My Newest Friend

Frank showed up in the middle of the day -- barefoot in late September, obviously agitated. In each hand he held a Coke.

"They sent me over here -- I talked to the nice lady for about an hour and she said maybe you could help me because I don't have any shoes and my feet are cold and getting chewed up and I wear size 13," the rambling words just spilled out of this middle aged man. "I'm a schizophrenic" was somewhere in the steady stream of sentences. No kidding.

I went into the back room at Nightwatch to see if we had anything that would fit his oversized feet. Didn't have any luck, but rustled up two pairs of new socks, a warm shirt-jacket, some PBJ sandwiches, cookies, juice.

He never stopped to take a breath, but was very happy with everything. His poor rough feet were so tender. He looked better with a shirt on under his jacket. "I love you" he told me and I believe it. I tried to get him to get to the mental health walk-in clinic with a buck-fifty bribe. Don't think he'll go.

R