Preventing risks
This morning, the air already feels heavy when we arrive at the office. It is almost 30 degrees.
As a team, we go over the patients we need to see first: those who do not always think about drinking enough water, finding shade, or who quite simply have nowhere to protect themselves.
In our bags, alongside the usual care equipment, we pack caps, bottles of water and sunscreen to hand out.
The two of us head out to a neighbourhood where we often meet homeless people.
It is hard to leave the coolness of the metro corridors and walk in the heatwave. But since the end of the winter plan, the security service has forbidden people to rest there. So we know we will have to go further if we want to meet patients today.
Suddenly, on a street corner, in direct sunlight, we spot a young man lying on the ground, covered with several blankets.
We approach him gently and ask how he is coping with the heat. He says very little. That does not matter. We introduce ourselves, share a few prevention tips about hydration and the risks linked to the heat, then suggest that he move to the other side of the street, into the shade.
We give him a cap. Then we leave him in peace.
Working without an explicit request: offering support without imposing it, at the person’s pace
Working without an explicit request means accepting that help is not always expected, or even wanted, at the moment it is offered.
It is not easy. It takes gentleness, patience, and above all the ability to move at the other person’s pace.
To offer without imposing. To be present without intruding. To come back, sometimes, without expecting anything.
We continue our round through the neighbourhood. Here we stop to greet familiar faces, there to offer something to drink, further on to take a break in a day centre.
At the end of the morning, with our bag almost empty and a few referrals made, we head back.
And then, in the alleyway leading us back to the metro, we see the young man from the morning again.
He is in the shade. The blankets are gone. And on his head: the cap.
As we pass by, he greets us with a discreet nod.
A tiny opening, but a real one.
When every gesture counts: water, shade and human connection can become a vital emergency
With the most excluded people, those who sometimes seem to reject help or avoid eye contact, it is often in these almost ordinary moments that something begins to open up.
Because during a heatwave, a cap, a bottle of water or a few metres of shade are never “small gestures”. For someone living outside, they can mean protection, relief, sometimes even a vital emergency.
And that too is our work: being there before the heat becomes dangerous, and making room, in the heart of a burning city, for a little care, connection and shelter.
Marie, nurse in the street team