Hope Buchanan and her boyfriend woke up Thursday morning on a wet, overturned couch under the Interstate 95 overpass at Maryland Avenue in Wilmington. One of them wasn't well.

Buchanan's boyfriend was throwing up. His color was way off. He was too sober, Buchanan said. She and their friends were sure he was suffering from withdrawals.

"He was shaking really bad," Buchanan said. "He was sitting between us and he just grabbed his fists trying to say 'help' because he couldn't catch his breath. It was bad."

Buchanan lives there under the overpass with her "pack," including her boyfriend, her cousin and another homeless couple. They're used to hardship, withdrawal and sickness, but Buchanan and her friends said Thursday morning's episode was something new.

"We managed to get a couple of sips of beer in him, but a few sips weren't enough," said Ingrid VonFricken, another under-the-overpass resident. "He thought he was dying."

VonFricken's boyfriend also seizes up when going through alcohol withdrawals, and he ran two blocks to a barber shop to use the phone. He knows seizures can be deadly.

Paramedics arrived shortly after and took Buchanan's boyfriend away for treatment.

Everything about Thursday's episode colorizes the normal day-to-day, VonFricken said.

"This is what's going to happen: He's going to get out, he's going to feel better and he's coming right back here to go to the liquor store because that's the life we live," she said.

Buchanan and VonFricken said their homelessness is a confluence of medical, psychological and addiction issues. They have families and healthy backgrounds, some of which include military service, but they live under a bridge and feel totally invisible.

"We end up stuck. We become part of the earth. In the mud, dirty, stinky. This is homelessness," VonFricken said. "I served in the Army National Guard. I drove school buses for 20 years. I survived cancer. Because I don't have enough money to live in the houses, this is where I am at 52 years old ... We slept on the concrete on this blanket. "

When her boyfriend was seizing on the wet concrete Thursday, Buchanan said she shouted to passers-by for help or to use their phones. She said they just kept walking.

"These people walk by us every day," she said. "Nobody asks if we're okay."

As of a January 2018 report, more than 1,000 people in the state were experiencing homelessness on any given day, according to the nonprofit Housing Alliance Delaware.

Seventy-eight percent of people experiencing homelessness statewide in 2017 were newly homeless. Of the 1,082 homeless people the Housing Alliance surveyed in 2018, 20 percent said they'd been evicted in the last year, the nonprofit reported.

It's estimated 3,500 people will experience homelessness at some point each year.

Contact Adam Duvernay at (302) 319-1855 or aduvernay@delawareonline.com

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