sliding doors

I was at the grocery store last night and noticed a woman sitting outside panhandling. She asked me for some change so I stopped to talk to her and to give her a few bucks. She didn't have a place to sleep and was obviously struggling with some mental health issues. I asked her if she knew about our program and she did but didn't think she could stay there because she'd lost her ID. I assured her that wouldn't be a problem but she persisted, a long rambling dialogue about district attorneys and some other things I didn't really understand.

I asked her if she would be willing to go if I promised she'd get a bed and she said yes so I pulled out a card and wrote please give N__ a bed tonight on it and handed it to her. I realized that a better thing to have done would have been to drive her there myself but I didn't offer that, because I felt nervous for what was probably no good reason. While I was sitting on the curb with her a man stopped and handed me a couple of bucks. This isn't the first time I've been mistaken for a homeless person and yet I felt the urge to say Hey dude, I'm not homeless but instead I thanked him and handed her the money because it felt insulting to define myself so separately from her. She thanked me for passing on the cash and I got up and left her there sitting in the cold.

I felt like an asshole the whole way home for leaving her there and when I came in the house I told J about it and he said what do you want me to do, drive back and pick her up and take her to the shelter? Well yes, actually. I replied. But he wasn't going for it and I couldn't blame him because I wasn't comfortable doing it either. Sometimes the fear keeps me silent, keeps me from doing what is right. I think of M in those moments and my ultimate responsibility to her but it doesn't really assuage the fact that a woman was still out in the cold, her destination several miles from where I left her.