Hero Quest Chapter 1 Part 7

“Come in!”

Silence.  “Darlene must have stepped out,” he whispered to himself.

“Come in!”

Still nothing.

John went over to the door and opened it.

“Oh did you say come in?”

The noise from the street usually kept anybody from actually hearing anyone inviting people to come in so John wasn’t really surprised that he hadn’t been heard.  John recognized Anne and asked her to come in.  It wasn’t difficult to tell that Anne had been crying.  John hugged her like the brother that he saw himself to be.  He handed her the box of Kleenex as she sat at the table. 

“I don’t know what to do,” Anne barely got the words out before she broke down in a fit of emotions.  John could not tell if it was sadness or anger that spurred this on.  He allowed the silence of the moment as she gathered her emotions.  Years ago he would have asked prying questions or would have guessed at the problem and offered a wide array of solutions.  Now he knew better. 

“Be present, John,” he told himself and watched her hoping that his eyes were showing compassion.

Anne looked up, wiped her eyes gently.  Her eyes were red now.  John tried not look at her eyebrow ring. “I don’t think that was there on Friday?” John tried to remember. “Yeah, that’s new,” he thought. 

As Anne gathered herself, a look of shame overflowed in her countenance. 

“Anne, you know that God loves you.” 

Anne remained silent, but kept her composure.  Her face no longer showed simply shame but also betrayed a look of doubt.

“He said that he loved me.”

“Who?”

“Mark.  He said that we should get back together for the baby.  We spent all day Saturday together and it was great.  But then after he dropped me off here and went and got wasted.”

“Baby?  Where did that come from?”  John tried to remember if he had heard anything about children.  “Maybe she’s pregnant?  I’ll need to come back to that.”  John tried to hide his look of surprise but apparently failed.

“I’m having his baby.  I just found out on Friday.  I need him to stay clean and sober, get a job and take care of us.”

“Is this your first?”

“I had an abortion a couple of years ago.  I was thinking that I should have another one if I can’t depend on Mark.”

John’s heart felt like it was breaking at the very thought of this.  She was just 18 and was tossed into such a difficult situation.  “At 18 she should not have to decide between life and death.  So much pain here, Father, help me with the right words to say here.”

“How long have you known Mark?”

Real Life at the Crisis Shelter February 20-26, 2012

Monday February 20:    During the overnight a man jumped the fence in order to steal our recycling cans.  Good Workers scared him off without the loot.  Lots of intakes on Monday night.  One of our guests who had returned over the weekend started to become herself again after coming down from meth.  She declared that she would rather have a baby than go through this pain again.   Two men tried to check in and asked us to make an exception for them since they did not feel like walking down to the men’s mission.  They were turned away.

Tuesday February 21:  During the day some guests in room 10 discovered that some of the food in their refrigerator was rotten and cleaned it out.  One of the guests who was not home at the time came home she found out her food was missing.  She was very upset that her rotten food along with other’s rotten food was thrown out.  She was able to calm down on Tuesday night but her anger over this issue eventually caused her to lose her bed later in the week.  

Wednesday February 22:    Room 10 started to have intense tension due to the angry woman and another woman in the room who was finding fault with anything that she could think of.  All in the room have been in on talks to try to restore peace.  Staff had also spent some time in cooperation with the Thrift Stores to redecorate and make the room nice.  The negative ladies were very critical of the redecoration.  The others seem to really like the added touch and the movement of stuff to make more space.  One of our guests was arrested for stealing from Winco.  She is one of our pregnant ladies so the police decided not to put her in jail.  Stealing is against our guidelines so we asked her to leave Friday morning as this situation came to light.  The woman who was upset about the food became hostile to her room mates and was very threatening.  She was asked to leave.

Thursday February 23:     One of our guests came to staff and told us that we were too nice to handle her “this time of the month” so she was going to go stay somewhere else and come back next week.  Several of our guests are suffering with the flu right now so there are many puking kids and moms.  Not nice.

Friday February 24:  Tension exploded all over the place Friday morning.  The other negative woman in room 10 was asked to leave.  Her daughter who was another adult guest decided to leave as well though that was not expected by staff.  A mom refused to clean her room and was asked to leave.  She had said that she simply was not going to do it.  One of our guests found a coat that she had lost long ago that had turned up at the shelter in the possession of another guest.  Over the weekend she stole it back from the other guest.   

Weekend:   Lots of tension over the coat.  It turns out that the coat had been left in the room and when the room was cleaned out it had become a donation.  The woman who was the original coat owner decided that she wanted it back so simply took it and then lied several times to cover it up but when she was caught she confessed and was asked to leave.  One of our guests went to the hospital for flu like symptoms on Saturday night.

General comments:    The removal of the negative women remarkably changed the temperature of the Crisis Shelter and by Friday night the shelter was much more peaceful.