“I’m fine, but you must be freezing,” she stated, as she draped a blanket over his shoulders. “It’s been raining for days.”
He shrugged. “My teeth are clattering like piano keys, but we’ve been through worse,” he stated.
Abdul had come to depend on their weekly visits as his solely semblance of stability throughout a time wherein dwelling on the road in San Diego had change into what he referred to as “a daily game of Russian roulette.” His longtime associate, Phasia McKee, had died in November of a suspected fentanyl overdose at 46 years previous. Three of his pals had been run over and killed of their tents by an intoxicated driver who swerved onto the sidewalk. In the final yr, Abdul had revived six individuals after fentanyl overdoses by administering CPR and the nasal spray naloxone. He had additionally overdosed 5 occasions himself, together with as soon as a number of days earlier, when he collapsed on the sidewalk, gashed open his brow, suffered a minor stroke and spent 36 hours within the emergency room earlier than being launched again to the road.
“How’s your recovery going?” Laine requested.
“I’ve got my miracle drug,” he stated, holding up a small container of olive oil, pouring some onto his fingers and massaging it into his pores and skin.
“What about your medications?”
“They’re either lost, stolen or in here somewhere,” he stated, as he started to sift via a grocery cart, a suitcase and two plastic bins that contained all his belongings. Laine knelt subsequent to him to test his vitals. He had a slight fever, and his blood strain was dangerously excessive. She gave him aspirin and took out her pc so as to add one other line to his medical chart, which instructed the story of a life outdoors: power fatigue, malnourishment, alcoholism, blurred imaginative and prescient, schizoaffective dysfunction, despair, anxiousness, paranoia.
For the previous a number of weeks, Laine’s growing concern about Abdul’s well being had prolonged past her workdays with the nonprofit group Healthcare in Action and into her evenings, till she generally picked up her son at day care and drove 45 minutes again into San Diego simply to ensure Abdul was nonetheless there. The common age of demise for individuals who have been homeless in San Diego was lower than 50, and Abdul was about to show 64.
Source: www.nytimes.com