Today I saw her again. See was dressed the same as all the other times I have seen her. Sweat pants, running shoes, some kind of pull-over top. Hair long, dirty blond and stringy. She walks along the hard shoulder of the divided highway with a slight stagger like she is a bit drunk. She veers onto the roadway an inch or two and then back on the shoulder. She turns and looks over her own shoulder, her face full of fear. Today she had a backpack, stuffed with who-knows-what. Sometimes she walks west but today she was walking east. This means that sometime during her walks she crosses 4 busy lanes of traffic. Sometimes she changes direction and starts to walk the other way, only to change again and go back the way she was going, eyes fearful both ways.
The first time I saw her I thought she was really high and in danger of getting run over. I looked for a highway patrol car (always some in this stretch) and there was one on the side of the road in the direction she was walking (lurching more like it). The trooper would have seen her coming and taken some action (I thought). The things I noticed most were the staggering walk and the fearful looking over her shoulder.
I know she has a story and big problems. I wonder if she is on the street because of the drastic cut in treatment for poor people when many facilities were closed or underfunded? I wonder if the current health care debate takes mystery women with fear in their eyes into consideration at all? Somehow I doubt it. I guess that she will end up on a slab somewhere, crushed and cold. The only meds in her system alcohol and heroine, or crack or crystal meth. Where a simple prescription of something, a bed and some counseling would probably save her, she lingers in fear. What a crappy system.
Photo credit: http://wittgensteinforum.wordpress.com/2007/10/
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