The Human Part

I worked crisis in Sagebrush City, a desert city in the Southwest. I brought my professional brain to work every day. My clients kept going around it.

The names have been changed, and so have a lot of the details, to protect everyone, including me.

Korey, one of my clients, showed up with his phone, one earbud, and instructions. "Left ear. Not right. You need the left so it gets straight to your feelings." He'd found a Warren Zevon song the night before, and he needed somebody to hear the song with him.

"This song ain't for your professional brain," Korey told me. "This is for the human part."

When the song ended, Korey said, "You know what scares me? Not dying. Nobody cares about dying. Happens all the time. What scares me is disappearing."

An old champion boxer with dementia kept swinging at caregivers he didn't recognize. Another home-care agency had already quit. So our home-care business sent men in sweats who called him Coach and said they'd come to train. They cooked because fighters have to eat right. They handed him his pills because a fighter has to stay sharp.

He stayed in his own house, with his own photographs and his own chair. We didn't cure anything. We found a door his mind would still open, and we sent good people through the door.

Our clients had big plans. A food truck. A Christian motorcycle ministry. One man planned to become a dolphin trainer. We lived in the desert.

Nobody lacked ambition. They lacked Tuesday.

Success usually meant the catastrophe had been delayed long enough to lose momentum. Every now and then, a client put together three Tuesdays in a row.

The Human Part is one of ten Sagebrush City books. Read them in any order.

Ebook (epub), delivered right after purchase.

Included free: Jukebox, a short bonus Sagebrush City book.