The Lady in the Trench Coat

Once upon a time, before I was a cop, I worked a menial job. Despite the sun having long set, the temperature was well into the 80s. The weather did not befit the World War II era military surplus raincoat and trousers she strode in wearing. There was not a rain cloud in view. Her actions were clearly erratic. When I stopped her and found my excuse to speak with her, she rummaged through her purse. She pushed aside the rotten banana and orange peels, past the random trash and obvious decay that resided in the bag. Her body odor or the rot, I was unsure, but I could barely stand the assault on my nostrils.

When asked the standard battery of questions, she was unsure the date, the day, the sitting president, and her name a jumble. It was clear. She needed help. When those sworn to protect swooped in, it was clear the pre-workout and gym time took precedent to any duty. What mattered was vanity. She was shooed away and discarded as trash. She was literally shooed. Into the darkness she faded. Along the dark and desolate state highway, she shuffled away, screaming vulgarity for her indignant treatment.

I knew every word meant nothing to her. She was so lost to the world. But for a brief moment, she was able to say everything I could not. She was shooed away at my protest. She was shooed at the protest of others. We sat watching, helplessly, as the duty was abandoned.

The reply to my protest, “What do you want us to do? Fill out a form, drive her 30 minutes to the nearest hospital, wait a few hours, just to have her admitted? Only to be released and her not take her meds again?”

Yes, that is exactly what I expected. That is exactly what I begged for, and it was exactly what was ignored.

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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on December 18, 2024.

Jake Smith is a law enforcement officer and former Army Ranger with four deployments to Afghanistan.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.