The alley was lit by the faint glow of street lights. Overhead power lines crisscrossed the piece of sky visible between the buildings and turned the night into a patchwork quilt. Garbage bins lined the angles at the bottom corners of buildings, spilling refuse in scattered piles.
“Breathe, damn it,” my partner said, and thumped the man’s chest for the third time.
We had been walking our beat in the Downtown Eastside when a woman told us of a man unconscious from a drug overdose. We were directed to this alley, where we found the man slumped in a filthy alcove.
A needle was stuck in his arm and his head lolled to the side when we tried to wake him, and I knew the man was dying. We pulled him from the alcove and radioed for an ambulance.
Kneeling beside the motionless form, my partner pressed his fingers to the side of the man’s neck and threw me a grim look. He couldn’t find a pulse. My partner wiped the back of wrist across his mouth in an unconscious gesture.
We could not perform mouth to mouth on this man. He was an IV drug user in an area where Hepatitis C and HIV were rampant, and we could simply not risk becoming infected.
I felt horrible for it.
Joining my partner in a crouch, I looked closer. The man’s face was hard from years of drug use and covered in grizzled stubble. Scabs scattered across his cheeks, and a lock of greasy hair fell across his brow. He could have been anyone.
Surely, though, he was someone.
He was someone’s son. He had loved, played, been a part of someone’s life. He had fears, goals, likes and dislikes. His addiction did not make him inhuman, it only made him addicted.
If not for the addiction he could have been me.
Faint sirens floated on the air, coming closer, and I placed my own fingers on the side of his neck. His skin was warm and supple, but there was no heartbeat. My hands moved to his chest.
Stillness.
I looked away and willed the ambulance to hurry. He could not die like this, in squalor. In the cold, outside, lying mere feet from a rank mound of human waste. It was not right.
Gripping the man under his arms, I cradled his head against my belly and dragged him into the center of the lane, away from the unspeakable. My partner helped me lower him to the ground, and we stood watch.
Within moments, an ambulance came into the lane and the paramedics were a blur of controlled chaos. The man’s clothing was cut off, heart rate monitors were attached to his pale chest, and a breathing tube was forced into his airway.
A pair of gloved hands with laced fingers pushed his ribcage up and down, up and down, up and down.
A flash caught my eye as one medic produced a small glass vial. She dipped a needle into the cap and withdrew a syringe full of liquid. Quickly checking the amount, she plunged it into the man’s arm, forcing the dose of Narcan into the man’s veins.
We waited. Hands pumped ribs. The breathing tube made a low sucking noise. Seconds felt like hours. Minutes felt like forever.
Then, as if rising for the first time, the man’s eyelids fluttered and then flew open as he drew in a great rasping breath. His hand clawed at the breathing tube, and he succeeded in pulling it out.
The initial breath was followed by a second, and then a third.
His eyes, a startlingly beautiful blue, blinked up at us, and tears coursed from the corners to be lost in the hair at his temples as he tried to fathom where and who he was.
Another one, brought back from certain death.
The wind cuts against your bare legs as you struggle to stay balanced in the hell called stilettos. A wisp of clothing covers your breasts, the fabric torn and stitched together with trembling fingers. The full moon rides the sky, seeking sanctuary behind racing storm clouds as you bend towards an open window.
You did not ask for this life, to be treated like this. To be a slave to the desires of those who stop and speak to you, their features cast like stone in the glare of a dome light.
And still, your own needs drive you out to lay waste to a habit that has overcome.
————————-
Vice Squad. Working to put pimps in jail and to get sex trade workers headed towards a life of safety and opportunity.
I will always have time for those who walk our streets, but the pimps are the reason I turned down a position in Vice a few years ago. At the time I could not imagine trying to ‘befriend’ a pimp in an interview. At the time I found their behaviour so incredibly disgusting that I did not trust myself.
#
Last winter, I managed to get into a local coffee bar just before closing. The girl behind the counter asked if I wanted a free sandwich along with my beverage as the sandwiches were at the ’sell by’ date. If I didn’t want one the food was going to end up in the garbage. I could have my pick, she said, as there were half a dozen slated for disposal.
“No, thank you,” I said. I bid her good night, took my coffee and headed out to my police car.
And there I sat.
A minute later, the girl answered my knock at the locked glass door.
“I’d like to take you up on your offer,” I said, “Can I have all of them?”
#
In the following hours I scoured the Downtown Eastside looking for sex trade workers to give the sandwiches to. I couldn’t approach a woman standing in a crowd, as she would surely be beaten for ‘ratting out to the cops’. I checked and rechecked for pimps, not wanting to bring any harm while trying to bring a little good.
It took forever.
Most were grateful. I stayed and chatted with one woman for twenty minutes. Her children were three, six and seven. All wards of the Ministry. She hoped to clean up. I gave her my ear and left her a part of my heart. It still stings.
Another woman ran from me, her eyes huge and her hands pressed up to her face as if I were the proverbial boogie monster come to catch her from under the bed of her childhood.
#
I never drive through the Skids without really looking. I keep track of who is still there, who the newcomers are, and who have fallen to the needle or the serial killer.
Georgina. She had the most wonderful laugh. Hearty and from the belly. She is gone now, as is her friend Teresa. One fell prey, and the other I covered with a sheet, her lifeless body on the floor, the needle marks still fresh in her arm.
#
All of this serves as a reminder – these wome have lives, loved ones, friends and dreams. We had best not forget.
There are those we deal with who are completely lost. The people so badly damaged there is nothing left to do but usher them to safety for the night.
Two nights ago I was flagged down by security at the bus station. A homeless man had been escorted out after causing a ruckus inside. Security said the man was too intoxicated to care for himself and pointed him out as he shambled across the adjoining park.
After radioing in, I got out of my truck and walked after the man. His gait was stilted and crooked, his grey sweatpants were soiled, and it had been weeks since he had seen a comb or a bath. When he stopped at my request, his eyes were in a vacant stare somewhere above my head, his mouth agape and framed by a mucus encrusted moustache. Dirt and grime were caked into every crease of his face, his clothing stiff with filth. Curled into the crook of his arm was a cola bottle half filled with a clear liquid. Clenched in his other fist was a balled up rag.
When I asked him his name, he parroted my question, and then brought his fist up to his mouth and inhaled deeply of the fumes rising from the rag clenched within. A thin line of drool dropped from his lip to string through his beard. His eyes found mine, yet they didn’t. He lowered his hand and poured the liquid from the bottle onto the rag, spilling some onto his sleeve. The smell of the poison was enough to rock me back on my heels.
Paint thinner.
It has been years since I’ve interacted with someone in his condition, years since I’ve walked the beat in the Downtown Eastside.
And yet nothing changes.
