I was so desperate for blog ideas that I wasted way too much time one day this week reading through my old ones. That inspired me to waste even more time following up on ideas I didn't expand on at the time, like this one, the story of the reluctant good Samaritan. This is the story of spare son number five, A.J., one of two A.J.s that lived with us. This A.J. was a friend of spare son number three, Mackenzie. A.J. lived in Pablo but visited Mackenzie several times over the four months Mackenzie lived with us, usually spending the night, but I really didn't know him. I didn't particularly want to know him. A.J. had peculiar body language, it's hard to describe, but his back kind of arched backwards and he held his head at an odd angle as if he were floating, or trying to. His didn't seem to be high or have any physical abnormalities, but he seemed abnormal all the same. I didn't mind having him around, but was never sorry to see him go. Mackenzie said A.J.'s grandmother, who had custody of A.J. and his sister while their dad was in Afghanistan, had shipped them off to their mother in Colorado. After Mackenzie moved to his own place, he told me he had bought A.J. a bus ticket to Kalispell so I knew he was back in the area but didn't give it much more thought. After all, it didn't have anything to do with me. Famous last words.
In those days I used to clean my house weekly, (now I clean it weakly) and it was on one of those cleaning days that I glanced out the window and saw someone wrapped in a sleeping bag stumbling around in the street. I went back to cleaning sincerely hoping it was no one I knew. Then the doorbell rang. It was A.J. He had been at Mackenzie's apartment the night before, got accused of stealing and then beat up by a stranger down the street who had got caught up in the excitement. His nose was broken and one of his two front teeth had been jammed all the way back into his gums. Doctor wannabe Mackenzie decided there was no head injury so broke into a trailer he knew of near our house, gave him a sleeping bag and left him to the healing influences of solitude without water or pain meds and a mile from the nearest help. It had taken him until afternoon to have the energy for the walk to our house. A.J. wanted to shower before going to the e.r., meanwhile I hunted through our unclaimed clothes pile for some dry clothes for him.
I found out at the hospital that A.J. was only 17 and, though they could give him urgent care, signed permission would be needed for the surgeries he was going to require in the coming week to extract his tooth and straighten his nose. Whenever they took him away for tests, I was on the phone frantically trying to find somewhere for him to stay. For all I knew he was a thief and no one still living at our house could vouch for him. Unfortunately the only place he had to stay was the apartment where he got beat up. Before releasing him the doctor asked where he was staying, he did not want him spending another night alone on the island. A.J. spoke up, "I'm staying at Connie's". Now we both knew.
I checked on him through the night and took him to the dental surgeon the next day; I decided he could stay until after his surgeries, a couple days... This is where I got introduced to really dysfunctional families and the slightly more functional department of family services. A.J. had insurance but no one wanted to sign permission for surgery. His mother never even called the e.r. to find out how badly he was hurt and later refused to sign even when the doctor promised to accept assignment, to charge no more than what the insurance paid. Grandma wouldn't sign because she was mad that he sneaked back to Montana without telling her, even though she had said she didn't want to hear from him again. I had to initiate a neglect complaint against the mom just to access family services and then didn't hear from his case worker until after his surgeries. Grandma finally signed for the dental procedure so his father wouldn't be bothered in Afghanistan, but she refused to sign to reset A.J.'s nose because "his dad has a crooked nose and so can he." But it wasn't about appearance, without surgery he would never be able to breathe properly through one nostril again, without prompt surgery they would need to rebreak the nose.
After the initial discouragement of realizing there was no way A.J. would be with us a couple days and having no knowledge of how to deal with this kind of situation, I became tenacious. This boy would have surgery one way or the other. I didn't care if I got his mother in trouble. If she couldn't even bother to call the hospital she was neglectful. I had the Red Cross contact his father in Afghanistan for permission for surgery. I didn't care how bad it made him look that he hadn't even known where his son was. I didn't care if grandma's feelings were hurt. I cared about A.J. Somehow I cared about A.J. even though I hadn't wanted to. The doctors accepted low military insurance reimbursement, one even operated on his lunch hour and the office staffs of both made many phone calls to his hateful family because all of us apparently cared more about A.J. than they did.
So A.J. had his surgeries. His father instructed me to take A.J. to the police station following the second surgery and implied he would try to keep me out trouble for "harboring" a runaway. The police didn't even interview A.J., they don't apprehend runaways over 16 unless they have broken the law, A.J. was a couple months shy of 18. The bus ticket to Colorado his father promised never arrived. A.J. stayed with us a month. Among all the usual mom stuff I drove him to his two fast food jobs until he earned enough to buy his own ticket. I have not heard from him since, typical for our spare sons. I think the Lord sent A.J. to me because I had the medical background to take care of him and the persistence to deal with his difficult family. God himself supplied the ability to love him. The main question I was asked when all this started was, "How do you know him?" My answer "I hardly know him at all". I guess the biblical answer would be "He's my neighbor".
No comments:
Post a Comment