A passerby thought the man under the white sheet could be dead.

But when two members of the Spokane Fire Department’s Behavioral Response Unit pulled back the covering, he awoke and pointed to the needle scars on his arm.

“This doesn’t mean I want to die,” he said on a cold day in February. “This means, ‘Help me.’ ”

Paramedic Jordan Johnson retrieved a dry blanket for the man, identified only as “Adam,” who was soaking wet from hours of laying outside Browne Elementary School in the rain. As Adam wrapped himself in the blanket, he fiddled with his pill bottle sitting on the concrete that was only labeled with his first name.

Johnson snatched his portable monitor from his truck and began checking Adam’s vitals. He would live another day.

Jordan Ellinwood, a Frontier Behavioral Health c

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