Have You Found Her

by Janice Erlbaum

  “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.

  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

  The 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.”