friends' protest posts when she says, “call my husband.” She seems young for a husband and doesn’t wear a ring, but a lot of the young people I work with refer to their partners this way. “I think we’ll have trouble with reception on a moving train,” I tell her. “You can text him,” she says, showing me the number written on her arm in ballpoint. I enter the number and she says, “write that India is at the clinic on Throop St, the Living Room.” “I know that place,” I tell her. “I use drugs ,”she says “but I don’t want to go to rehab right now, I just got out of jail for stealing and doing what you need to do to survive in a City and I have some things I want to do.” It’s getting close to my stop, so I tell her I run a homeless youth program. “What’s it called?” “New Alternatives,” I tell her and she adds that and the address to the text on her skin. “Take my number,” she says and I put it in my phone, promise to text her and get off at W 4th St thinking about what the odds are that I was on that train in that moment.