Have You Found Her (9 page)

As was I. I sat in the visitor’s chair, watching her eyes dart around behind her closed lids, then fly open wide, then shut in exhaustion again. Sat there saying meaningless things, like, “I wish there was something I could do for you.” Worrying—
She’s crashing again. The sepsis is recurring. Her kidneys can’t take the stress. She’s not going to make it after all.

She rolled over, moaned. I couldn’t stand the pain, and I was three feet away from it. “Do you want me to call the doctor again?”

She shook her head. “There’s nothing they can do, I just gotta…” Speaking was too much effort. She collapsed against the pillow. “Maybe…you should go.”

“I’d rather not leave you like this.” Another stupid thing to say; what was I going to do, wait until she felt better? She was in a hospital; I was going to have to go home at some point. She was telling me to go.

I felt like I could see her watching me through her closed eyelids, like she was just waiting for me to leave so she could write me off. Meanwhile, the clock in my pocket was ticking; Bill was waiting for me at home. If she really didn’t need me, I knew somebody who did. Somebody, and three cats, and a long list of people to call to say
Happy holidays, I love you
. Suddenly, sitting there in the visitor’s chair—yet another uncomfortable chair, in yet another institution, that smelled yet again like disinfectant and pain—I felt unbearably homesick for our apartment, just a few blocks away.

“All right,” I said, rising, though she hadn’t said anything. “I’ll let you get some rest. I hope it gets better by tomorrow. I’ll come by and check on you, okay?”

Sam’s jaw clenched in confirmation, or maybe it was a nerve twinge. She kept her eyes closed, shifted her drowsy head, and muttered, “Right.”

Was that supposed to be sarcastic? Or did she mean “all right”? I’d never promised her something and not delivered; I never would. I would be there tomorrow, and we both knew it.

“Okay,” I said. I reached out tentatively for her foot, but she shifted again, and my hand fell short of it. “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The door to her room was closed when I arrived the next day.

I knocked softly in case she was sleeping or didn’t want company. Yesterday had been a bad day; maybe today was worse.

Sam’s voice, cheery and airy. “Come in.”

I entered, bearing today’s books and cookies, and grinned at Sam, sallow but happy, propped way up in her adjustable bed with pillows. Then I stopped short. There was a woman in the visitor’s chair,
my
chair. She was in her mid-forties, with graying, shoulder-length hair and a wry smile on her face. She held out her hand. “I’m Jodi,” she said, in her thick Brooklyn accent. “Lemme guess, you must be the Bead Lady.”

I beamed at her, shaking her hand. Here she was, my competition for Sam’s affection; totally likeable, of course. Not to mention: a grown-up, with real credentials, who might actually be able to help Samantha in a substantive way, who’d already helped her so much. I was instantly grateful for and relieved by her presence—I’d been starting to feel overwhelmed by the extent of Sam’s emotional damage, wondering how I was going to single-handedly see her through to rehab and beyond, but now Jodi was here, in person, ready to take over and show me how it was done. “I’m Janice. I’ve heard so much about you. It’s great to meet you.”

“You too,” she said, raising an eyebrow toward Sam. “This one talks about you all the time.”

Sam glowed with happiness—again, she’d turned 180 degrees from the day before. Yesterday she was moribund; today she was as chipper as a chipmunk. “Janice visited me
every day
since she found out I was here. Even
Christmas
.”

Jodi’s eyebrows climbed even higher, and I felt a little busted. “Work’s been slow for the holidays,” I offered, sheepish.

“Uh-huh,” said Jodi. Probably thinking
Child molester
.

I stood there, chairless, biting the inside of my cheek, trying to decide if I should stay or leave them alone. They’d obviously been in the midst of something deep and important; maybe I’d interrupted an important revelation. Maybe Sam was telling Jodi the Christmas Eve story. Maybe Jodi had already heard it.

“I should give you guys a chance to talk privately,” I said. “I’ll take off; I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?” asked Sam. She wrinkled her forehead, apologetic. “I feel bad—yesterday I wasn’t feeling so good, and now you came all the way back here today…”

“I’m just a few blocks away,” I assured her. “It’s no problem. I’m glad you guys are getting a chance to catch up. I’ll come back tomorrow, and you’ll tell me what you think of these.” I showed her the books I’d brought for her to read, two novels and another memoir.

“Thanks, Janice. I really appreciate it.” She looked happy and guilty in equal measure, like she’d been caught having some kind of affair, and she wanted to get back to it as soon as possible. “Thanks.”

“It’s okay.” I zipped up my bag, stood straight again. “Okay!” I sort of bowed to each of them. “It was great to meet you, great to see
you
.”

“Same here,” said Jodi. “I’m sure I’ll see you around again.”

“Either here or there,” I said, smiling and pointing north, toward the shelter. “Okay.”

There was Sam’s socked foot, sticking up at the end of the bed. I grabbed it, shook it, and walked out of the room.

Me again. It was getting to be a routine, coming to the hospital in the evening after work. The guard downstairs nodded at me now, and the nurses recognized me in the halls. I smiled as I passed—
That’s me, the noble volunteer, going to visit that poor homeless girl who’s been so sick over the holidays
.

Nothing else really existed for me in that lost week between Christmas and New Year’s. I got up in the morning, ran a few miles, and poked around at my desk until it was time for me to visit Sam. Then I’d visit, come home, and write about it in my notebook until my hand wanted to fall off—the things we’d talked about, bits of dialogue, the way her face looked in varying lights. Then I’d start making dinner, and Bill would be home around eight. Over dinner, I would talk about Sam. When we turned on the TV, she was all I saw.

Still, I was trying for moderation. I set time limits on my visits, even if I broke them most days, and I didn’t call between visits, as tempting as it was. I was preoccupied with her, but I knew I couldn’t let Sam take over my life.

Sam, Sam, Sam. Her grateful eyes as I entered her room. Today she was feeling okay, the wound was starting to close at the ends, her appetite was back. They were stepping down her painkillers some more, which made her a little flinchy, but aside from exhaustion and nausea and body aches and a hot throbbing in her hand, she was doing all right. I was getting the brave face again today, tinged with sadness. I sat right down in my chair and we got to work.

What was on her mind? Something that girl Dime at the shelter had said. The reason Sam was going to punch her that day she punched the wall instead, the reason she snapped her wrist in the first place.
What’s the matter, you miss your daddy’s dick?

“Oh, wow,” I said. “Them’s fighting words.”

“Why would Dime say something like that?” Sam asked. Maybe she had her own issues, I suggested. Sam gnawed her bottom lip, looking at the far wall again. “Maybe,” she said. “But…”

It was like she was trying to tell me something, or ask something. I thought I’d read enough survivors’ lit to guess what it was.

“Listen,” I told her, “sometimes when people are molested or raped, their bodies decide to do what they can to protect them from the trauma. Physiologically, you know what I mean? Their bodies go along with it, and react as though it’s not so bad. It doesn’t mean the person liked it or wanted it, it just means their body decided to try and make it better for them any way it could. It’s a survival mechanism.”

She nodded, eyes on the far wall, still gnawing her lip.

“It’s science,” I said. “I’m not blowing smoke. It’s a recorded phenomenon. You can look it up.”

She nodded again, unconvinced, but dropped it and moved on to subject two. The illness had screwed up her spot in rehab. Jodi broke the news to her last night—the yearlong treatment place upstate wasn’t going to be able take her, with her kidneys in the shape they were in, not to mention her chronic asthma. She was too much of a medical risk; they were a rural facility with no contingency for serious ongoing illness. So once she was released from the hospital, she would go back to the shelter for an indefinite period, until they could find another program.

“Oh, wow,” I said again. My chest felt heavy, like I’d swallowed a rock. I tried not to show the extent of my dismay. Sam had to get to rehab, soon, and it had to be at least a year—the amount of intensive therapy she was going to need was staggering. It was what we’d been planning on, all we’d been talking about: how she’d get to rehab with everyone’s support, how she’d find more people there like Janice and Jodi who’d care for her, how I’d write letters and visit on visiting days, how much better off she’d be in just twelve months. If she didn’t get into a decent program, quickly, she might decide to give up; she could wander away and get lost again. “But they’ll find you another program, I’m sure.”

She wasn’t so sure. What if her health continued to suffer? What if she needed dialysis sooner rather than later? All these health problems were her own fault; one of the night nurses had indicated as much. Why bother to patch her up, when she was bound to relapse and ruin whatever they’d managed to do for her? And if she ever needed a transplant, she knew she’d die—nobody was going to give a kidney to a junkie. She was still gnawing her lip, staring at the dreaded far wall of doom.

“Hey,” I said sharply, to get her attention. “You’re in good hands. They’re going to find the right place for you.”

They’d better,
I thought.
I can’t take much more of this.

Our conversation wandered all over the map that day. She was worried about her younger sister, Eileen, who’d almost died after a suicide attempt and was now living in a group home somewhere in Colorado. Sam didn’t know how to contact her, and wouldn’t be allowed to even if she did. Then she was talking about her brother, older by one year—he’d left home around thirteen, cleaned up at seventeen, and joined the navy. They were so close as kids, ran the streets together for a few years; now that he was sober, with a new life, he wanted nothing to do with her.

One thing at a time, I told her. Take care of your health, and deal with your trauma, and then, if you want, you can find your family.

Her face softened as I talked, telling her the success stories I knew, friends who’d overcome abuse and addiction. “And now she’s an actress, and she writes screenplays, and she has a day job that pays well; she has a boyfriend and an apartment and two cats.” Telling her how I quit cocaine at the age of seventeen by going on a monthlong marijuana binge, smoking about eighteen joints per day while waiting for the cocaine urge to subside.

This really piqued her interest—she knew I’d had a dalliance with drug addiction, but we hadn’t discussed it at length. “So you’ve been sober since then?” she asked.

I fingered the callus on the side of my right thumb, the one I had from flicking the wheel of my lighter, lighting and relighting joints. “Well, not
entirely
sober,” I admitted, then immediately kicked myself. I shouldn’t have said that; I was setting a bad example, still acting like a juvenile delinquent at the age of thirty-five. “I still smoke pot. Too much, actually. But I barely drink, and I never do any hard drugs anymore—I haven’t in years and years.”

It looked like she was going to ask me something else, but she was distracted by the door opening.
Probably the doctor,
I thought, turning in my chair. Good, I wanted to talk to him. Instead it was Ashley, Sam’s caseworker from the shelter, the big white girl from Texas.

“Surprise!” Ashley’s face was tan and her nose freckled, like she’d just come back from a vacation in the sun. She waved at Sam and then pointed at me, her broad smile showing a dimple on one side. “And look who else is here! You’ve got so many visitors!”

“Hey, Ashley!” Sam’s face perked right up. “I can’t believe you came!”

Ashley put her hands on her hips and bugged her eyes out at Sam. “Of course! Soon as I got back from vacation! And I was thinking about you when we were down there; we had the most fun, I was wishing you could see it.”

I deferred to Ashley, scooting out of the visitor’s chair and seating myself on the wide ledge of the windowsill. She unwrapped her outer layers and sat down in the chair, still jabbering about her vacation. Apparently, she and her family had gone to Disney World, and they took the Disney cruise, too. “Which is great, because you get to hang out with Mickey and the rest of the characters…”

Sam was rapt, nodding and smiling. I hadn’t been aware that she liked Ashley so much. There had never been any extracurricular mention of Ashley, no key chain made for her. Most of the girls at the shelter thought Ashley was okay but no great shakes—kind of bossy, kind of dorky, kind of into the Lord. Now Sam was beaming at her, laughing. “That sounds so fun, oh my god.”

And I was smiling along, but I was thinking,
Maybe ix-nay on the isney-Day thing, Ashley. Maybe don’t come all busting in here, talking about your fancy vacation to the Happiest Place on Earth with your big old intact family, to this girl who thinks it’s a treat to lie in a hospital with every antibiotic known to science shooting into her elbow. How about that.
But Sam seemed interested enough, nodding as Ashley described the rides, the parades, and the fireworks.

I could picture Sam in the Magic Kingdom, where my dad had taken me when I was a kid, and where my mom and I took Jake when he was young. Who would appreciate it more than Sam? I could see her staring in wonder at the spectacle of it all, the richness of every detail; I pictured her running her hand, amazed, over the fake rocks of the fake mountains, gaping at the colored lights playing over the castle at night. We’d trade her grungy ball cap for a pair of mouse ears; she’d get off Space Mountain for the fifteenth time and run right around to the entrance for the sixteenth. Ice cream in one hand, fudge in the other. The works.