Falling through the cracks.

I have a poor sense of smell but I can tell which flat it is from the entrance hall. Even if I couldn't, the neighbours waste no time in letting me know I have reached the correct address as I hover outside the slightly open door through which a slice of dark hallway scattered with debris is visible.
The neighbours are two neat older ladies and they are baying for blood. They tell me about the smell and the rotting rubbish in the hallway but they can tell me very little about the gentleman who lives there, it appears nobody speaks to him. "Something must be done" and it appears I am the person they feel should do it.
I push the door open and the smell intensifies as I call his name, there is no response. I advance hesitantly into the gloom and pause at the bedroom door, I try to adjust my eyes to the scene before me. Mr C is so thin that I can see the whole outline of his pelvis. He is lying on a rancid divan bed with a sheet half over him, I cannot see his chest moving and I creep closer, taking in the gaunt face and the straggly growth of beard. When he opens his eyes and starts I cannot repress a small squeak of alarm, I had been certain he was at least unconscious and possibly dead. He struggles up, hastily trying to cover himself and clearly horribly embarrassed. I back away, making my apologies and saying I will wait for him in the living room while he gets some clothes on.
While I wait I survey the scene. The place looks as if it has been comprehensively vandalised. The sofa cushions are missing and the strips of webbing beneath are mostly broken, the filthy carpet is barely visible beneath the covering of clothes and food wrappers and there are stains on the walls and the windows which could be blood or food or something even less savoury. Bizzarely, the door of an automatic washing machine leans against the fireplace. I can see through the doorway into the kitchen because the door is off it's hinges and propped against the wall. It appears there has been a fire in there at some point. The walls are blackened and a tower of cartons and rotting food balances on the charred worktops.
I turn as he staggers into the room and half falls into the sagging chair. He is breathing heavily and he has put on a pair of trousers and a shirt which flap unfastened around his emaciated torso. I realise how much of a judgement I have already made when I hear his voice and am surprised by it. He speaks with a BBC accent and his tone is refined, he is a wreck of a man but his manner is that of a gentleman. He cannot sit still, settling only for a moment in each position before moving restlessly again, his face twisting in pain. He tells me that his hip is agony and that he rang an ambulance the other night but was told nothing could be done for him at Accident and Emergency, he needed to see his doctor. His doctor had seen him before of course but he had been told nothing could be done for him until he stopped drinking. I suspect this is only half the story but I get the general picture. He says the only thing that eases the pain is the whiskey, he cant remember when he last ate, he thinks he had a Cup-a-Soup yesterday but it quickly resulted in explosive diahorrea. This is hardly news to anyone standing in that room with him.
Slowly I coax the story from him. He is only sixty two. He lived with his mother until he was in his late forties, she "suffered with her nerves" and he looked after her until her death. He then found out that, although she was long estranged from his father, they were still married and their will had never been changed. His father took possession of the house and he was left effectively homeless.
He moved into a holiday cottage on a small farm belonging to friends and stayed there for nearly ten years. He says the farm became too remote for him as his hip condition worsened and he was moved to this council block for older people three years ago. I suspect that his drinking may have played a part in this, at any rate, he says he has no contact with these friends now and he has no other connections in the area. It is a paradox, the flat is a vile health hazard in an otherwise pristine small complex. He is vilified and avoided by his neighbours and it is hardly surprising that this is the case, and yet his whole demeanour and bearing is that of a man who should be living a genteel middle class life far from council accommodation.
Back at the office, I speak to his social worker, who had asked me to check out the situation and report back whether we would be willing to attempt a clean up of the property before putting in a regular service. I cannot bring myself to refuse to help, even though I know I will have to help with the operation, I couldn't square it with my conscience to send the staff in there without joining in. The thing is, I can't imagine undertaking the task with Mr C in residence, we have to find a way to get him out of the flat. We debate the issue, we both feel he has a medical problem but there is no chance of getting him admitted while he is permanently drunk, he is well known to all the medical services and, frankly, they have tried everything to help him and they have run out of sympathy. The social worker somehow persuades her senior practitioner to sanction some emergency respite care and we both hope Mr. C will manage to sober up while he is there so that she can get him some medical attention for him.
We take sixteen bin bags of rubbish from the flat and it takes three of us a full day and buckets of bleach to get the place even half way habitable. We get through it with an overlay of hysteria, laughing as we uncover each new atrocity, shrieking at the mouse droppings but taking a pride in putting up curtains we have brought from home and making the bed with sheets we have ferreted from the backs of our own cupboards. The social worker negotiates a grant to replace the burnt out cooker and the council come and repair the toilet and emulsion the walls. At the end it still doesn't look like a normal home, we have taken up the carpets but he will have to make do with linoleum and the whole flat is bare, but it is serviceable and it is clean and I am happy to take the fall for the difference between the time we have been there and the time we will be paid for because we have made a difference.
In the meanwhile Mr. C. has thrived on regular food and less regular alcohol and has got an appointment to have his hip assessed for replacement. He is not horribly dehydrated now and the pain is more manageable. He returns home with an hour alloted for each morning to make him food and maintain his environment. The social worker must have begged and pleaded, it is more than most people in Mr. C's circumstances would usually get but by now we all have an investment in turning him around and there is a team spirit invested in his future.
And now six months have passed. We go to Mr. C. each day and, for the most part he eats. He has fallen spectacularly off the wagon once or twice but in general he has kept his whiskey consumption within reasonable levels. He has proved to be the gentleman I suspected lurked in there, he is softly spoken and intelligent and it is possible to glimpse the fragility that led him to drop through the cracks in the system in the first place. He reads the Independent each day and enjoys documentaries on the little television set that a carer donated after swearing she no longer needed it. He rang me this morning to tell me that he had been to see the Specialist. He wont be having a hip replacement. He has advanced bone cancer.