Ask Me Why I Hurt (31 page)

Time flew by, as fast as ever, and soon it had been two years since Katrina and Christmas was fast approaching. “Hey, Randy.” It was Bob Sarnecki, the vice president of our IT program at Phoenix Children’s. He came walking down the hospital corridor after me. “A computer and video company would like to donate a bunch of gift cards to hand out for the homeless kids at Christmas this year,” he said.

I was elated. Jan and I had been handing out sleeping bags and sweatshirts for years during the holidays. Every year we got more, and every year we ran out.

“They also suggested we transmit a video signal from the hospital here to a videophone on the van. We could have somebody dress up as Santa at the North Pole.”

“That’s an even better idea!” I exclaimed. “Who could we get to be Santa?”

“Me.” He gave a shy, goofy grin.

The days before Christmas Jan and I carried boxes of ten-dollar gift cards out to the streets. For many of the kids, I knew, it would be the only gift they would get. They ran off in packs and soon
returned, showing what they had bought. One girl got herself a pad of paper and a collection of colored pencils. She sat down in a lawn chair to spend the day coloring. A boy got himself a new pair of cheap shoes. Another got a belt. I was struck at the kids’ practicality. Several bought phone cards to call relatives far away. A few purchased gifts for others, like the boys who brought small presents and cards to Jan, their mother figure. She took them, thanking each boy sincerely.

On Christmas Eve we drove to a busy location. We had the videophone all set up in the front of the van. I invited Amy and the kids along to help. I had doubted that teenagers would want to talk to Santa, but I was wrong. The kids clamored, eager to have their turn. One by one they stepped in front of the videophone. Santa was there, dressed in his red suit and white beard, sitting in a chair in front of a white background that I knew was butcher paper. The amount of fuzzy static was perfect. I could almost hear the cold winds at the North Pole howling. We had suggested that Santa not promise the homeless kids anything, but just listen to their wishes.

“Hey, Santa,” one boy said. “I want to get clean.”

The girl behind him stepped nervously up to the video. “Hey, Santa,” she whispered. “Long time no see.”

For four hours the vice president of the Phoenix Children’s Hospital sat in his office, talking to the kids on the van on the video. As each child filed past, Charlotte and Janie and Reed greeted them, handing out candy canes and cookies that Amy had brought. Younger kids got a toy or stuffed animal. For the older teens we had the gift cards. The word spread on the streets, and more and more kids showed up. Santa’s voice got hoarse, but he continued, stopping only every few hours for a bathroom break.

It was 8:30 P.M. when we took the kids home. Charlotte was crashed out, sleeping hard against her car seat. Janie and Reed were in the backseat. They were six now and often surprised me with their knowledge and insights. I found their different reactions to that evening fascinating. Janie took it all in stride. Like Amy, she figured helping others was her job and felt no internal
conflicts about doing it. She rode with a pleased expression on her face. She has Amy’s strength, I thought. Reed seemed to wrestle more with the what-could-have-been questions. He had a strong sense of empathy and, as we drove, asked a million questions from the backseat. “How did the kids get homeless?” he asked. “How come they can’t find jobs? Can I help them go back to school?”

Amy and I fielded the questions as patiently as we could. We had decided that it was important the kids know about my work—but not in ways that would frighten them. “Not everyone is lucky to have a family like our family,” Amy replied.

“Mom,” Reed finally asked from the back seat.

“Yeah?”

He waited for a moment, looking out the car window. “How about I give them my toys?”

Amy and I exchanged a look. “You don’t need to,” she replied. “But if you want to, you can.”

A few days later Donald was standing before me, his face thinner, eyes blue as ever. New muscles filled out his shirt. He was now a mature young man in his early twenties. He came up to the van while I was showing it to a reporter from a magazine. Pastor Richardson was behind him. He too looked much older, as if he had crossed that invisible line from being late middle aged to elderly. His hair was now entirely gray, and he walked with a bit of a stoop. His eyes were a little cloudy.

I left the reporter for a minute to talk to Donald. His hands were dusty, just the way the pastor’s hands had been when I first met them both. “We wanted to deliver you some good news,” Pastor Richardson said. I could swear Donald seemed brighter, more mentally adept. He had an assurance now, maybe an understanding of who he was, and a gift that surely comes from being loved.

Donald handed me a small envelope. The paper was creamy, and I saw my name engraved on the front. “A card, how nice,” I
said. I was thinking vaguely it must be a birthday, a retirement, or a church event. I opened the envelope. Donald waited expectantly.

I read the announcement with awe. “You’ve gotten married!” I exclaimed. He grinned and showed me the ring. I saw his name in fancy print: Donald Richardson. I was astounded again. Pastor Richardson had given Donald his last name.

Donald shyly handed me some photos of the wedding. His new wife was the plain-faced girl from HomeBase, the one who had had her eye on him. She wore a dress bright with satin, and for shoes she had bright red heels. Her brown hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail, and next to her Donald had a huge grin. Surrounding them were the pastor, his wife, and his congregation. They all were standing on a stage next to a podium draped with a faded cloth.

“The wedding was in Pastor Richardson’s church,” I said.

“Of course,” he said.

I felt a trembling of emotion that threatened to break through me. It all came crashing in: the van, the kids, the schedule, the worries, Nicole and her pet of hair, Amy and my ongoing struggles to let her be my support, my own children and my guilt at not being the father I’d always wanted to be. And now here was Donald, smiling at me more brightly than any stained glass window. There was a reason for it all, I realized. Good things could happen. I lifted my head and looked into the clear blue sky. It was as if I could see right through it into the heavens.

T
he girl was pregnant. She was pretty far along, at least six months. Her belly was distended, and her ankles were so swollen they lapped over the tops of her sneakers. She was seventeen. She wore dirty gray socks with tiny pink pom-poms. I examined her carefully. She had all the complications of a homeless pregnancy. Her throat was swollen. Her tonsils were infected. Her gums were radiant with gingivitis, which was particularly worrisome because oral decay can send a cocktail of bacteria into the bloodstream toward the developing baby. She had signs of anemia and low calcium. She, and her baby, had received no vitamins, no tests, and no prenatal care.

“What sort of foods have you been eating?” I asked.

“I’ve been drinking milk,” she said defensively.

“We buy the white kind, not just chocolate,” the boy standing next to her said. “When we panhandle enough, I buy her a whole quart.” She had insisted the boy join her for the exam. He was only fifteen. He had lank brown hair and sleepy green eyes. Cat’s eyes, I thought.

“Are you the father?” I asked.

He looked at her for help. The two exchanged a glance. “I was
gang-raped,” she told me. “It was a bunch of guys. I was sleeping in the park. I woke up, and they were on top of me. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Would you like counseling? I could refer you—”

“No,” she said.

“When you’re ready,” I told her, “I can get you help. OK?”

“I’m going to be the dad,” the boy said. He covered her hand with his. “I’m going to take care of her and the baby.”

I looked at them. He was fifteen and homeless. She was seventeen. She was also homeless. “Raising a baby is hard,” I replied.

“It’s my baby,” she said stubbornly. “I don’t care if I got it because of rape.”

“Me either,” said the boy.

“I’m not an OB,” I told them. “I can try to make sure you are healthy. And I can see about finding you shelter. But I need to get you more help if you are serious about having the baby. Number one, we need to finish the exam.”

“Can I get vitamins?” the girl asked. She touched her belly. “I want the baby to be healthy.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll take care of her,” the fifteen-year-old boy repeated. “I’m going to be a good daddy. Not like my parents. We’re going to take good care of our baby.”

When the two left, they were holding hands. They had waited several hours while we tried to find them shelter, but there were no openings. She was on a waiting list. In her hand she carried a bag containing prenatal vitamins. Vitamins and nowhere to sleep, I thought.

I remembered when I was fifteen. I could never have imagined myself as a father. I didn’t think I could have even imagined anyone else as a father. The idea that this boy would think he was capable of fatherhood should have been appalling. Yet at the same time I understood. The boy was reaching out for one thing in his life that had meaning. So was the girl. Since the beginning of time people have had babies, I reminded myself. Sometimes they were
younger than these two and facing harder odds. People had survived much worse. Maybe these two could make it work. But still, I thought, they were children having children.

“Jan, do you ever think about the odds these kids have?” I asked her as she labeled the girl’s blood work. Her eyes were sunburned around where she had worn sunglasses.

“Like those kids, two teenagers having a baby,” I added.

“If it was one of my kids, I’d hit the roof.”

“I know you would.”

“But I’d still love them.” Her face got softer. “I guess I’m always just hopeful for the best.” She looked over to the sunlight rectangle of the door. More kids were approaching.

“Me too,” I said.

Life on the van hurtled forward as always. I found it hard to believe that January 2008 was here. Eight years had passed since we started the van. In 2007 I had been able to hire a new nurse, Julie Watson. She was an outstanding nurse, and Wendy and Michelle were over the moon that they could now do case management duties without having to cover medical issues.

All the same, I could tell that Wendy was beginning to dread our team meetings. She was still profusely apologetic for not being able to get Nicole help. We had been seeing Nicole now for two years, a lifetime for someone of her needs to survive on the streets, and every effort to get her help had been fruitless. During this time we had watched helplessly as she slid more and more into psychosis. Wendy had called the local inpatient psychiatric unit. She had called everyone, from social workers to the courthouse. They had told her what everyone else had said. Nicole couldn’t be committed against her will unless she went through extensive court proceedings and was found to be a danger. And she couldn’t get voluntary help without identification, which, of course, wouldn’t
happen as long as she was psychotic. She was trapped in a system that punished her for her own mental illness. Wendy refused to accept this, and I understood how she felt.

I felt the familiar stab of helplessness. “You can’t blame yourself for the system,” I told Wendy. “The system is not set up for the mentally ill, whether they are adults or children.”

Wendy’s blond head dipped. “I just wish there were
something.
”

“I know,” I told her, wishing I could offer more.

“More requests,” Jan said, and we all groaned. Jan was always answering the van’s phone and hearing requests from agencies that wanted us to bring the van around: adult shelters, schools, soup kitchens, and alcohol and drug treatment centers. The problem was we had only one van and one team. We were limited by our budget and by our staff numbers. Every day we took out the van it cost a few thousand dollars in overhead for upkeep, salaries, supplies, and medications. That meant every new site we added came with costs. I tried to weigh the number of kids we served at each site against the chance that we could get funding, which mostly came from grants. My big dream, spoken to no one, was to get another doctor on board. Then we could split shifts and reach twice as many kids. But that also meant somehow coming up with thousands in extra funding. The way the economy was heading, I didn’t think that would happen.