I was driving down the street when I noticed two people lying on the sidewalk right in front of this building:
I was just considering keeping on going, when I noticed two things. First of all, there was a little play structure in front of the building, second of all, a woman (presumably an employee, on a smoke break) was walking out towards them with a sideways look.
I decided to pull over and help. We both got to the couple at about the same time and we tried to rouse them, at first by speaking loudly, then shouting, then shaking them. The woman was lying on her side, the man on his back, she had her leg wrapped around his, and was resting her head on his chest.
Eventually, the man woke up. I said, “are you OK?” “Yes,” he mumbled. “Do you know where you are?” “Portage,” he said. “Actually, no, you are in Winnipeg.” “What’s your name?” “Dougie.”
The woman from the building told them that they needed to leave, there would be kids there soon, and they didn’t want people passed out on the sidewalk when they showed up.
The woman on the ground woke up, “are you OK?” I asked. “Yeah,” she says. “Do you know where you are?” “No,” she says. “You’re in Winnipeg.” “Winnipeg…” she says with a look of bewilderment through the haze of her chemically corrupted mind. “When did I leave Ontario?”
The man wants a cab, I help him get up off the ground, the woman from the building asks if they have money, he says they do. At that moment, a cab pulls out of the back lane 15 feet from us. The man starts waving the cab down. The cabbie stops, hesitates, looks at the man, assesses the situation, and peels out of there. “C’mon, don’t be a prick!” says the woman from the building. I can identify with the cabbie.
Now we help the woman get up, but I realize that she will not let me take her by one of her hands. “I cut my cast off last night,” she says, it’s not supposed to come off until June 22nd (it’s May 30th). The woman from the building says, “well you need to get to the doctor.” We begin to discuss the possibility of going to Mt. Carmel clinic…half a block away. Eventually they agree that they will go, although, I’m not really sure they agreed, but they started slowly, unsteadily walking with me to the clinic. It takes about 15 minutes to walk the half block. They were easily distracted and we were behind a bar.
As we get close to the clinic the woman (Susan) pulls me aside and points at her face (she had two black eyes and blood under her nose), then turns her body so that the man can’t see her hands, and with this incredibly dark fear in her eyes she points to him. She is telling me that he did this to her. Then she points to her hand (the broken one) and does the same thing.
We get into the clinic, and they kind of give us the run around, and make us wait for a bit, Dougie heads to the bathroom at one point when Susan doesn’t see him. Eventually she is wondering where he is and starts to panic. She does not want to be without this man who apparently beats her badly.
We find him as he comes out of the bathroom, and they start to head for the door against my protests. We head outside, and I am about to just let them wander off and do their own thing. Susan sees a man walking towards us, she gets that same crazy fear in her eyes and starts to run the other direction and crashes straight into Dougie, she bounces off him and falls flat on her back. Her glasses go flying and I am not sure if she cracked her head on the ground. I go to her and ask her if she is ok. Eventually she gets up (the man just walks by as if nothing was going on – I’m sure he’s an innocent bystander).
We decide to go back into the clinic. Eventually, a nurse (or someone) comes to talk to Susan, and I notice and come join the conversation. We get talking and she tells me that she used to go to Church of the Open Door. Then we meet the nurse that we were supposed to, she basically tells us that we need to go to the hospital, emergency.
Susan is upset, and can’t figure out why these people wouldn’t give her a cast. By this time there are nurses and receptionists watching our whole drama unfold. The security guy appears and is standing there making sure there is no trouble. Susan says to me, “can’t they just give me some cement, and I’ll pour it over my arm?!” I responded with, “well, if you want, I can take you to Home Depot and we can pick up some cement…” all the people watching the situation laugh loudly.
We walk out, and I am trying to figure out what to do next, call a cab to bring them to HSC? Just leave them to their own devices?
My heart settles on giving them a ride, although I am not convinced I really want that. As we are walking over they began to have a small spat, I wasn’t even looking, but then I heard a sound, turned to look and Dougie’s hat is flying off his head as Susan retracts her good hand from his facial area. Dougie goes down on one knee, holding his nose. Susan is saying things like, “Oh, what, you can do this to me? and nobody cares, and now your doing this? Get up you faker!” Dougie is down for a good while, and I begin to wonder if he is OK. He gets up, and Susan gets that look of fear in her eyes again and moves so that I am between her and him. He isn’t responding with violence, but I do notice that blood is beginning to trickle down from his nose.
I start to wonder if maybe Susan’s black eyes and broken hand were from a different source than Dougie…if she is so violent why couldn’t she have broken her hand on his face…or someone else’s and gotten into a big fight.
“Do I really want this in my car?” I think to myself. We get to my car and Dougie gets in the back behind the passenger seat. Susan doesn’t want to get in the front, “He’s gonna strangle me!” she says. I ask Dougie to move over to sit behind me, he does, Susan get’s in and we drive over to HSC.
When we get there, I pull in beside the Emergency and let them out. They say “thanks,” and walk towards the door. I pull away and head on with my day, wondering what this all means and if I did anything right in that situation.
I felt like that was the lowest I had seen someone. It had to be such a horrible place to be. Such a desperate situation, such a hopeless time in order to end up that rough, and that out of it. I began to hope well for them, and especially that the cycle of violence, and hurt would end for them soon…but not really being all that hopeful…