The Refugee - a flash fiction story

The Refugee

by Kimberly A. Fader

“Remember when we kissed all night?” an inebriated Albert shouted across the crowded room to Rhonda, a woman half his age and twice his size. A splatter of laughter broke out, and Sara, the homeless shelter social worker, waited on alert. Rhonda had been known to flip out for less. But that evening, she just dismissed Albert with a wave of her hand, as if he were a bothersome fly, and focused on the playing cards in her hand. Albert watched her with mischievous glassy eyes, nodding and laughing a little, but then drifted back down under the radar where he spent most of his life.

The following morning, Albert left the overnight shelter alone, with a slouched posture and slow but steady gait, trailing the crowd as usual. Someone might have mistaken him for a businessman down on his luck, with his scuffed dress shoes, dirty trench coat, and pork pie fedora.

His only regular companion was a man who looked to be in his sixties, about Albert’s age, with a pink fleshy face who drove a dated Pontiac Bonneville. The Bonneville driver avoided Sara, but the few times their paths crossed she discovered that although he had a Mothers Against Drunk Driving red ribbon tied to his mirror, he carried a cooler of beer behind the passenger seat, within arm’s reach. The man routinely picked Albert up at the beginning of the month after his disability check arrived, and she learned their preferred destination was the local Offtrack Betting establishment.

Sara wished she could inform the Bonneville driver, who often sped off when she approached, that Albert’s small check needed to last all month and that he was prescribed potent psychotropic medications that, when mixed with alcohol, could be deadly.

Albert signed a confidentiality release allowing Sara to speak with the overbooked hospital clinic psychiatrists. She informed them of Albert’s alcohol abuse, and they, in turn, warned him of the danger at every visit.

Albert laughed and said, “Okay, yeah, yeah, okay.” The doctors looked at Sara and shrugged. Adults had the freedom to make terrible choices.

One February morning, Albert arrived in Sara’s office with a crumpled warning letter from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). His green card had expired. Green card? Sara thought. Although Albert spoke with the hint of an accent, she had been more focused on his current needs than his history. Shelter residents often come with long and winding stories revealed over time or as needed, as in this situation.

After multiple calls redirected around the departments of the USCIS, Sara learned that Albert, born in Budapest, was a refugee of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet Union’s communist regime. Thirty thousand “freedom fighters” were offered asylum in the United States, and some settled in Norwalk, CT. Sara now remembered walking by their bronze memorial monument without stopping to read the plaque. Several large Hungarian families had established flourishing businesses in town.

However, Albert didn’t seem to have any connections in the Hungarian community. He might have alienated them long ago or perhaps landed in this country alone from the start. A man of few words, especially when sober, Albert was unable or unwilling to fill in many of the blanks. From what Sara could gather, he arrived in the United States at age nineteen, right at the age his lurking diagnosis of schizophrenia might have become symptomatic.

Albert needed to keep an appointment with the USCIS in Hartford, CT, about 90 minutes away. Life could become more difficult if he didn’t restore his green card status. He would lose his benefits and more. Sara rearranged her day to take him.

Sara realized Albert had horrible hygiene but didn’t fully appreciate the impact until they drove a while in the car’s confined space. Her nostrils burned from the stench of old cigarette smoke, metabolizing alcohol, filthy clothes, and, she suspected, urine. She couldn’t fully open the windows on the highway in winter, but she had to crack them a bit to provide breathable air.

To increase her tolerance, Sara focused on all Albert had endured. Sara imagined an even scrawnier young Albert, rescued from his war-torn homeland, shipped off to a foreign country with a foreign language, and then becoming incapable of distinguishing reality from the hallucinations and delusions his mind created. She wondered how and what he survived. It must have been terrifying, perhaps explaining his reliance on “liquid courage.”

Sara and Albert checked in at the USCIS counter and were told to have a seat. The area was packed with waiting people of all ages and complexions, some curled up and resting under their winter coats, the epitome of the huddled masses inscribed in the sonnet on the Statue of Liberty. The stuffy room had few seats open, and pinched expressions made it clear that Albert and his pungent odor were not welcome additions. Albert either took it in stride or was oblivious. His blunted affect could be a symptom of his schizophrenia and PTSD.

Sara thought his overwhelming smell worked to their advantage once they finally entered the small office of the agent assigned to renew Albert’s green card. The agent worked as quickly as he could. Sara realized that Albert was functionally illiterate. He was also a painfully passive and ineffectual communicator, even when someone was trying to help him.

In the elevator down, Albert looked shaky. Although eager to leave the city before rush hour, Sara bought him a muffin and water from the building’s kiosk and offered him time to smoke a cigarette outside before hustling him to the car.

Mission accomplished, Sara thought and took a last deep breath of clean air before getting back in the car. The return ride was quiet until suddenly, a frantic-looking deer trying to cross the eight lanes of highway traffic bolted in front of them. Sara cried out and braked just in time to avoid hitting the frenetic animal. She looked to Albert, who maintained his flat expression, appearing unphased.

“Albert, did you see that?” she asked.

“What?”

“The deer running across the highway!”

“You thought you saw a deer?” He laughed, “Okay, yeah, yeah, okay.”

The End.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.