Mickie is a millionaire. A bad copy of a Marlboro man; skin the color and texture of old beef jerky with just for men dark hair, a scruffy patchwork beard of white and shoe polish black. Shirtless, he wears a fishing vest left open and camo cargo pants. He used to wear combat boots but at some point he switched to slippers. And he is always on his three wheeled bike haunting the streets of Glendale. Everyone knows Mickie.
To me, he looks like someone accidentally left behind. Someone who staggered out onto the streets after a couple decades. Decades of what I don't know- war, drugs, the bottom of too many glass bottles. He is the kind of man, had my sister still been alive, she would have been hanging out with.
We are pretty used to Mickie. I try my best not to run him over. Although we have had some close calls. He's like a stray cat always darting out into the road when you least expect him to.
Yesterday he stopped in our driveway to talk to BC as he changed the oil in the red van for me. This is BC's way of offering me flowers. Little Red is sitting idle again, sidelined with a starter issue and I have been reassigned the Red Van. BC knows this makes me very unhappy but a working car is a working car, complaining would be pointless. So I get an oil change on the car I don't want to drive instead of a new starter in the one I do want. But there is a second reason I am getting so miss pandered to- it's hunting season.
Already I had innocently wandered into the kitchen for coffee to find heavily armed men. I was assured they weren't staying long since they were headed to the gun range to make sure they were all straight..... I assume BC meant their scopes. All this means I will be alone for the month of October- this includes for Beach's birthday, all the Halloween parties, and possibly Halloween itself.With the hunt so near dead squirrels are turning up in the trash can ("Oh Sweetness, did you see that, sorry....") BC has long forgotten about the details of domestic life. But he hasn't forgotten how much I love disease and disaster. So when Mickie showed BC his leg I was called outside to consult.
There was Mickie the millionaire on his tricycle. His leg inflamed, threatening gangrene, from mid calf down. As I was attempting to get him to remove his slippers 2 LDS missionaries happened on the scene. That would be BC with his pants particularly belted high- I had almost comment but then I saw how it closely resembled the way the W men wear there pants and I decided that 10th west polygamy fashion had some merit. Especially anything that closely resembled JW (that man is a reason to convert!)....>okay, out the gutter and back on the sidewalk< that was BC, myself the un-doctor, Mickie the millionaire, and now 2 young missionaries, one crystal clear blond, blue eyed, the other short, fat, dumpy, and as he would tell me later from Oklahoman.
It wasn't as easy as you would think, Mickie didn't want anything to do with going. I tried explaining how the clinic we wanted him to go to had a small flat fee for all services. Had I been enjoying any part of being so close to medicine again it was ripped away by Mickie the millionaire's last objection, "I don't have any money."
What the system "can't" know is how bad it is down on the front lines. That the barriers to seek treatment when someone like Mickie who is vulnerable and in pain, sees noway up from where he is, are too high. His choice as he saw it was go from boots to slippers while his leg rotted away. He had done what he could for himself. Help was too far to see. And as men in suits argue about healthcare they have no idea the damage they are doing. They go to church on Sunday and on Monday block true salvation. Inaction has the same ethical price tag as action- preventing access to medical care, they might as well join the hunt and pull tags for the poor. Same theory as shooting deer- pest control, prevent them from starving, and dying of disease. Not so pretty from down here.
Humanity fails again.
These days when I run, I run the river trail north. It takes me to the "doorstep" of the very homeless I wrote about in the article that gained me such high praises. The men and woman I interviewed live there hiding in the banks of tall golden grasses.
Daniel, whose blanket I sat on, a year later nothing has changed for any of us- he is once again staring down a long winter. And I am a broken hope like a ghost skirting the edges of the issue. Sometimes he smiles at me and I smile back. Most of the time we pretend not to know one another while I try not to notice the woman is gone and another is in her place.The difference between Daniel and Mickie and myself is uncomfortably slim. Daniel lives down the street in a tent by the river, Mickie lives down the street behind Brent's house in a trailer (I hadn't known this, for 3 years I had mistakenly believed he lived with Brent and the boys), and I live down the same street in a little white house. Of the three of us I am the one without hope. Daniel carries a bible and Mickie claims the LDS faith, I believe in absolutely nothing and have faith in even less.
How can things change when we are all so willfully blind to each others needs. I have been in Mickie's slippers; my sister died in them. Plain sight is a horrible place to suffer alone.
In the end I told Mickie "You can go with BC or you can go to GOD, but only one of them is looking out for you right now."
And so there we all were, BC the broke Quaker from New England paying Mickie the Millionaire's medical bills, the 2 young missionaries walking off empty handed, and me the un-doctor left standing on the sidewalk wondering about Daniel and when the first snows will hit the valley floor.
~We all want something beautiful, man I wish I was beautiful... ~ Counting Crows
Addendum: Mickie's leg and foot have mostly healed. He can now be seen riding the streets of Glendale on his 4-wheeled Big-Wheel.
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