Never a dull walk

I usually walk a couple of miles a day. Today I had one last assignment to critique and then I was going to go for my walk. I opened the assignment and decided I needed to walk first...

So off I headed to City Park, one of my usual routes. Alas it was near 5pm and the traffic was so thick I could not get across 17th street, so I went west instead.

Toward the end of the 2 mile route, I came to a small 40ish woman sitting hunched over on a step outside of an old apartment building. She had a couple of shopping bags beside her and looked up at me and asked if I had a phone. My guard immediately went up, and I asked Why, and she asked if I would call 911 because she had just been beaten. Of course I called, and the dispatcher started asking me questions that I had to ask this woman for answers. Her partner was on meth. She is tired of him beating her. She has had heart failure. And then I began to realize she was also drunk....

Do I tell the dispatcher not to bother because she is drunk or do I carry on? Then a "friend" of hers drove by and stopped and tried to get her to go with him. She told him to leave. He drove a block away and watched. The fire truck arrived, and the fire men calmly walked over to her as they sized up the situation. The expression on their faces told me they had heard the story many times.

I asked one of them if I was needed for anything and he shook his head and I continued home. Half a block later the "friend" stopped me and thanked me for trying to help. He said he would have taken her home, but his wife wouldn't allow it.

Downtown living is too real some days.