I normally write when I can’t sleep. Recently I’ve been fairly busy and sleeping most nights, so I haven’t been writing. For that, I apologize. In no particular order, here’s what’s been going on over the past few days.
I May Have Found a Place
I’ve tacitly found a place. It’s on the South Side of Chicago, near public transport stops, and the rent is affordable. The downside is that because I have no credit (I’ve never rented anything, taken out a loan, purchased my own insurance, or even had a credit card) my initial deposit is unusually high, on the order of several thousand dollars. Between your donations, some of you directly and many of you through the GoFundMe, and my various odd jobs, I have nearly enough to cover the deposit.
Odd Jobs
I’ve stopped devoting all my time to seeking a permanent job and have begun doing temp work.
My first temporary job was a data entry gig. It was scheduled to last three days; I wrote some scripts that allowed me to finish in one day. Instead of being brought back for the last two days, I was paid for one day of work (about $60) and given a $10 McDonald’s gift card to thank me for finishing early. My second job played out much the same way, except there was no gift card.
My third, and current, temp job is the same except this time I’m deliberately going slow to earn a bigger paycheck.
Michael and Astro
I met Michael on this website. He offered to allow me to use his couch for a while. On a very rainy, windy night I took advantage of his offer. After a long power outage on the Blue Line, I met Michael and his cat Astro early on a dark and stormy morning.
I’m going to write more about Michael and his very friendly cat Astro in my next post, because this one would probably be well over three-thousand words if I didn’t. But I’d still like to thank them here.
We Have Become a ~~Grandmother~~ Crime Doctor
I met one of you, through this site, who connected me with a friend of his. Said friend gave/lent/traded me some money for a favor to be performed at a later date.
That date came and I was asked to tend to the wound of someone who was injured while doing something I knew better than to ask about. I arrived at the address I had been given and was greeted quite warmly; from there I was shown to a “clinic” that had been set up in a back room. I was shocked at how well stocked the place was: it had every manner of suture, an ECG, a vitals monitor, an AED, a nice portable ultrasound, an autoclave, a wide variety of surgical tools each in its own sterilized packaging, diagnostic equipment, infusion pumps, a ventilator, et cetera…there was even an IO drill. The drug locker was equally well stocked with hundreds of medicines in pills, suppositories, creams, ampules, and vials.
The patient was a large man with a severe though non-life-threatening injury. I worked on him for about an hour. I’ve been back several times to check on him, I think he should make a full recovery with no lasting harm and only minimal scarring.
I was called back a few days later. The new patient had a deep cut to his forearm. I assumed it was crime related, but on a follow-up visit I learned he had been trying to juggle knives. He too will make a complete recovery with minimal scarring—if he stops picking at his stitches.
I never wanted to go into medicine, and I certainly didn’t want to practice in the U.S., but needs must when the devil drives.
I Got Robbed, Again
I was robbed again. They roughed me up a little this time and made off with my phone and about $120 I was on my way to deposit. My phone was still insured and I got a new one the next day. The cash is gone forever.
Evgeni
While waiting for a bus back from the suburbs, I saw an older man; he was 70 if he was a day. He struggled putting his bicycle on the front of the bus. Once he was done, a younger woman handed him a crate she had been carrying and gave him a small hug. He wedged his backpack and crate into a seat on the opposite side of the aisle from me then he laid out the contents of his pockets on the seats of the back row. Short, toothless, and shabbily dressed, he tried to get off the bus for a cigarette before immediately getting back on followed by the bus driver. He laid down across the back row and quickly fell asleep.
The bus took a sharp turn, and his crate flew into me: a large Bialetti coffee maker crashed into my leg before falling to the floor. “Oh, I can’t see; you have to look for me. Is it dented? Does it still screw together?” he asked in a thick Russian accent. The coffee pot was in good order.
He introduced himself as Evgeni and we began to talk. He works in facilities maintenance for one of the local colleges. “I work there since I first got here. I been doing the same job for 25 years.”
He explained that at this time of year, he’s expected to clean out dorm rooms and get them ready for the fall semester. “Everybody I work with loves me. For my birthday they take up a collection and they give me twenty-two hundred dollars—everybody loves to work with Evgeni. You know why?”
He looked at me as if he expected an answer to his rhetorical question. Just as I opened my mouth to answer in the negative, he jumped back in, “Because I show up two hours early and leave an hour late every day, and I don’t ask to be paid for it. They get that time for free.” I asked him if he wouldn’t be happier getting paid for that time.
“No,” was his response. “I seen so many people get let go after a semester or two because all they want to do is complain. Not me. I go with the flow; I do what I’m told and then some. And for twenty-five years they keep me on.”
“And you’re happy doing that?” I asked.
“Yes! Of course,” he said with a wry little smirk. “Always I am happy. Do you know why?” He paused, waiting for me to answer this new rhetorical question. “Because I have the secret to happiness,” followed by another brief pause, “Do you want to know my secret?”
Doubtful that he could but intrigued that he might tell me, I answered in the affirmative. He leaned over to me and spoke in a slow whisper: “I rob them all blind.” The little old man sprung back and let loose in a loud burst of laughter.
“I haven’t bought groceries in twenty years. Oh one of these apples is bruised—the entire bag must go…home with Evgeni. Potatoes, flour, beef—I get it all when I clean the kitchens.” He took out his phone and showed me a photo of him standing next to a television of nearly the same height. “The university said ‘It’s broken, [I] can have it,’ they didn’t need to know I just pulled a couple of fuses.” He opened a black garbage bag in his crate to reveal what looked to a nearly brand-new woolen Hudson’s Bay Point Blanket. “The student, she says, ‘You must take, if you don’t I’ll just have to throw it away, I have no room to pack it.’ And so I take it,” he gave a small wink, “reluctantly.”
As we pulled into the station, the now spry Evgeni retrieved his bike from the front of the bus, tied his crate to its fender, and rode off into the night.