Have You Found Her

by Janice Erlbaum

  “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. “Juhneece,” 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, Juhneece. 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, Juhneece.”

  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!

  I ran up to the shelter after work, slid the unsealed card under the closed door of Jodi’s office, then turned right around and left before I could run into any of the other girls. I didn’t have the wherewithal to hang out and mentor anybody today.

  I got the message the next afternoon: “Hey, Janice, it’s Jodi. Sam’s back here at the shelter, she got your card, it made her very happy. She says she’s gonna really try to stay sober this time, and make it to rehab as soon as she can, so we’re working on that. So everything’s good, and we’ll see you on Wednesday.”

  Great. I could picture Sam sitting in Jodi’s office, her wide brown eyes scanning the card I’d sent, her lopsided half-smile as she tucked it carefully into the pocket of her cargo pants. No doubt Jodi would put her on restriction until she got to rehab; she’d spend the next few days in the lounge, writing to herself in her thin, scratchy hand, tearing through the slim collection of battered paperbacks scattered on the bookshelves. I’d come into the lounge on Wednesday before dinner, and her face would brighten like a bulb; I’d ignore the rules and give her a hug.

  If I could last the five days until Wednesday. “I don’t know,” I told Bill that night over dinner. “Maybe I’ll drop by there tomorrow while you’re at work, bring some more donations. I got some more books to give away, and there’s some stuff in the closet I’m not wearing….”

  “Uh-huh,” said Bill, his eyebrows only slightly raised. He’d been watching me fret and fume all week, since Sam’s surprise discharge from the hospital; he knew this trip was about more than donations. I could see the concern on his face, the tension in the corners of his eyes—Don’t get burned out, he wanted to say; don’t overdo it, okay?—but he refrained from saying anything besides “I’ll check my closet; I think I have some pants that shrunk in the wash.”

  So I walked into the lounge that Saturday with my prop bag full of donations and my eager heart pumping hard against my chest. A roughneck named Melissa (“Call me Mel”) hollered at me.

  “Bead Lady! What’s poppin’?” She stuck out her fist for me to pound, and I hit it lightly with mine. “What you got in the bag, beads?”

  Mel would have been my new favorite these days, if I’d had time for new favorites. Funny, manic, and thoroughly sincere, she’d run away from her parents in North Carolina at the age of fifteen to go live with her girlfriend, who was moving to Florida. The girlfriend’s parents quickly threw her out, so she lived on the beach for a while. Since then, she’d bounced around to various people’s houses, institutions, beaches, and parks, through various states, with various girlfriends; now, at eighteen, she was trying to get a job and a place to live.

  I put the bag on the table. “Not beads today, just some clothes and books and whatnot.” The other girls in the lounge immediately clustered around, chattering—Ooh, clothes. “How’s things been with you?”

  Mel lifted one scrawny shoulder. “A’ight. Boring. I got an interview at Key Food tomorrow.”

  I smiled absently. “That’s excellent. I hope it works out. Hey, do you know that girl Sam, tall white girl, she was in the hospital….”

  “Oh, yeah.” She nodded. “She’s not around. Actually, I think she mighta left this morning—her roommate was giving away her shampoo and stuff.”

  “Oh. Huh.”

  My stomach flipped over. No way. She couldn’t have left the shelter, not since her return; she just couldn’t have.

  “Be right back,” I said.

  I headed toward the counselors’ office as the girls started claiming their seats at the table in the lounge. Knocked, entered, noted the counselors on the phones, engaged in conferences. No Ashley. I looked at the whiteboard. No Samantha Dunleavy.

  Oh, no. No, no, no.

  I stumbled back into the lounge. A six-foot-two stunner named Ynnhoj (pronounced “ee-nazh” also the name Johnny spelled backward), with broad shoulders and a prominent Adam’s apple, was holding up a pair of Bill’s old pinstripe pants—“Oh, I could make a fierce pair of shorts out of these.”

  Mel shuffled up to me, wearing her eager smile. “Bead Lady, you hangin’ out?”

  Any other day I’d say, “Yeah, I’m hangin’ out, where’s the party at?” and I’d sit right down with Mel and Ynnhoj to shoot the shit, to dissect the days-old newspaper someone had left behind, the faces on the front page already vandalized beyond recognition. “No, I gotta go see a friend. I’ll be back Wednesday with the beads, though.”

  She scowled and waved one arm at me—Forget you, then. “I’ma have a job by Wednesday!”

  I smiled at her as best I could. “I’ll miss you, then.”

  “A’ight,” she said, arm dropping to her side, disappointed.

  I started crying on the subway home. And there’s nothing like crying on the subway, shielding your eyes with your hand and folding into yourself, trying to stifle the sobs so they look like coughs—you’re never supposed to show weakness on the subway. I pulled it together well enough, but by the time I’d emerged at Union Square, I was in the onset of a full-blown panic attack, reduced to muttering to myself as I race-walked, spastic, It’s okay, it’s all right, everything’s okay, I’m okay. Looking over at the redhead’s corner by the Gap Body store, empty for the winter. Where could she be? Where did they all go when they disappeared—winter homes? Other cities? Detox wards? Early graves?

  I got home and e-mailed Bill at work. Sam’s gone. I don’t know where. This fucking SUCKS. Then I called Jodi—no answer, of course, since it was the weekend. I left her a message. “Hey, it’s Janice. I saw that Sam’s not there at the shelter anymore; can you tell me what happened? Thanks.”

  I drummed my fingers on the desk. Nadine might be in her office, but I couldn’t call her; she’d told me to back off from Sam. Nadine probably didn’t know where Sam was anyway—she’d been discharged. Sam’s name wasn’t on her whiteboard; Sam was not her problem anymore.

  Think. I could call the shelter and pretend to be someone else looking for her. A police officer! At least they’d tell me the last time they saw her. But probably better not to impersonate the police. I could call all the hospitals and morgues—isn’t that what people did when their loved ones were missing? Or maybe I could call the cops. Hi there, I’m missing a homeless girl—well, she was last seen at a hospital, then a detox, then a shelter. She’s about six feet tall, and she has a tattoo that says PSALMS 22 on her left arm. Her right hand has a three-inch scar, one of her Achilles tendons was slashed, and her kidneys are about to fall out. Can you help me?

  Nobody could help me that night—not Bill, not my friends, not the joint and a half I smoked, hoping to q
uell the terrible panic. I’d lost her; Sam was gone. Bill tried his best to talk sense to me—“Jodi will call you back on Monday,” he said. “You’ll find out something. She probably got sent to rehab, and they forgot to let you know. If she’s back in the hospital, you’ll find her, and she’ll be okay. Get some sleep. Jodi will call you back.”

  Eventually, and against my will, I got some sleep. She’ll be okay, I repeated to myself. Jodi will call me back.

  I got up on Monday, ran a few miles, and got to work, checking my cell phone every ten minutes. Ten o’clock…ten-thirty, and still no call. Maybe Jodi was coming in to work late today. Maybe she wasn’t coming in at all. Eleven A.M., I called again. No answer. I didn’t leave a message. She’d get the first one. I called again at noon, at one—still no answer. At two, I left another message. “Hi there, Janice again, I’m sure you’re busy and I hate to bother you….” Nothing. Three-thirty, my cell phone rang, and I jumped out of my skin like a skeleton to get it, but it was just Bill: “Heard anything? Well, hang in there.”

  By 6 P.M., I was crying, smoking, and trying to hug the cats, who wanted none of it. I decided to try the counselors’ office; maybe Ashley would be there. Maybe she’d take pity on me and break confidentiality and tell me where Sam had gone. A counselor named Tamara answered the phone.

  “Hey, Tamara, it’s Janice! Bead Lady! How are you?”

  “Good,” she said, businesslike. I could hear a knot of girls arguing in front of her desk. “What’s up?”

  “Well…” I faltered. I didn’t want to ask for Ashley—Hi there, Tamara, could I talk to the white counselor, please? And I couldn’t just ask Tamara about Sam; she wasn’t allowed to give out information about residents, even discharged ones. I’d have to try the back way, the way the girls always went when they wanted someone to tell them something. Yo, I heard about what happened with that girl, yo….