Walking stories

Encountering Deborah

September 24, 2023

A few days after an encounter I had been pondering as a possible subject of  a walking story, Kevin Fagan’s newspaper account of the swelling numbers of drug overdoses in San Francisco appeared on page one of The Chronicle.

His story began with the description of a man lying on the sidewalk on Mission Street, with passersby skirting his form.   “It took a minute for the crowd milling around nearby to notice,” wrote Fagan.  Eventually, someone did notice:  9-1-1 was called; someone living in a tent nearby rushed over, breathed into the mouth of the man who had overdosed and administered Narcan.  The man seemed to be coming around when an emergency team took him away for medical care. 

In telling that story, Fagan was employing what’s called an “anecdotal lede,” a journalist’s device that in this case provided an entry point for a tale about the city’s inability to deal with the crisis.  In my own telling,  there’s a selfie frame around it, the image of a spoiled white-haired grandma with a spoiled white-haired dog, the former clutching her pearls, the latter probably tempted to bark upon coming upon an unusual street scene.  

But for San Franciscans, I thought as I read Fagan’s story, it’s not an unusual scene.  In fact, it seemed, this is so common that there’s nothing I can add to the discussion.  But in the midst of my thoughts, when I went over the details again, I came upon my most vivid memory:  Deborah.

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We were heading east on Page Street, Greenberg and I walking home from the library.  I’d returned a book and quickly checked out the Lucky Day section, which usually offers some new book I find irresistible.  But there was nothing that attracted my attention, so all I had in my hands as we turned toward home was the end of Greenberg’s leash.

For the person sprawled on the sidewalk about 30 feet from the corner of Cole, it wasn’t a Lucky Day either.  When I came upon the scene, there were two men bending down, ministering to the prone body.  I stood back a bit, because the two were deep in concentrated conversation, one particularly peering closely at the figure lying half on his side, his head resting on the pavement; the other digging into his pocket, probably for a cell phone, I thought..

I wondered if I could help, but sensed that an interruption by a stranger with no particular medical skills or expertise would be an intrusion. I hadn’t been there when the two good  Samaritans arrived, didn’t know whether they were friends or simply strangers who’d come upon the unconscious person at the same time.  They seemed to have taken the situation under control.  9-1-1 was reached, and I could just about hear them talking with each other as one tried to answer the questions of the dispatcher.  If I thought I could help, I would have volunteered to do so. 

But  I thought I’d be in the way.  I didn’t want to be a rubber-necker turned on by the excitement of  what seemed to be a life-or-death situation.  And I worried that Greenberg would pick up on the drama and start barking, which would  be unwelcome, to say the least.  So I stood back.

“He’s just lying here,” I thought I heard the man say into the phone.   “His pulse is very weak.  He seems to be barely breathing.”  The two were looking down at the man’s neck.   “We can see the artery in his neck, and it is barely moving.”    He paused to listen to questions from the dispatcher.  “Yes, we’re pretty sure it is a drug overdose.  He is surrounded by drug paraphernalia.”

From where I stood, I could only glimpse the face of the stricken person. It struck me that his  body was twisted at an odd angle.  There were a few tattered satchels and bags scattered closeby. 

I wondered about all the questions coming from the 9-1-1 dispatch – come on, just get here –  but remembered that when I’d called them a few weeks ago about a traffic accident on our corner, they’d told me that they dispatch immediately, even while the operators are gathering information.

The incident happened alongside a house with  ground level windows and two storeys above.  As I walked a bit farther east, I heard the screech of a window opening, and then the voice of someone from one of the upper floors.  AApparently, the resident inside had heard the hubbub on the sidewalk below.

One of the guys kneeling around the victim yelled up to that resident, “Do you have any Narcan?” Meanwhile, in the distance, I thought I could hear the soft scream of an approaching  emergency van, perhaps a few blocks away.    It was a quiet afternoon on  a leafy residential block in the Haight, and there were no other pedestrians.

I was walking east, focusing my attention west, to the scene on the sidewalk.  I wasn’t aware until he passed me that a tall man was barreling westward down the street. The late afternoon sun was in my eyes, silhouetting his figure. The outline of his clothes looked somewhat ragged, but this is the Haight.  It was easy to assume he was a street person, but many of us look that way. 

 As he approached the two men tending to the person on the sidewalk, he glanced downward, with some apparent interest.  But he didn’t break his stride.

“Deborah,” he said, loud enough for me to hear a half-block away.   The kneelers were too  intent on tending to the overdose victim to respond to him.  I didn’t see them look up.

The passing man got to the corner of Cole Street and from the middle of the street, looked back and said it louder, as though he wanted to make sure that the victim’s name was known.  “Deborah,” he said. “She’s Deborah.” 

He knew her, well enough to be sure of her name.  And he continued westward, towards Shrader.    I didn’t know her, hadn’t even been able to identify her gender accurately.  And I continued eastward, towards Clayton.

He contributed her name, I would contribute this essay.  We were adjacent, but not involved. I guess that Deborah, who I hope was saved because someone stopped, had a lucky day.