Life Just Got A Little Easier

For 8 years at work, I've been running calls on the same homeless guy at work. " Mad Dog ", a local newspaper street vendor had been abusing the 911 system with his constant bullshit calls of being drunk, faking seizures, passing out next to the road, sun burn, leg pain, hand pain, anything that would get us to take him to the hospital so he could get a hot meal.  Six years ago he strangled to death another newspaper guy over a dispute on who " owned " the corner they were on.  After being locked up for 4 months, he was let go after some public defender got him released when he argued it was done in self defense.  I often wonder how you strangle someone in self defense........

In one calender year, we ran on him 211 times.  Sometimes he would bang on the station door at 3am, demanding a ride to the hospital because it was raining and he couldn't sleep outside.  Other times he would hop our property fence, steal from our ice machine, and use our dumpster enclosure as his personal toilet.  I've personally had him arrested for threatening me 3 times.  In what I thought would be the final solution, I collected money from all three shifts of Firefighters at my station, some Dr's and Nurses at the local ER, and we sent him to Nashville on a bus.  Well, he got off in Ft. Pierce and came right back after selling his ticket for beer money.  They guy just wouldn't go away.

A couple of days ago I learned he died.  He had liver failure from drinking his whole life, all 46 years of it.  The last time I ran on him a month ago he looked pretty bad.  His belly was all distended, his skin looked like wax and he had lost a bunch of weight.  He was being nice because he knew he was dying, and he told us so.  I asked him if regretted anything in his life, and being typical Mad Dog, he answered  " like what?". I mentioned him murdering someone, which he seemed to have forgot about.  I brought up the fact that he wasted his one shot at life, because he was too lazy to pull himself out of the gutter, and too weak to put down the bottle.  He got a sad look on his face and said no.  He was satisfied with how he spent his life, even the last 25% of it being a nuisance to us, the local business owners, the local residents,  and the hospital.  He said it was fun.  

When I mentioned to the staff at the local ER that he had died and he would never be bothering them again, a nurse brought out two pieces of paper that they kept on their break room fridge that had crayon drawings done on them.  They were scenes of a sail boat on a lake, and some trees on a hill. Both were signed in his real name on the bottom.  They looked like something that would hang on a kindergarten class room wall.  I asked if I could have them, but the RN who had them said she wanted to keep them on the fridge because they had been there so long, and that she liked them.

The only thing that saddens me about " The Dog's" death is that I wasn't there when he went. I wanted to be the last face he saw when he expired.  I always told him I would be, because I thought he would get hit by a car one day performing his paper selling antics in busy traffic.  Instead, he died by himself, in a vacant apartment he broke into, with his beer and cigarettes by his side.  Of course the owner of the apartment will have to pay to have a bio-hazard company come clean up the mess that " The Dog's" decomposing body left.  Even in death the guy is a pain in the ass.

When I was leaving the hospital the other day, my partner asked me why I wanted to those drawings.  I told him it was the last remnants of Mad Dog, and I wanted them.  

" For what", he asked.

" To burn", I told him.