"Hey!"
"Do you have a couple of bucks?"
"I have to see this guy first. I'll see you later. "
When I saw Amanda just three months earlier, this once-beautiful woman was already a mess, but she's much worse now. There's a black spot on her diseased gum and her yellow teeth have rotted further. Like old, leaning gravestones, they're ready to be knocked from their foundation. A crusty black scar oozes from her right shoulder blade. Old scars from two stab wounds are hidden by her dirty tank top. Living on the streets since 2011, she's been raped, beaten and stabbed. Locked up twice, for eight and six months, Amanda was rather safer inside, but it was much harder to score behind bars because, well, she couldn't put out.
Twenty-nine-years-old, Amanda is from Brownville, NJ, population 2,383 and 74 miles from Camden. Amanda got married at 16, then at 19, she tried to join the Army. After scoring 92 on her Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test, Amanda discovered that she was pregnant, however, and so her military career had to be aborted. Amanda then became a nurse for eight years, "I was a good nurse too."
When Amanda was 24, her four-year-old son died of leukemia at Children's Hospital in Camden. He was her only child. An intern nurse had injected the boy with an antibiotic to which he was allergic. "Mommy, I'm going to die, my son told me. I don't want to die, he said. I kept hearing that over and over and over, and that's why I got on drugs, because when you're high, the pain goes away."
"How long have you been on heroin?"
"Three years."
"So you only got on it when you came to Camden?"
"Yeah."
"Did you do drugs before? Did you do coke?"
"I only smoked weed. I tried coke but I don't like uppers."
Amanda said she needed money for a bus ticket to go see an aunt in Toms River, so I gave it to her. An hour and a half later, though, I still saw her wandering up and down Broadway.
"I thought you were going to Toms River!"
"I bought food. I hadn't eaten in three days."
"There's The Cathedral," a soup kitchen. "You know about that. Come'on."
"Do you have a couple of bucks?"
"I have to see this guy first. I'll see you later. "
When I saw Amanda just three months earlier, this once-beautiful woman was already a mess, but she's much worse now. There's a black spot on her diseased gum and her yellow teeth have rotted further. Like old, leaning gravestones, they're ready to be knocked from their foundation. A crusty black scar oozes from her right shoulder blade. Old scars from two stab wounds are hidden by her dirty tank top. Living on the streets since 2011, she's been raped, beaten and stabbed. Locked up twice, for eight and six months, Amanda was rather safer inside, but it was much harder to score behind bars because, well, she couldn't put out.
When Amanda was 24, her four-year-old son died of leukemia at Children's Hospital in Camden. He was her only child. An intern nurse had injected the boy with an antibiotic to which he was allergic. "Mommy, I'm going to die, my son told me. I don't want to die, he said. I kept hearing that over and over and over, and that's why I got on drugs, because when you're high, the pain goes away."
"How long have you been on heroin?"
"Three years."
"So you only got on it when you came to Camden?"
"Yeah."
"Did you do drugs before? Did you do coke?"
"I only smoked weed. I tried coke but I don't like uppers."
Amanda said she needed money for a bus ticket to go see an aunt in Toms River, so I gave it to her. An hour and a half later, though, I still saw her wandering up and down Broadway.
"I thought you were going to Toms River!"
"I bought food. I hadn't eaten in three days."
"There's The Cathedral," a soup kitchen. "You know about that. Come'on."
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