Have You Found Her

by Janice Erlbaum

  For a while—that was the catch. I nodded, stared straight down at the water, as she was staring. Tried to see her peripherally, to look without looking.

  “And what’d your…other doctor say?”

  Her mouth twisted again, suppressing something that wasn’t a smile. “She says…I’m doing all right.”

  Sam had been resisting this all week, since she left the halfway house; she wouldn’t talk about her AIDS. I’d hounded her about it, as gently as I could—“When are you seeing the doctors again? Do they want to retest your T cells? Do they think the antivirals are working?”—but she was evasive, gave the minimum amount of information, changed the subject—“I don’t really want to think about it too much. I just want to keep taking my meds, and focus on, like, life and stuff. I start training for that street canvassing next week. And I applied at this place that’s like a dog-walking service. They said I could probably start real soon.”

  I didn’t want to push her now, but I had to know. “Any more news about the numbers?”

  I sneaked a look at her, caught a little wince as it passed over her face, watched her slump forward a few degrees. “They haven’t really improved.”

  “But they haven’t gotten worse,” I noted, optimistic. “Stable is okay. Maybe once the antivirals start working…”

  She slumped a few degrees more. “They actually got a little bit worse,” she confessed.

  I slumped too. “Huh. Well…”

  The river raced underneath us; it was giving me vertigo. I wiggled backward on the log, steadied myself.

  “So listen,” I said, clearing my throat, “since we’re talking about all this doctor stuff…”

  I could feel her stealing a sidelong look at me, her elbows resting on her thighs, her head drooping. “Uh-huh.”

  “I think it would be a good idea if you had someone to help you deal with all of this, you know?”

  She frowned at her lap. “You mean, like a shrink? ’Cause I don’t wanna see a shrink, I’m seeing enough doctors, and the shrinks didn’t do shit for me when I was in the psych ward. And I mean, I got you, and Maria, and I called Jodi the other day, we’re gonna get together soon, I think—”

  “Not like a shrink,” I interrupted. “Like a guardian. A legal guardian.”

  I sneaked another look at her. Her arms were wrapped around her knees, and she gripped her own wrists tight. “Like…how do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’m saying that you need somebody to look out for you right now. And I know, you’ve been taking care of yourself since you were twelve, and you’ve gotten this far, and you know nobody’s more impressed by that than me. I’m not saying you can’t take care of yourself, I’m just saying that you don’t have to anymore—you have me, and you also have Maria and Jodi, and I know all of us want to make sure that you’re getting all the right treatment, all the right assistance, all the right everything. You know?”

  She nodded into her knees, the lower half of her face obscured. “I know.”

  “So, what I’m saying is…I mean, we’ve known each other for close to a year now…” I stumbled on my words—why was this so hard? I’d just proposed to Bill last month; you’d have thought I’d be used to proposals by now. “I’m saying, why don’t I become your legal guardian?”

  She was quiet. Which I couldn’t stand—she was supposed to say yes right away!—so I kept talking. “That way, if something were to ever happen to you, god forbid, I’d be there to help you deal with it. If you went back into the hospital again, or had any kind of emergency—like the room deposit—whatever you need. And, you know, even when you’re feeling well, it’s nice to have a guardian, right?”

  She laughed, and her face came out of her lap, turned toward me, her eyes so clear and open. “Yeah, it is. I mean, knowing that I have you in my life, and Maria and Jodi, it makes such a big difference to me.”

  “It makes a big difference to us, too.” I looked at her lovingly, wishing she were short enough and young enough to permit me to stroke her hair when she wasn’t lying in a hospital bed. “And listen, if you’d rather elect Maria to be your guardian, as long as there’s someone who can act on your behalf when you need them to, I totally understand.”

  I totally understand, I told myself. Maria’s single, I have Bill at home; Sam might want someone who’s all her own. And Maria was just as devoted to Sam as I was, if not more. Sam was certainly devoted to her—she’d once let it slip that Maria was the one she thought of like a mom, and I was like a cool older sister. But I’m older! I wanted to protest. And besides, I met you first. You have to pick me. Pick me!

  Sam stared straight ahead downriver, her chin on her knees. She didn’t say anything, and neither did I. It was a beautiful place to sit, hearing the soft shush of the water underneath us, watching the silver ropes of the stream over the rocks.

  “You would really want to be my guardian?” she asked. Her voice was soft and incredulous, as sweetly disbelieving as a kid’s on Christmas morning. Is this for me?

  “Well,” I told her, bumping her with my shoulder. “What the hell, I’m stuck with you anyway. I might as well horn in on your family fortune.”

  She bumped me back, openly smiling. “Right? Ha ha.”

  Then she leaned back, and we sat, side by side, quiet for a moment. She was doing the math in her head; I watched her add it up. I was only a year younger than her real mom, the junkie who sold her for drugs. Mom. My heart got louder in my chest. I wasn’t ready to be anybody’s mom; I’d never planned to be. Bill and I had agreed long ago, we never wanted to have kids. But then, I’d never planned on meeting Sam.

  She balanced her chin on her knee, affecting an underbite. She looks good, I thought. She was thin, but the circles under her eyes weren’t too bad, and her skin was tawny from the sun. She looked peaceful, and determined, like she was looking forward to the rest of her life.

  “Can I think about it?” she asked.

  “It’s a standing offer,” I said.

  “Cool.”

  Cool. Okay. She needed to think about it. I was a little disappointed, but I shouldn’t have been surprised; I should have known the idea of family, of legal, of guardian, would be hard for her to swallow. She couldn’t hear those words without feeling the sting of the belt. And she knew why I was asking her now, when I’d never asked before; she knew I was thinking ahead to the time when she couldn’t manage alone. I didn’t want to face the fact that the day was coming; why should she?

  I’d give her some time to think about it. She didn’t have to decide that very minute—in a way, she’d already decided. I was here, wasn’t I? Just like I told her I would be, all those months ago at St. Victor’s: I’m going to be in your life from now on.

  I spread my hands on either side of me, leaned back, and felt the breeze on my face. Sam sat silently next to me, on the thick log over the deep water, looking down at the Bronx River, running away.

  Late July, 2005. This is when Sam and I saw the redhead on my corner, when we were heading from my house to the bookstore at the north end of Union Square. This is when I took her to an open mike at a poetry club, but she decided she didn’t want to get up and read, so we just sat and listened. This is when I carted a bunch of Bill’s old housewares from his bachelor apartment in Queens up to Sam and Valentina’s place, and Sam used her new pots and pans to make us coconut curry shrimp. That’s when I met one of the other families sharing the apartment—a Mexican couple with two kids under the age of four. The couple didn’t look much older than Sam and Valentina.

  Sam and I saw each other every three days or so, and I heard from her daily. She’d started a few shifts a week as a street canvasser, stopping people on the sidewalk to raise donations for impoverished kids. “’Scuse me, sir? Do you have a minute to help starving children?” Ironic; in a way—she was still panhandling for food.

  She didn’t mention my offer to become her legal guardian, and neither did I. But something had been agreed upon between us, it seemed.
She was dutiful about checking in with me, and she was way more forthcoming with the information from her doctors; she even offered me the name of her pulmonologist, the one who’d sounded the alarm in the first place. “But I’m switching doctors next week, to someone at the hospital nearby,” she said. “It’s a pain, going all the way to Brooklyn all the time.”

  She still called with emergencies—she sprained her good wrist while skateboarding; thank god it didn’t need surgery. She was feeling hopeless and depressed—why did she decide to get sober at the exact moment when drugs would have come in so handy? She and Valentina drank a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream down by the banks of the river; it made her puke her guts out. I gave her a pass on it—one pass, because she was honest about it, and she said she hated the experience. “But if you do it again,” I warned, “you’re blowing the Disney World deal.”

  All in all, though, I had to admit that Sam and Valentina had managed to surpass everyone’s expectations—they’d found a place to live, and they were maintaining it. Valentina worked as a messenger during the day, then in the evenings she put on her blouse and pumps and brushed out her hair and went to business school. Sam, too, was working; aside from the Baileys, she was seven months sober. Almost three weeks into their experiment in independent living, it was looking like a success.

  And then, of course, another phone call came. Monday, August 1, noon. I was at my desk when my cell phone buzzed with a number I didn’t recognize. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Janice, it’s Maria.” Her tone was friendly, but I could tell this wasn’t a social call. “Just wanted to let you know, Samantha’s been admitted to Mid-Bronx Hospital. They think she has meningitis, but they’re not sure if it’s bacterial or viral yet. I saw her for dinner yesterday, and she wasn’t feeling so hot; I tried to get her to go to the emergency room last night, but she wanted to give it until the morning to see if she felt better. But apparently she fainted on the way to work, and she managed to get to the nearest hospital, and they admitted her right away.”

  “Oh, wow.” I was momentarily stunned, woozy. If it was bacterial meningitis, I knew, she could be dead within days. Bacterial meningitis can kill a healthy person who contracts it; without an immune system, she had no chance. Viral meningitis is less deadly, but for someone with AIDS, it’s still very bad news. “Do you know when they’ll know more?”

  Maria was trying to sound calm and rational, despite the facts; I recognized this from my own attempts at the same. “Tomorrow, I think. In the meantime, you can see her, but you’ll have to wear a mask and gloves and everything. It may not be the best idea to visit. And I don’t know if she can handle calls right now—I just spoke to her, and she said her head is killing her.”

  “Of course.” And yet she’d managed to call Maria, I noticed. What a stupid time for me to be jealous, when her life was at risk. I was in shock, that was my only excuse; I wasn’t thinking straight. “Thanks, Maria.”

  Bill came home that night to find me smoking and surfing, smoking and surfing, dripping ashes all over my keyboard, relentlessly clicking. “Sam’s in the hospital again,” I told him, distracted by a flashing banner on the New York State Department of Health AIDS services website. “Oh, and I heard from the deejay; he got the check from my dad and everything’s set.”

  Bill shook his head at me. “See, in my business, they call that ‘burying the lede.’ What happened this time?”

  “Meningitis.” I took another hit off the joint and starting coughing up a lung. “Not sure what kind yet,” I wheezed.

  “Oh, babe.” He sought refuge in the easy chair. “This is happening way too fast.”

  “I know.” Although, according to the Internet, this was how things went when you had advanced AIDS. You got infections, and sometimes you recovered from them, but they always left you weaker than when you started. And then you got another infection, and maybe you recovered from that one, too. But only 60 percent of your full health. And you kept getting sick, and never fully getting better, until finally you just died. That was how things went.

  I tortured myself all night—I should have been spending more time with her, knowing how short time could be; I shouldn’t have let her get this sick. I was supposed to be keeping an eye on her; instead, I’d been letting her run around working a part-time job, smiling at her stories about riding her skateboard and wading in the Bronx River. I should have warned her to take it easy. I should have been more conscious of her health. I should have talked to her pulmonologist. I shouldn’t have let her and Valentina live alone.

  I thought about those Disney reservations. She might not make it to December, I realized. She might not even make it the six weeks to the wedding.

  The next day, I rode the subway for an hour to the hospital in the Bronx, where they’d determined her meningitis was viral—good news. Or, goodish—none of it was really “good.” I came into her room just as she was waiting for a spinal tap.

  “Hey, babe.”

  Sam was in the fetal position on a flat bed, shivering, white as an eggshell, face contorted with pain. She couldn’t answer, could only open one eye in acknowledgment, but I knew she was grateful to see me. I dropped into the visitor’s chair, and she extended her hand, which I grasped and held. It was clammy and cold, like she’d been squeezing ice in her palm.

  “Thanks,” she croaked feebly.

  “Shhh,” I told her. “Save your strength.”

  The door to the room opened, and a nurse and a doctor entered, bearing a tray of hideous implements: a long, wicked, pointy metal pick, and a needle and syringe the length of my forearm. I was glad Sam’s eyes were closed. The doctor, a stout blond guy, smiled at me as he addressed Sam. “Okay, Sam, I’m glad your friend’s here, but we’re going to try the tap again. I know this isn’t fun, but we’ll make it as quick as we can.”

  “Should I go?” I asked, hopeful.

  He glanced at me, as the nurse applied a local anesthetic to Sam’s lower back. “Well, you can stay, if she wants you to.”

  Sam gave my hand a faint squeeze—Stay. “I’ll stay,” I decided, bracing myself.

  “Ow!” she chimed, as he dug in the needle, a sharp, bright note of pure pain, and her hand clamped onto mine. “Ow!”

  The doctor winced along with her. “I’m sorry, Sam, I know it’s uncomfortable. We’ll get it as fast as we can.”

  “Ow!” Her whole body spasmed and flailed, her bony hand jerking mine in its tight grip. I could feel the pain flowing through her body; I felt sick just witnessing it.

  “Try to stay still, if you can; I know it’s hard.”

  “Ow!” Jesus! Sweat and tears poured from her face; her mouth was open and distended in agony. What were they doing to her? It looked like torture, actual torture, like what evil governments do to political dissidents in back rooms. I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn’t close myself off from the sound, the grip on my hand, the waves of pain coming off of her. “Ow!”

  Both the doctor and the nurse looked miserable, brows furrowed, wincing as she did. “We’re really sorry, Sam, we’re almost done here.”

  “Ow!”

  I felt the blood rushing from my head, the clammy nausea coming over me. I kept my hand on hers, tried breathing deeply. “It’s going to be over soon,” I crooned. “It’s going to be over soon.” Sam gave another jerk and cry, and I cried out with her. “Ow!”

  “All right, all right. I think we got it.” The doctor pulled out the needle, put it on the tray. I didn’t dare look at it. Sam gave one last cry as he withdrew, then her hand went heavy in mine. “That was tough, I know.”

  He pulled off his gloves and mopped his brow. Sam looked as though she was about to faint dead away. “Okay, honey,” said the nurse. “You rest now, all right?” They prepared to leave the room with their infernal tray, but I interrupted.

  “Is she…is she going to be okay?”

  The doctor gave me a blank smile. “We think so.”

  The nurse opened the door. Wait! Th
ey couldn’t leave without giving me some information, some idea of how bad this was or wasn’t going to be; they had to tell me whether she was going to make it through this or not. “Is there any idea how long she’ll be here?”

  Either the doctor didn’t know, or he wasn’t going to answer. “Until she gets better. Okay, Sam, we’ll see you later.”

  Sam was limp, her breathing shallow, her wet hand dangling in mine. I sat alone in the room with her, listening to her monitors beep, watching her chest rise and fall. Just three days ago we’d met downtown in the park, walked around and browsed the magic shop on Fourth Avenue, talked about her taking the October SATs. Now here she was, drained of everything vital, stuck like a soggy noodle to a dampened hospital bed she might never get out of.

  Her eyes fluttered open, and she twitched and pulled her hand from mine. “Hey,” I said, frowning. “Hey,” she said thickly. “Hurts…so much.”

  “I know, oh god, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you’re going through this right now.” Right now, as opposed to when? The ten times she’d already gone through it this year, the ten times yet to come? “Just rest. Is there anything I can get you?”

  She couldn’t even shake her head no. “Thanks. I’ma…” She settled in a little, face screwing up as she bumped the site of the spinal tap. “Eeeyagh.”

  “Oh god.” I could feel the pain in every pore, every muscle of my own. I writhed in my seat. “I’m so sorry, babe. I’ll just sit right here and be quiet while you sleep for a while, okay?”

  Nor could she shake her head yes. “Thanks,” she said again, her heavy eyes closing.

  I sat and got familiar with our new room, a room I knew I’d be seeing for a while. It was a children’s hospital she’d been admitted to—she was on the floor for teenagers—and the perimeter of the room was bordered with a historical time line of New York City: dinosaurs and rocks in one corner, crowds cheering at Yankee Stadium wrapped around the other. The TV on the wall was flat-screened, and there was a wireless keyboard on the nightstand—they must have had some kind of child-safe Internet access here. A stack of kids’ books sat on the far windowsill. I strolled over and browsed the titles. One of the Chronicles of Narnia books, favorites of mine in grade school; a book called McGrowl, about a crime-solving robotic dog.