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No snow on her. Waiting for the bus on West Broadway -- with her umbrella, under a store awning.

 It's still snowing in Vancouver and my WordPress blog is still suspended.

Unfortunately the snow isn't enough to cheer me up. Still, I should just buck up and get on with it right? Life goes on around me, demanding my attention.

Bloody hell!

While I've been typing this post in McDonald's a woman has appeared at the counter. It's free coffee week at the Golden Arches but they weren't giving her one. I turned to see the woman, she was squat with a stolid expression and she was carrying a jacket and a plastic shopping bag. She had cross-cut slashes all down both forearms which were consequently covered in blood.

What the...?

See what I mean about not paying attention?

I jumped to the counter. There seemed to be an abundance of coffee denial and a shortage of 9-1-1-ing. I was a bit loud about that. A woman did finally call for an ambulance.

The woman with the cut up arms left. A customer at the counter actually declared the cuts were superficial -- self-inflicted -- and couldn't have hurt. Aarrgg!

The staff justified not calling an ambulance immediately because the woman had come in one time before in the same condition and that she left before an ambulance arrived.

In fact the woman left the restaurant. I couldn't convince her to wait. She didn't say a word, she just left. She immediately tried to get on a westbound bus but I watched as the driver took one look at the blood covering her forearms and hands and ordered her off the bus.

She trudged off down West Broadway. The woman who had called 9-1-1 was trailing after her trying to talk to her. I didn't go out and help. At no point did I consider trying to "detain" the woman with the cuts.

When I looked up a few minutes later the woman with the cuts was back; she was again trying to board a bus but now she had her jacket on with the sleeves over the cuts. A different driver still ordered her off the bus. As she walked  walked west up Broadway I could see bus passengers pointing at and complaining about something to the driver. Not a minute later I heard sirens and watched an ambulance and police car speeding west. Then there was the woman who'd made the original 9-1-1 call; she was walking east.

So a potentially mentally-ill woman, covering in blood up to her elbows, was, and may still be, wandering around Fairview in the snow and cold. She appeared to be willfully dodging help, which didn't seem too hard to do as most people just wanted to ignore her.

Vancouver is a wonderful city full of people who care. They just don't always care about other people. But then neither do I.

Did I mention my WordPress blog is still suspended?