But later, when I open the DSM for the first time, there will be John. I’ll read the criteria for Major Depressive Episode, and it will be like reading John’s biography.
John is depressed all day, every day.
John is not interested in anything, even TV.
He will say, “I drink whiskey, and I don’t even like the taste.”
He will say, “I don’t even like getting drunk.”
He will say, “Peanut butter don’t even taste good.”
He won’t be eating. He will be skinny, wirier every time he comes around. He won’t be able to sleep because he’s so worried about work. He’ll feel too tired to look for a job. He’ll feel like he’s fucked up everything in his life. He’ll feel like it’s his fault that the guy in New Orleans drove off with all his hard-earned money.
John will say, “I’m ashamed to ask for help.”
He will say, “I wonder if it’s even worth it?”
“It’s worth it,” I will tell him.
* * *
That first day I talked to my boss about John, she gave me three Giant Eagle gift cards and I handed the cards over in an envelope. John bought warm food from the deli, mac and cheese and fried chicken, and he used one card for gas. He filled up his truck and drove back to the apartment he was sharing with four other adults, a couple of middle-aged guys who chased disasters like John did, and their girlfriends.
John started coming to pantry. Pantry was a food bank but we called it pantry because it sounded better than canned vegetables and ramen noodles. Pantry was packed but I always asked John how it was going, what he was up to. Work was scarce, he said, but he’d been doing stuff for a temp agency. He said he was on a crew. I could feel how proud he was to have a job, to be pulling himself from the muck. I walked him to his car. We shook on it, on everything. A week later, he showed up in the morning looking for emergency food. He was struggling. He was broke. He was broke even though he still held the same job on the same crew. “These fucking temp jobs,” he said.
That crew was going somewhere in a pickup truck when the driver took a bend too fast and John rolled from the truck bed and shattered his arm on the asphalt. He held up the cast. Everything from the wrist to elbow was metal. The next time we talked, it was worse. His body was rejecting the pins and screws. His arm was yellow. Then the arm stabilized. Then the doctor said John would never work again, that he was fully disabled. John said, “I worked my whole fucking life.” Then John had a lawyer and was suing the temp agency.
Now he’s in our office, just out of jail.
The temp agency said they would settle and promised checks but the checks haven’t arrived. John is completely broke, which is broker than broke, broker than before. Last Friday, someone, a friend, sort of a friend, a guy John recognized from the neighborhood, offered to buy drinks at the bar if John would drive. John drove. The cops stopped him on the way home. They asked him to exit the car. They asked him to walk a line. They took him to jail.
John says, “That was five days ago.”
I say, “That was seven days ago.”
John says, “It’s Friday?”
I nod.
John says, “I’m going to jump off the fucking bridge and break my neck and drown.”
“Don’t do that,” I say.
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard John articulate exactly how he wants to die, how he’s going to do it. I look around the office and feel the dry heat blowing in and think about what I’m doing and what I’m supposed to do. Social workers have a code of ethics. Those ethics say you cannot let a person walk off and die. I ask John if he’s serious. He says he doesn’t know. I ask him if he wants to go to the hospital. I tell him they will help him at the hospital. There are doctors. They have beds and food and people to talk to.
John says, “I don’t got insurance. I don’t have a way to get to the nut hospital. They impounded my truck and I can’t afford to get it out.”
I say, “I can drive you,” and I will but I don’t know if I’m allowed to.
I don’t know the outreach’s policy about taking clients places. Everyone who works here is a woman and they don’t like to be alone with the male clients, who are generally few but loud and frustrated and angry. Last year, one guy threw a can of creamed corn through a window at the food pantry. Another guy smokes weed in the bathroom and denies it while laughing. Another guy seizes and collapses to the floor and is too big to be lifted.
John says, “I really only came in here to see if you have some clothes.” He flares out his winter coat and lifts his shirt and shows off the waist of his jeans. The jeans don’t have belt loops and they buckle on the side. He says, “They’re women’s jeans. The jail lost my clothes and this is all they had. It’s like a bad joke.”
“They look good on you,” I say.
John smiles a little.
I think sometimes I’d like to be in charge of a charity organization so I could make all the rules then change the rules to whatever I need the rules to be. I’d run my charity organization with a bat. I’d knock on the doors
