The first week...

(And this is my community: Morris House 09-10)

After (almost) a full week of work, I caved and bought my first iced coffee. We only get $80 per month for such expenses, so I need to chose these coffee days carefully. It was after lunch and I could feel the afternoon yawns about to settle in as I looked out at the brick park that I'd sat in for my hour break. The sun was beating down on all of us, myself and two hundred or so other city employees or "unemployees" eating their lunch in solitude in the early afternoon. They read their books, pushed the buttons on their phones, and ate chinese noodles from cardboard containers. A man with a sunburnt face played the guitar on the highest step near Starbucks. I listened, packed my tupperware in my backpack, and headed toward the walkway. It was time--after the first chaotic days of work behind me I decided I'd earned it.

In that small treat the world seemed to open up a bit. Maybe it was the friendliness of the clerk, who smiled at my acceptance of a free dulup of whip cream on my drink, or the fact that the caffine kept me from falling asleep at my afternoon software training session, or the small comfort that keeps building with each day at work. But whatever it was, I enjoyed myself.

The first week at the Recuprative Care Program has had its ups and downs. I work in downtown Portland, which houses a hundred or so clients from Central City Concern (a portland non profit that runs programs focusing on employment, housing, and heathcare for the homeless). There is a small office that I sit in with the 4 other RCP staff members. There are white desks againt the walls, metal filing cabinents, and two-hole punches. There is hand sanitizer, and a basket of granola bars that I must pass out to the clients during my morning rounds. Billy often sits outside, in his wheelchair, sometimes drunk and sometimes sober, yelling his insightful rhymes to anyone who will listen. He is thin, and permently wounded from all of his leg surgeries, and seemingly traumatized from all he has experienced on the street. Patients come in and out of the elevator, smiling and moving on their way. And so far I've spent a lot of time in that small corridor of the office, looking out to those walking in and out of the building, adapting to medical lingo and answering the phone.

Tom, the logisitics coordinator, described the RCP as a place of a lot of darkness and a little bit of light. He, and other staff members, said it would be best not to trust the clients. They steal. They sell their pain meds or take too much of them. And he's right, the cruelness in the streets does not go away in the Henry Building, when the patients have a place to rest and recuperate from their time in the ER. But I guess the only way to get through a job like this is to notice the light, despite how small: a "good morning" from a sober Billy, an occational iced coffee after lunch, and a new client, Dan, morbidly obese, coming in after major surgery, and opening the door to his room, sitting down on his bed. He took a deep breath, and looked out the open window to the food carts across the street. "I think I'll relax now," he said. And we both knew that was something to smile about.