Extended
client profile from Crackheads and Zeroes of the Zeta Function, as part of a
larger city planning draft.
=======================
My
co-worker and I are watching footage of a sociopathic six-year-old who's
popped the necks of two pet birds, and she says, "Her therapist is
terrible. If I had that kid, I'd be asking, 'Do you understand what death is?
That you ain't coming back?'"
This
question plays through my head for the rest of the day.
7:30am:
Mr. Miller's psychiatric intake. OCD coupled with Catholic Guilt, years of
booze, head injuries, PTSD, and no sleep means every answer is a slam
poetry contest.
"I
wasn't, wasn't trying to kill myself.
I
got out of prison in New Jersey
Not
in Arizona
N-O
If
I said yes I meant no
Do
you spell New Jersey with a Z?
Show
me how to spell New Jersey
J-E-R-S-E-Y
No
Z.
No
Z.
I
got out of prison and I took two bottles of pills
I
sat on the curb by the fire station and said
I'm
not trying to kill myself
Then
the firemen took me to Saint Mary's
They
gave me a shot of something to calm down
I
don't remember anything after that."
When
we finish, he taps five times on the door and leaves. I offer to buy him
rosary beads, but he stopped believing in those things years ago.
I
first met Mr. Miller at a Starbucks at the behest of a local journalist and
my boss, neither of whom are in the habit of dropping everything to advocate
for one out of a sea of homeless men like Calvino's angel plucking Saint
Peter's mother out of Hell. He was neat and overly polite, his face weathered
by depression like a baseball glove.
After
the enrollment questions I offered him a change of clothes, but he refused.
When your pattern recognition apparatus is on over-drive, any small blemish or
malfunction ruins an object, so anything we gave him---a cell phone, a portable
radio, a winter coat---ended up in the trash. Nothing is clean enough. He'll
spend forty minutes washing his hands and then bend over the ground, arguing
with himself (or his father's voice) about how he'll go to Hell if he doesn't
pick up all the trash in the parking lot. We now give him gift cards.
He
didn't fit anywhere. Shelters made him paranoid and led to fights. Sleeping
on the church steps meant living in a thin layer of dirt and personal funk.
Every few weeks he'd be too sad to function and check himself into Dekalb
Medical, but who wants to live in a hospital? During the winter I'd drive him
on a circuitous route to McDonald's so he could warm up and listen to
"Country Folk Can Survive" on repeat, his fingers tapping out a
Fibonacci sequence, nails bitten down to the bloody quick.
Once
we got his New Jersey birth certificate (which took several months, three
mail-in attempts, forgery, medical claims, tracking down his alienated
parents, begging like a little bitch to the poor woman who ran his parish vital
records office, and eventually discovering a state law where ex-cons could
get it for free with their social worker's signature), I took him to a Social
Security contractor with an armload of his medical records and 8 months later,
after wrestling money from Arizona and setting up a representative payee so
wouldn't have to manage his own finances, he qualified for Medicaid and his
first disability check appeared.
By
this time I'd holed him up in a non-congregate hotel, a pandemic windfall
that gave 90 days of free shelter to medically fragile homeless adults who
tested negative for covid-19, and miraculously saw him paired with a second
case manager whose child had an identical OCD diagnosis ("Oh Mr. Miller, you can't keep all the lunch trays in your room, but I'll let you clean up
since I know you'll do a much better job than me.")
One
day a housing offer landed, a one-bedroom apartment with sliding scale rental
assistance and wrap-around mental health services, but when I pulled up the
housing spreadsheet (a giant unholy matrix where hundreds of clients are
prioritized based on length of homelessness, vulnerability score, and whether
they have their six forms of ID) I didn't see his name.
(I
should preface that the following conversation went very smoothly and
professionally, but only because every caregiver involved was quick to reply
to e-mails/text messages/phone calls. Half the case managers in this business
are unreachable unless you hunt them down in person and bring Skittles. Also I
changed their names to famous WWE wrestlers)
Me:
"Heeeeey why don't I see Mr. Miller on the list?"
Housing
Navigator: "He's still attached to Randy Savage Hospital, which makes him
invisible to you. Contact their man."
Me:
"Hey Randy Savage, Mr. Miller's been offered an apartment."
Randy
Savage: "Really? I thought Rey Mysterioso was in charge of finding him
housing."
Me:
"Hey Mysterioso, have you found housing for him yet?"
Rey
Mysterioso: "Nope! If you have something, let's do that
instead."
Housing
Navigator: "Have we asked the client if he wants this housing
option?"
Me
and Hulk Hogan: "Yes, Mr. Miller calls us five times a day, every day,
sometimes at 7 a.m., because prime numbers are lucky. He wants an
apartment."
There
followed a few minor bureaucratic pitfalls, ranging from "you need to
backdate this document so HUD will think he's been homeless long enough"
to "someone forgot to check the Disabled box", but eventually we
bundled off his papers and now await the city's decision, like Catholics
staring at the church and wondering what color the smoke will be.