Have You Found Her (10 page)

Ashley stayed for only a half hour or so—she had laundry and unpacking to do—but on her way out she pressed upon Sam the copy of
Cosmopolitan
she’d bought for the plane ride home—“Just something for you to flip through,” she said. Not exactly a present, so she wasn’t breaking any shelter rules. I wondered if Ashley was visiting “off the record” or not—she probably was, I guessed, whereas Jodi had come on business.

“Good to see you, Janice. Maybe I’ll see you up there tomorrow? And Sam, you better get better soon, okay? We all miss you a lot!”

“Okay,” said Sam. “Thanks, Ashley.” Her little-girl voice again—funny how it would come out at times. So disarming, you just wanted to reach out and muss up her hair, which was always already mussed. Ashley beamed at her with maternal pride as she left. She was the
caseworker
.

The door swung shut behind her. Sam turned her head to me and gave me a bemused look. “
Cosmopolitan
?” she asked, emphasizing every syllable. “Do I look like I read
Cosmopolitan
?”

I laughed, louder than I should have. She still liked me better than Ashley, thank god. “Don’t you want the latest eyeliner tips for more orgasms?”

She held my eye, exaggerating the drollery. “Do I
look
like I wear
eyeliner
?” She made a tossing gesture with the magazine, and I laughed again. Maybe Ashley could help Sam find a new rehab program, but I knew what reading material to bring.

I had to leave soon, according to my internal schedule, but I wound up staying almost forty-five minutes more, talking about Ellenette and her welfare checks, about Sam applying to college when she was out of rehab. Now that her mood had lifted, she wanted to tell knock knock jokes, dead-baby jokes, guy-walks-into-a-bar jokes. Every time she saw my hand go into my pocket for my phone, she started a new topic of conversation—“Oh, hey, I really liked that one book you gave me, the one about the girl who lived in Grand Central station. You know she wrote it with the social worker who helped her get sober?”

Finally, I had to tear myself away—I was hungry, and Bill was on his way home, and I’d been there for two hours of up-and-down intensity. Between the sexual abuse and the near-dead sister and the rehab delay, I was emotionally spent. “Listen, I really do have to go,” I told her. “But you know I’ll come by again tomorrow, right?”

Her lower lip poked out for a second, but she reined it in quickly. “I know. And you know you don’t have to come! If you’re busy after work, or whatever.”

I stood up, folding my arms in mock exasperation. “Samantha Dunleavy. What do I have to do to convince you that I want to be here?”

She squirmed a little, dug her chin into her chest, trying to suppress a smile. “I know, I’m just saying—”

“I told you, I’m going to be in your life from now on. That’s a threat,
and
a promise. You’re not getting rid of me.”

“All right.” She gave in and smiled.

I stood there at the end of her bed and decided. I came around the side and half hugged her across the chest with one arm, my cheek resting on the top of her head. She reached up with her gauzed paw and hugged back.

“I’m here,” I said.

I love you,
I thought.

“Thanks,” she said, as a tear hit my shoulder. “Janice, thanks.”

Chapter Four

Gone

         
T
he streets were empty on New Year’s Day, strewn with muddy confetti and slush as I trudged to the hospital to see Sam. I was still hungover from the bottle of champagne that Bill and I had split the night before, but I was looking forward to seeing Sam, as I always did, my heart quickening in the elevator like I was about to go onstage.
Okay.
Time to be that person again—the strong, steady adult, the one who said all the wise, profound things, the one I’d always imagined I could be.

I walked down the hallway to her room and stopped short in the doorway. The room was dark and the bed was empty, flat as a slab, neatly made with fresh white sheets. There were no books on the night table; her name tag was missing from outside the door. A ghost room, like she’d never been there at all.

She’s dead,
I panicked, then scolded myself.
She’s not dead, don’t even think that.
Why did I always have to jump to the worst conclusion first? It was like I enjoyed freaking myself out. I backed up and headed down the hall to the nurses’ station, breathing quickly, trying for an obsequious smile. “Excuse me,” I began, but the nurse with the phone to her ear did not acknowledge me. I spun around, spotted a doctor I recognized coming down the hall, and put myself directly in his path. “Excuse me, Doctor, I’m looking for Samantha Dunleavy—she was in that room over there….”

The doctor paused, annoyed at the interruption. “And who are you?”

“I’m…” I was stumped. I was nobody. I was no relation; I’d just met the girl six weeks earlier.
I’m the Bead Lady.
Nobody—just the person who’d been sitting in that visitor’s chair every day for the past week and a half, praying for her to survive. “I’m her friend.”

“Oh, right.” He gave me the barest recognition, started to move past. “She was discharged this morning.”

“Oh! Okay. Can you tell me if she was with anybody when…”

No, he couldn’t, because he was already halfway down the hall.

“Okay!” I said to nobody. The nurse on the phone regarded me oddly. I turned and headed toward the elevator.

I felt so weird and weightless, walking back home, like my arms were too light, like I’d forgotten my bag somewhere.
Discharged.
Okay. So she was better, she was fine, her health was all right. I was off duty now. I was dismissed. She was probably back at the shelter already, watching Jerry Springer on the TV in the lounge, playing cards for cigarettes, bitching at her roommate, St. Croix, because she never came to visit.

I could go up there
. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, ready to turn and walk toward the subway, then started toward home again, defeated. I couldn’t go up to the shelter just to see Sam, and I couldn’t pretend I was there for any other reason. Even if I did go up there, I wouldn’t be able to sit and talk with her for hours the way we’d been doing, not at the shelter. I’d have to wait until Wednesday, and see her around the bead table, with ninety other girls all hollering for me, “Miss, glue this? Hook this? Tie this? Miss, how you spell
lesbian
?”

My feet dragged all the way home, where I surprised the cats; they blinked at me like they hadn’t expected me for a while. Called Bill at work, told him the news.

“Discharged,” he mused. “Well, I guess that’s good news, right? She’s all better, and now you can take a breather.” He knew the everyday visits had been wearing on me; I’d just been complaining to him the night before.
It’s unbearable to witness that much pain
,
and the stories she’s told me…

“If she really is all better,” I fretted. “I mean, yesterday she still had an IV in her arm, and today she’s back on the street? This is how she got the infection in the first place. It’s our goddamned health-care system—they push you out the door before you’ve recuperated.”

“Honey, she’s fine,” I heard Bill say, but I rushed past it.

“And how do I know she even made it back to the shelter? She was sick, she could have collapsed somewhere! For Christ’s sake, she had a blood infection, she almost died, and now they’re giving her subway fare and sending her on her way?”

“You could call the shelter,” he suggested. “Make sure she got back okay.”

“I could, but they wouldn’t let me talk to her. The residents can’t receive phone calls; they can only get messages. And I can’t leave her a message with my phone number.
The rules
.”

I knew I should listen to Bill; I knew Sam was fine, and I was just panicking. And still, I started to cry. Told Bill that he was right and that I loved him, put down the phone, and started to cry. Why? Not for her. She was fine, she was better than she’d been in weeks. But I wasn’t fine. I’d been cut off, abruptly and without warning, from something I hadn’t even known I needed six weeks ago. The rush of her company, the high of holding her hand. Her addictive grin.

The next forty-eight hours were all thumb twiddling, waiting for Wednesday night. I tried to concentrate on work, on my friends, on whatever Bill was saying at any given moment, but I was too anxious. Precious time was slipping away! The urgency—it was like high school again, where a relationship could live or die depending on whether or not you skipped homeroom one day, where hanging out with someone for ten days in a row was practically a common-law marriage. Every day that I wasn’t with her, that intense bond we’d forged weakened; if I didn’t see her again soon, I’d be consigned to the past—
Oh yeah, remember Janice? Whatever happened to her?
—like a one-night stand at a sophomore kegger.

My heart started its pronounced thumping early on Wednesday, while I was still on the subway uptown; by the time I’d walked from the station to the shelter, I was working up a little sweat.
What if she’s not there? What if she was sent to rehab already? What if she doesn’t like me anymore?

The next two and a half hours were miserable, sitting in the cafeteria, craning my neck around like an attention-deficit giraffe, looking for a sign of Samantha, who did not appear. Sitting around the bead table with a new girl called Frenchie, an old-timer called Dagger, and a girl they called Klepto, who smelled like pee—still no Sam. Most of the girls who knew her before the hospital were gone; her erstwhile roommate, St. Croix, had been discharged for overstaying her deadline without getting a job. “Have you seen that white girl, Samantha?” I asked a few girls, to no avail.

The counselors’ office was locked; I knocked and got a no-nonsense “We’re in a meeting” through the door. So I couldn’t peek at the whiteboard; there’d be no clues about Sam’s whereabouts from Ashley. I waited an extra half hour before cleaning up, hoping Sam would materialize from somewhere, or the counselors’ meeting would end. Finally, my cell phone buzzing in my pocket with messages from Bill (“Hey, Shmoo, thought you’d be home by now; let me know if I should start dinner”), I loaded up my bead bag and prepared to go.

I was dawdling by the elevator when the door to the counselors’ office opened and Nadine walked out.

“Hi, Nadine!”

Nadine was pinching the bridge of her nose. She looked like she’d just been through a tour of Iraq. “Juh
neece,
” she acknowledged, on her way to her own office.

“Nadine, I was wondering…” She stopped and looked at me, almost incredulous. Now was obviously not a good time. “I know Samantha was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday; I was hoping to find out—”

“Samantha is not here right now.” Nadine started toward her office again, finished with me. I took the risk of following her, like I’d seen the girls do.

“Is she back in the hospital?” I asked, trotting up alongside her. “I mean, is she all right?”

Nadine didn’t turn to look at me. “She is in a hospital, yes.”

I
knew
it. I
knew
she wasn’t fine; I could
feel
it. It was just as I’d predicted: the doctors had discharged her too soon, and now she was lying in a septic coma, fighting for her life. “What happened? Is she back at St. Victor’s?”

We stopped at the door to Nadine’s office. She put her key in the lock, turned it, then straightened up and faced me. “She’s not at St. Victor’s. She’s in a hospital on Staten Island. And she’s not allowed any visitors. She’ll be out in a few days.”

“Oh. Okay.”
No visitors—Jesus!
What kind of near-death ward was that? And how did Nadine know when she’d be released? “I just…is there any way I could—”

Nadine exhaled hard. “Samantha is in a lockdown detox facility. She relapsed and used heroin the day after she left the hospital. She will probably be allowed to come back here once the detox program is through. I don’t know yet.”

She waited a second, then pushed the door open, like,
All right? Are we done here?
I stumbled backward a step or two, thrown by the news.

“Oh. Well, thanks, Nadine. Sorry to bother you. I’ll just—”

Nadine cut me off, final. “Listen, Juh
neece
. Don’t get too involved with Samantha. It’s not a good idea. She’s got too many problems for you to deal with. Okay?”

“I…” My throat froze. Twenty years melted away, and I was a resident again—chewed out for breaking the rules, still determined to keep breaking them. “I understand. Thanks, Nadine.”

“Okay.” She stepped into her office and closed the door. “Good night, Juh
neece
.”

I was numb when I got home. Then I was despondent. This could be the end of the friendship, I thought—if the shelter didn’t take her back after detox, or if they sent her straight to rehab before my next shift; if she decided she was tired of trying, and she walked away—that would be it. I’d never see her again. She’d have no way to contact me, even if she wanted to; she had no last name or address for me—I was just Janice the Bead Lady. She’d never know that I was still her supporter, her friend; that I was still thinking of her, waiting to see her, just like I said when I left her bedside on New Year’s Eve, saying
See you tomorrow
.

I couldn’t lose her the way I’d lost all my old favorites—not again, not this time. I had to find a way to get her a message in detox.
Hang in there; don’t give up, I’m still on your side. Don’t run away.
But patients weren’t allowed any contact in detox, damn it. I’d just have to wait until she was discharged and pray that she made it back to the shelter.

I called Jodi the drug counselor the next morning.

“Bead Lady,” she hailed, flipping papers in the background. “What’s up.”

I got right to the point. “I hear our friend Samantha’s in a lockdown detox.”

“Huh,” she said, like she was considering it. The flipping stopped, and there was a pause. “Well, whoever told you told you right. She’s gonna be on Staten Island through tomorrow, and then I’m fighting to get her readmitted here.” She sighed a little. “Then I gotta find a rehab that’s willing to take her, with all her health issues.”

Thank god for Jodi, for her calm, reassuring voice. As bad as all this was, at least Jodi was on the case. She sounded harried but by no means overwhelmed; this was her job, this was what she did best. Jodi would fight for Sam; she’d find her a rehab. I realized I’d been holding my breath, and I let it go,
phew
. “What happened?”

Her voice dropped, confidential. “Well,
I
think they didn’t step her down off the pain meds slow enough, or they discharged her too soon, while she was still in pain. Either way, I think both the pain and the withdrawal got to her. She copped on the way back from the hospital.”

“Wow.” I laughed, though it wasn’t funny. “That didn’t take long.”

“She’s an overachiever,” said Jodi. “She works fast.”

I could see why Samantha liked Jodi so much—her deadpan delivery, her slow, unruffled way of speaking—she exuded an air of resigned humor, like she was expecting the worst, so she was almost amused when it happened. I wished I’d had a counselor like her when I was a kid; someone who’d have understood me and fought for me. An adult I could trust to help me, even when I’d made a mistake.

“So,” I ventured, “the thing is, you know, I was spending a lot of time with Sam over the holidays….”

“Oh, I know,” she said wryly. Then her voice warmed. “You were very dedicated. It meant a lot to her.”

I closed my eyes, pressed my lips together, heart surging.
I meant something to her.
“Well, I won’t be around when she gets out of detox, and in case I don’t get to see her before she goes to rehab, I just wanted to send her a note, or a card or something, like a message of support.”

Jodi was considering again; there was a pause and then an exhale. “Well, I guess I could pass along a card. Like a get-well card, right?”

“That’s it,” I agreed. Nothing rule-bending, not a gift, just a
get out of detox soon!
card. “And I’ll leave the envelope unsealed, so…” So Jodi could see that I wasn’t a child molester.

“All right.” She seemed to like this caveat. “So drop it off anytime, and I’ll make sure she gets it when she gets back.”

I hung up the phone, relieved, and got back to work, humming to myself. On my lunch break, I went out card shopping.
Dear Sam,
I wrote inside the card.
I’m sorry things have been so shitty for you, but I want you to know that I’m still on your side, and I can’t wait to see you soon. Keep fighting the good fight!