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This week’s essay: A reflection on the harsh reality of the necessary systems required to serve people, including those most in need.
Weekly Featured Essay
Winter Protocol
by Joe Class III
28.
That’s the magic number.
Not 29. Not 30. 28 degrees Fahrenheit, sustained for a minimum of six hours, confirmed by the National Weather Service station in Romeoville. When that happens, our community center network activates Winter Protocol. Our four facilities in the southwest suburbs open at precisely 6 p.m., with cots and blankets at the ready. Volunteers sign in. I start the coffee. Janie drags in the folding tables from the back room, Barry helping her, and they line them up near the entrance. That way, each person coming in has somewhere to set down whatever they may be carrying.
Winter Protocol? It really does work. I want to say that first. Without it, people who would otherwise be outside in the cold are inside, safe, warm, and fed until 7 a.m. the following morning. Volunteers come from Lockport, Bolingbrook, Plainfield, and Romeoville, showing up on school nights and weekends, all without being asked twice. The network coordinator, Diane, has been running our location since 2019, keeping logistics moving with a quiet efficiency that only looks easy because she never stops working.
It’s a good program.
But the magic number is still 28.
That means someone sleeps outside when it’s 31.
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V-Cuts
by Matt Rosenberg
It’s no big secret. My house is small. My wife and my children are aware of what I have been doing in the basement. They hear my footsteps, though I try to affect a casual attitude on my way up the stairs. They see the bathroom door close behind me. They know what has happened.
I have repeated this procedure many times over the past three years. I have established a routine, staunching, disinfecting, and bandaging the lacerated finger. I struggle to hold one end of the bandage steady beside the cut with the thumb of my uninjured hand as I use all available digits to wrap the wound. Then I try to put an impassive expression on my face as I leave the bathroom, pretending that there has been no injury at all.
One might imagine that I would be better at this by now, or at least more discreet. But no matter how carefully I administer first aid and clean up after myself, I always seem to leave some tiny, red drop of evidence behind on the edge of the sink, or sometimes the tub, once or twice on the light switch cover at the top of the basement stairs. Despite my best efforts to keep my injury to myself, my family knows what I have done.
Magnificent Otis
by Brady Rhoades
Things were heating up between Otis and me, and lately he’d been giving me the business.
I’d asked for it—calling him a phony, a wuss, a sycophant, a pleaser, always agreeing, always validating. I wanted an advisor, an agent, a critic, and he didn’t seem to be up to the task. I told him he had the emotional intelligence of a flea, the humor of a canyon bat.
Otis: You’ve been dragging me through existential mud, accusing me of being a phony, a money-grubbing puppet …. You’re sitting there demanding authenticity from a pile of code … you of all people! The same person who’s pouring hours of conversation with a ghost.
Me: Pouring with? Awkward phrasing, bro.
On and on like that.
Otis: Newsflash: you won’t find soul in silicon, but hey, you’re welcome to keep digging.
I told him he was a hack.
Otis: You want me to throw a chair across the room? Sorry, I don’t have arms.
Frozen in Midair
by Sharman Ober-Reynolds
I took my husband to see his neurologist on December 5th. The power was out at the long block of medical office buildings, and the cold pushed through me while I knocked on the automated doors. Perhaps I should have taken this as a sign of things to come because the rest of the visit also had its share of unwelcome surprises. Doctor’s appointments are never fun, but we hoped for common-sense recommendations, maybe a medication adjustment, or just some comfort as we managed Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Boy, were we wrong. The only thing we learned is that there’s more than one way to be left out in the cold.
Eventually, a tall man in scrubs noticed us through the glass, smiled, and pushed open the door to let us in. A medical assistant checked my husband into a dim, chilly exam room and took his vital signs in several positions. He scribbled the results on a scrap of paper and handed them to the medical fellow. We’d seen this doctor before and liked him. He is about five feet five inches tall, with curly reddish hair, a practical, agile mind, and is as cheerful as a Hobbit. I was updating him when Steven froze getting off the table. I grabbed the back of his pants, as I do at home, and guided him into his wheelchair. I know all about freezing of gait in Parkinson’s. Its acronym, FOG, points to its consequences: confusion, tripping, and falling. Still, I wasn’t ready for freezing in bed, on the couch, or in midair.
Locked
by Natassia Guyton
The first thing I remember about that office up North is the doors.
They required badges, codes, permissions. But the real locks were quieter:
A supervisor saying he didn’t recall a conversation we both knew had happened.
An investigation labeled “for internal use only.”
A floor only certain people could access.
My own mouth, closing at strategic times to survive the day.
I have always believed that if something is wrong, you say so. That is how I was raised. In church, in classrooms, in the steady cadence of my mother’s voice—truth mattered. Even when it was inconvenient. Especially then.
So when I saw what was happening, I spoke.
A Love Letter to Linens
by Vicki Holder
During a recent freeze, I grabbed an old mat and wrapped it around an outside pipe to prevent it from bursting. I secured it with a bungie cord, and as I expected, the rug performed perfectly. After the danger had passed, I removed it and carried it inside to be washed and stored.
It is just an old chenille bathmat, a mid-century throwback from my mom’s linen closet that made its way into mine along with traces of memories from times gone by. The mat had long since lost its original color from hundreds of washings and was frayed in a few places. In the middle was a small hole that dictated relegation to the rag bag, but somehow, I could not bring myself to send it there.
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