Bornfamous

A guy with the improbable name of Fox calls today while I’m eating lunch to say that he’s at the beach with my homeless ex, who looks really bad and is talking about killing himself with his insulin, and would I come take him to the hospital?

Let’s see: last week I bought Rusty a bus pass and a phone card so he can call all the shelters, and gave him $20 for food, meanwhile wondering how I’m gonna stretch the budget to feed our son and his girlfriend for the rest of the month as they take their sweet time about looking for jobs. Can you tell I’m getting a little fed up? Sure, I’ll spend another $2.50 in gas to drive Rusty to the hospital. Why the hell don’t I tell Fox to call 911? I don’t know.

I hang up and check the OB webcam. There he is, slumping on the wall as a guy with a bicycle [Fox, I presume] leans over talking to him. He does look pretty bad. I sigh, eat a couple more bites, and head for the door.

Rusty is reeking when he gets in the car.

“You’ve been drinking,” I point out helpfully.

The other guy comes to my window and introduces himself. Fox is talking like a social worker, raising my hopes that somebody will finally get Rusty off the street. Fox says he’s with a place called Harbor Church and they’ll help Rusty get in some other place for a couple of weeks if this one doesn’t take him. I’m relieved to hear it.

Let me be perfectly clear about this: I don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to Rusty. What I give a rat’s ass about is my soul. As long as my son’s father is out there, literally dying on the street, I’m having trouble looking myself in the mirror.

“Last night was the first time I’ve been to church,” Rusty slurs. He looks horrible–face red and swollen, deep wrinkles, old before his time.

“That’s not true,” I say, irritated with the pointless lie.

Fox gives me his phone number and asks me to call him if Rusty doesn’t get into the treatment center. Oh. I thought it was another psych ward. I wonder why, with all the people who have been trying to help Rusty, he’s been unable to get into any shelters since last November. Well, of course. It’s the bipolar thing. He simply is incapable of doing anything positive on his own behalf. I remind myself that mentally ill people need help and understanding, not contempt.

We head for the freeway.

“Sorry I’ve been drinking,” says Rusty, which surprises me. He usually insists that he hasn’t touched a drop. “I only drank two beers so the treatment center will take me.”

Where did he get the beers, I ask.

“Fox.”

“Wait. I thought he was some kind of social worker.”

“No, he’s just some guy on the beach.”

“You mean he’s homeless?”

“Yeah. Well, he lives in his van.”

It doesn’t add up. But nothing adds up where Rusty is concerned. Still, I’m feeling guilty about having a warm place to live while Robby’s dad spends the wettest winter in 60 years out in the rain. I know he can’t survive it much longer. I think about the extra mattress and wonder if I should let him stay a week or two if the hospital doesn’t take him. But I tried that last summer after his pancreas was removed, and what was supposed to be a two-day stay stretched out to three months. Three crowded, chaotic, unpleasant months. I’ve been trying to practice what I believe about compassion and kindness but Rusty doesn’t make it easy.

He starts rambling about his most recent hospitalization in January, when he got kicked out of the psych ward for threatening his doctor. He’s chuckling about it, proud of himself for being a tough guy. I remember how these kinds of stories used to impress me. What was I thinking?

As we draw closer to the hospital, Rusty remembers that he doesn’t have cigarettes.

“I’m not buying you cigarettes.”

“I’m not asking you to buy them,” he says. “I’ve got some money.”

“Well, I’m not driving you to get any either.”

“Okay.” I can hear the dread in his voice: two weeks without tobacco. I have no sympathy. We pull up to the ER and I let him out.

“Thanks.”

“Good luck,” I say, and drive away. About an hour after I get home, the phone rings.

“Hi,” says a familiar voice. “It’s Randa.”

Rusty’s ex-girlfriend. We’ve become friends over the past year or so as I’ve encouraged her get more independent of him. She’s done a good job, moving into a sober-living place and working on getting her life back together. Randa says I’m the only person she can talk to about Rusty because I’m the only one who understands exactly what it’s like. No shit.

“I just got a call from Rusty,” she says. “He wants me to call an ambulance for him.”

“Oh, they didn’t let him in?”

“Huh?”

I explain how I’ve just dropped him off at the Alvarado ER.

“Oh,” says Randa. “That’s odd. No, he’s at 70th at the Shell station and he wants me to call 911 and tell them he’s threatening to kill himself so they’ll send an ambulance to take him to Alvarado.”

I realize that Rusty must have walked to that Shell station, about a mile from the hospital, to get his damn cigarettes. And now he wants a ride back in a nice, taxpayer-funded ambulance. Typical.

To hell with the mattress. To hell with the bus passes and the phone cards and the $20 bills. To hell with kindness.

I’m done.