Alice & Dorothy (3 page)

“
We need some help here!
” The old man yelled. He was standing in the yawning doorway on the hospital emergency room, faded John Deere hat in hand. He was using it to wave at the front desk nurses. In the sanitized emergency room waiting area, rheumatic, sad eyes looked up at the noise. Nobody moved. A few of those waiting for treatment looked over at the admissions desk.

“Sir?” one of the nurses said.

A fat Cuban in a white security shirt approached the man. He did his best to look like an authority figure, though he refused to make eye contact for more than a moment or two at a time. “Sir?” he said in a heavy accent, more street than island. “What’s the problem?”

“Sick girl,” the old man waved the guard through. “Some guy just dumped her and took off. She’s totally out of it, man.”

The mechanical entrance doors hummed to life and swung open with a puff of air. Jason appeared, He pushing Alice in her wheelchair. Her blond hair hung limp and sticky in her face, clothes mired with grey vomit. She was unconscious. The security guard pushed her head back so he could see her face. Her eyes fluttered. Mouth agape, her sewage stench breath exhaling shallow puffs of air. A duty nurse had come around the counter, through the sealed emergency room doors and past the twenty or so onlookers.

“
Overdose
,” the guard said, earning a dirty look from the nurse.

She was a small, birdlike woman, a wisp of brown hair hanging down one side of her face. She had a light in one hand and a stethoscope around her neck. “Thank you Carlos.” There was an edge of sarcasm in her voice, someone used to talking down to the men in her life. She pushed Alice’s head back and then thumbed one eye open, shining the light in it. No response from Alice.

“Hey,” Carlos said, turning to the old man and his son. “You don’t know her at all?”

“Some asshole ditched her with us,” Jason said. “Little wiry guy in one of those plastic coats. Said his girlfriend was really sick, and needed help getting her into a wheelchair.”

“A plastic coat?” Carlos said. “Like,
uhh
, a rain jacket?”

“Wind breaker,” the old man said. “One of those ones that fold down into a little square. You know, with a belt? Black. My boys had em when they were kids.”

“Ahh yeah,” Carlos said. “Anything else?”

“Ok sweetie I’m going to take you to the back,” the duty nurse said, speaking loud enough for Alice and the rest of the people watching to hear. Being a big shot. “Katie can you open the door for me?”

There was movement behind the check in desk, and the twin frosted glass doors on the other end of the room opened to a maze of hallways and multi coloured strips of paint.

“Oh,” Carlos said, biting the tip of his pen. He pulled a small notepad from his shirt pocket and was scratching a few notes down. “Uhh, I’m sure they will call you.”

“
Yeah.
That’s what I thought.” There was a disgusted finality to his voice that marked the end of their conversation.

Jason looked up at the clock. It was just after 2am.

Alice was rushed down a long hallway following a single green strip. At a T-intersection, the single strip turned into a double strip, and the nurse continued to walk as quickly as her legs and comfortable shoes would allow. Eventually they came to an open area lined with beds separated by curtains. There were a few people back here, doctors quietly puttering around files and light tables, nurses walking back and forth, talking quietly among themselves. Some of the curtained beds were occupied. A woman was crying in one; in another a young man was whispering earnestly about getting out of his fucking bed and catching a score for the morning.

The nurse jotted down a few notes on her clip board. Looked up and smiled when the attending doctor came over to see. Dr Bale, tall and lanky, designer black framed glasses. Name brand expensive, for a name brand lifestyle.

“Know what it is?” the Dr Bale said, inspecting Alice’s face but not touching her.

“I don’t even know
who
she is,” the nurse said. “I don’t know if she has insurance or anything.”

“Just wandered in off the street? Or was she brought in?”

“Dropped at the front door,” the nurse said. “Apparently some guy got her into a wheelchair and then took off. She was brought in by the family of Deborah Angles, the abuse case in six.” She corrected herself. “
Presumed
abuse. Looks like she got punched in the face. Orbital fracture, nose cracked open.”

“Not on my list,” he said. He waved a hand to change the subject.

“Sorry doctor, I just see these fuckers come in spouting some shit about hitting her head on the staircase or walking into a wall, I mean,
come on
.” She raised her hands in mock surrender. “Like we don’t see that twenty times a day, always the same stories. Same shit.”

“
Still
not on my list,” Dr Bale said. He made eye contact with the nurse and held it for a moment, making sure she got the point.
Not Interested
.

“So what’s her deal?” He said.

“I checked pupil response, blood pressure’s low, respiration laboured. She’s almost in a coma. Looks like opiates. Heroin, probably. She has pinpoint pupils.”

“Negative,” Dr Bale said. “I want you to start an IV drip immediately. I want you to dig me up a narcotic antagonizer. Naloxone, if we have it. Let me know when you’re done.”

“But doctor,” the nurse said. Her eyes shifted back and forth. “We don’t know what kind of insurance she has. We don’t know anything about her.”

“Interesting that you are more interested in her money than her health,” Dr Bale said. He scowled. “Just do it. If anyone says anything,
which they won’t
, ask them to come see me.”

“Yes doctor,” the nurse said.

“Cheer up,” Dr Bale said. “You’re probably going to give a girl her life back tonight.” He snapped pen onto his clipboard and turned on a heel, not bothering to wait for a response.

“Yeah, If I don’t get fired for it,
Dr Fuckhead
.” She pointed the wheelchair toward an empty bed. “Come on sweetie,” she said into Alice’s ear. “Let’s get you tucked away. You’re about to have a hell of a trip.”

The nurse called an orderly to help get Alice into bed. Then she secured the girl down with arm and leg straps and added another across her hips. She winched a strap across her chest. There were arm bars located on the sides of the bed, the nurse pushed Alice’s right arm straight out from her body. She ran a thick I.V. drip into Alice’s hand, the flesh puckering around the needle and immediately soaking up the bag of saline. Finally she ran a hose from the respirator in the wall to her mouth and nostrils. She secured them with medical tape; little X’s on both sides of her mouth and one across her nose. A little piece over each eye would keep them shut.

She measured Alice’s heart rate and temperature, then double checked by feeling the thrum of her heart on the inside of the girl’s wrist. More scribbles on the girl’s chart. At the top of it, she wrote “Jane Doe: Pending”. More paperwork for the stack. Medicine these days was eighty per cent paper and twenty per cent drugs. Ahh, the miracles of modern living. She checked her watch.

At the bottom of the sheet she wrote
Naloxone 20cc requested by Dr Bale
2:30am.

She’d have to make sure the good doctor signed off on the request. That way, when they asked who was going to do the paperwork she could step out of the way. With any luck, nobody would even talk to her about it.

Nalaxone was a drug designed specifically for junkies addicted to opiates – usually heroin, but just as often morphine or codeine addictions caused when people had to take pain medication for an extended time. When the Nalaxone entered the bloodstream it reacted with opiates in the blood and in the brain. It was a sticky cell; it collected the opiates in clumps and then flushed them from a patient’s blood through their kidneys and out through the uterine system. The whole process took about four hours, was very expensive, and included follow up treatment for three weeks of taking Nalaxone tablets. It was a sort of miracle among heroin users; it allowed rapid detoxification without the weeks of agony associated with opiate abuse. This girl would have flu-like symptoms for about a week, and, as long as she kept taking the pills, opiates would have no effect on her. Hopefully in that time, she could get her shit together.

Myra headed to the pharmacy, found a small row of Nalaxone bottles among the dozens of other bottles, grabbed a 50cc syringe, and signed for it. Then she went back to where Alice was laying on the table, attached a heart monitor from the wall to Alice’s finger, and filled the syringe from the bottle. She pushed the plunger forward to get the bubbles out of the needle.

“Good luck sweetie,” she said, pushing the syringe into an entry point on the I.V. needle in Alice’s arm. “We’ll see you on the other side.”

Alice stood outside of a large vanilla coloured house. The sun was warm on her skin, the grass a vivid emerald green. Cotton candy clouds sped across an aquamarine sky at an unnatural pace, sending shadows speeding across the landscape.

She had some sense of movement about her, a growing feeling. She had mushrooms in her mouth; the taste coated her teeth. The house was the general shape of a large rabbit; it had twin chimneys sprouting from a thatch roof in the shape of rabbit ears, while thatch rested between them like a tuft of brown hair.
The House of the March Hare
, she thought. She knew the place, but she had no idea from where.

There was a table set under a tree in front of the house. Sitting at the table, The March Hare himself was having tea with The Mad Hater. Between them was a large Dormouse, slouched over on the table asleep. The other two paid little attention to the sleeping rodent; indeed they used him as a pillow to rest their elbows and were busy talking over top of the creature.

“There’s plenty of room here,” said Alice. She waved at the table. “You guys are using three seats out of,
like
, twenty.”

“No room,
whore,
” The Dormouse said, yawning and snapping his teeth. They were jagged shards of bloody bone. He tucked a hand under his chin and resumed his light snoring.

“Plenty of room,” Alice said again. She yanked a chair out and sat at the far end of the table. The Hater and March Hare watched her intently. Finally the Hare stopped scowling and smiled.

“Have some wine,” he said amicably.

Alice looked across the spread. High class silver, fine china cups and saucers, teapots with little ceramic paintings of flowers and grapevines. There were at least a dozen. Little painted bowls filled with milk and sugar. Clotted cream and jam. Vanilla.

“I don’t see any wine,” said Alice. “Just a lot of teapots.”

“There isn’t any wine,” The March Hare said. He looked at Alice as though she was the dumbest bitch he’d ever seen. “It’s all teapots, stupid girl.”

“Why did you offer me some then?” said Alice. She crossed her arms. “Pretty shitty to offer me something that isn’t even here.”

“It was pretty shitty of you to sit at our table without being invited,” The March Hare said.