Part 7
Nine months later, I still took the eastbound bus before sunrise.
I had completed the nursing-assistant program and found a patient-care job with the VA homeless-patient team. It paid enough for me to leave Bell’s Market, though not enough to stop checking my bank balance before buying groceries.
The work was less dramatic than people imagined. Most mornings involved blood-pressure cuffs, replacement identification forms, medication lists, clean socks, and telephone calls made while somebody sat close enough not to be forgotten on hold.
Victoria’s office completed a review of George’s case. It identified six veterans in the region whose letters had repeatedly been returned and whose cases had been closed without a successful handoff to street outreach.
The number occupied one line in the report. Mae knew each name and where five of them had been sleeping. The sixth had already entered a shelter by the time the outreach team found him.
The VA changed the local procedure. A returned letter could no longer close one of those cases until an outreach worker documented an attempt to locate the veteran.
One November morning, Malik and I stopped outside the old laundromat. A man named Leon had been sleeping there for three nights. He was younger than George and wore a Ravens cap pulled low over his eyes.
I offered him coffee.
“No clinic,” he said before I could mention one.
“All right.”
He looked suspicious. “That’s it?”
“For today.”
I sat on the bench and opened my own sandwich. Leon accepted a banana but left the coffee untouched until Malik and I had moved several feet away.
The next morning, he asked what happened at the clinic.
I told him about showers, a primary-care team, housing assistance, and doors that sometimes locked. I also told him he could leave.
“People always say that,” Leon muttered.
“I know.”
On the third morning, he agreed to speak with Mae by phone. He did not agree to a van, an appointment, or housing. I wrote the number on a card and let him put it in his own pocket.
The bus came at six-thirty.
Before boarding, I looked at the strip of brick where George had once rested his head. The laundromat’s new owner had removed the plywood and painted the door blue. Inside, a worker was testing a row of machines. Their empty drums turned beneath the fluorescent lights.
Leon lifted his banana in a small farewell.
I climbed aboard with one sandwich still in my tote—the second one, not mine. As the bus pulled away, I opened my breakfast and took another bite.
The peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth, and the coffee was still hot.