Have You Found Her

by Janice Erlbaum

  He observed me as I wept, obviously beyond the point of reason, and sighed again. “You’re not ruining everything. And you didn’t ask for this, either. Come here.” He opened his arms to me, and I wrapped myself around him, snuffling, hiding my guilty face. I’d somehow turned this from Bill airing a legitimate grievance to Bill comforting me. “It’s okay.”

  I burrowed into him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, honey. I don’t know what to do.”

  “I know. I know.” His voice was resigned; I could feel it through the ear pressed against his chest. “There’s nothing we can do. That’s what sucks so much.”

  I continued to cry for a while, because it was so hopeless, and he rocked me gently back and forth and said, “Shhhhh, it’s okay.” And I kept on crying, because we both knew that it wasn’t, and that it wouldn’t be—not until she died, and not even then. It was one thing that was never going to be okay again.

  It was two days later, just after Bill had left for work, that Maria called with the news. “I just heard from one of the nurses. She’s bad. She was bad last night, and she’s worse now. The fever is really high, and they can’t bring it down. I can’t get there until this evening. I don’t know, Janice, this might be it.”

  It. I started to memorize everything around me—this is the rug I am standing on, this is the weight of the phone against my ear—so I could describe it later. I was in the living room when I got the call; the air was cooler than it had been in weeks, the sky was autumn blue. I showered, dressed, got on the train. The train was crowded, the newspapers spoke of terror. I kept poking the idea like a bad tooth—I’m on my way to see my dying friend; she’s probably going to die today. What was that going to be like? Impossible, that she would close her eyes and they wouldn’t open, that I would come into her room and she would not be there anymore. The other riders stared at the subway ads, listened to their headphones; three teenage girls in tight acid-washed jeans pushed one another and giggled. They had no idea what I was riding uptown to do.

  Sam was alone in her bed when I entered, her eyes shut, her color ghostly, her chest barely moving with each breath. Her eyes fluttered as I slid into my seat, took her hand, so thin and weak, with its familiar pink scar from the surgery nine months before. “I’m here,” I told her, and her head lolled toward me, slumped on her spindly neck.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m here, and it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” She went limp again, her chest still. She wasn’t breathing. The orange line on her breathing monitor went flat. “Sam.” I jostled her, and the line started moving again. Her hand felt so hot in mine. I squeezed, and she did not squeeze back.

  The breathing line went flat again. Beeeeeep, said the machine. I jostled her, more urgent. “Sam.” The line moved again. I looked around helplessly for a nurse, the call button out of reach unless I dropped Sam’s hand. The monitor beeped, the line flattened. “Sam.”

  The heart-rate monitor was beeping, too, the line there becoming more erratic. A gray-haired nurse hurried into the room, grabbed Sam’s wrist, ripped open the hospital gown, and pushed hard on the electrodes on Sam’s bony chest. Sam’s head lolled again, and the lines on the monitors resumed their spikes and waves. The nurse frowned, checking the lines going into her arms, the antibiotics flowing into one side, the pain meds into the other.

  “She’s bad today,” I said. My voice was surprisingly quiet and calm. I felt like I was hearing myself through a telephone.

  “She’s not feeling so good, no.” The nurse stepped back and watched the lines on the monitors, moving in choppy waves. “If that beeps again, you call for me.”

  She exited the room. Wait, come back. Help. Sam’s head lolled again, and her eyes fluttered open. “Hey,” she managed to croak at me.

  “Hey.” I tried to smile. “Don’t say anything. Just rest. I’m here.”

  “Thanks.” She closed her eyes again.

  This was how I spent the next few hours, sitting at her side, waiting for the lines on her monitors to fail. I picked up the book I’d been reading to her, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, stopping every few lines to look at her face. Was she struggling? Was she at peace? The waves of her breath, the spikes of her heartbeat—they were erratic, but they were still there.

  And I prayed. Don’t fight anymore, Sam. It’s going to be okay. You know what you told me about those photons, how they disappear, and when they come back they’ve aged years in a millisecond? And how that’s proof of alternate dimensions? Well, I really believe that. I really believe there’s a dimension out there, one where you never got HIV, and we’re all there with you—me, and Maria, and Jodi, and Evan, and Bill, and your sister, Eileen, she’s there, too. And your dead dog, Max. He’s alive, and he’s right there at your feet. And it’s Christmas, and we’re all at Jodi’s house together, and we’re opening our gifts. Look what you made for me, Sam; it’s a drawing. It’s a picture of us at Coney Island. There’s you and me and Bill, and the water and the sand, and the Wonder Wheel, and the Cyclone. Your lips are blue from the candy. Look, Sam, look.

  Her lips were blue and purple. I could see the artery throbbing in the side of her neck. Her hands were as the nurse had left them, palms-up on the sheet next to her like they were waiting for nails.

  Sam shifted her weight and blinked a few times. One eye opened slightly. “Hey,” she croaked at me.

  “Shhhh,” I said. “Take it easy.”

  She tried to sit up, her eyes opening more and more. “What…when did you…”

  “Shhhh,” I said again, smiling at her. Here she was, awake. Alive. “You’ve had a rough night and day.”

  She shifted again, uncomfortable, and cleared her throat weakly. “I gotta…can you ask the nurse to come?”

  She needed a bedpan, her least favorite thing to ask for. I put one on the bed next to her, and she grimaced as she tried to grasp it. “I’ll go get the nurse.”

  I got the nurse and left them alone for a few minutes, pacing the hall right outside the room. Heard the sounds of Sam vomiting—sitting up didn’t agree with her—and the nurse washing the basins in the sink. I reentered the room, pretending to knock as I came around the curtain.

  “How’s it going?”

  Sam lay back against the pillows. She looked like she’d been flattened by a steamroller. “Better,” she panted.

  And she was, a little; she recouped somewhat that afternoon. By the time Maria got there that evening, Sam was propped up in bed, listening to me read aloud from The Curious Incident.

  “How’s our girl?” asked Maria, rushing into the room, hair flying behind her. “There she is. [Smooch!] I was so worried about you! They said this morning you were…not so hot.”

  “I’m a little better,” said Sam, cracking a tired smile as Maria petted her hair.

  Maria shot me a look over Sam’s head. And how are you?

  I shook my head at her. Not good. “Hi there,” I said, outwardly jovial. “How’s it going?”

  “All right. I had to call in a bunch of favors to get out of work, but here I am.” She spread her arms like the angel of good cheer and let them drop again. “So she’s been resting today?”

  “Nurse just took all her vitals; she said she’s doing a lot better than earlier.”

  “Fantastic! Good girl.” Maria pulled up a second chair, and Sam slowly turned her head Maria’s way.

  “So listen,” I began.

  This was always my exit gambit—So listen. Maria, here’s the baton; I’m passing it to you. I was done for the day; I was more than done. Next time Sam was going to almost die, I wanted it to be on someone else’s watch. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I promised Sam. “Hang in there, okay?”

  Tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. By September 12, Sam was starting to improve. Her fever was down, and she was awake, moving around; she even got out of bed so she wouldn’t have to use the bedpan. September 13, she was sitting up, surfing the Internet, and eating solid foods. September 14, they
had to do another spinal tap on her, to see if the infection had spread again.

  Why did they put her through this, when her system was already so weak? And why did they always do it when I was there? A new doctor, an older guy, and a young dark-haired nurse whom I recognized from the floor came in with their torture tray, numbed Sam’s back, and plunged in the pick. “Ow!”

  I squeezed her hand and told her more about Disney World, per her request. “And then day two, we’ll go to Epcot, and they’ve got this ride that’s like you’re hang gliding over California—”

  “Ow!”

  “Ow!” I echoed involuntarily. “It’s okay, it’s okay, Sam.”

  The doctor dug around in Sam’s lower back, sweating and cursing under his breath. The dark-haired nurse looked at me with tears in her eyes. “You’re a good friend,” she said.

  September 15 was a bad day, but not as bad as the week before. Sam was feverish, achy, anxious, angry; Valentina wanted to give up their apartment share and room with someone else, and the hospital’s social worker, Felicia, told Sam that she wasn’t going to file for benefits to cover home care. “Felicia said she won’t file until they’re sure I’m going to be leaving the hospital. Of course I’m leaving the hospital!”

  Of course. It was this kind of thinking that was keeping Sam from signing the health-care proxy, which I’d left on her nightstand with a pen for the past week, with a Post-it note that said “Sign me.” She didn’t need a proxy—she was going to be fine. Look at how much better she’d gotten already! She wasn’t supposed to live through the meningitis, but she did, didn’t she? The doctors didn’t know anything.

  “Do you want me to try to talk to the social worker?” I asked. “I know it must be hard for you to deal with everyone, all the doctors and social workers and everything.”

  “Mmm, I can handle it. But thanks, Janice.”

  “No problem,” I said, smiling through my disappointment. “Just part of my job.”

  Friday, September 16, she had another eye injection. The eye was practically dead by then, the retina floating in a sea of murk. It was unnerving, watching her go blinder by the day, watching her face grow a little dimmer from the bulb that couldn’t be replaced. But she’d still smile, she’d still say things with remarkable force—“I’m so pissed at Valentina, I can’t believe she’s moving out,” or “I hate the night nurse, she’s such a bitch.” She still wanted to play pranks. Maria called, and Sam whispered, “Tell her I’m real bad today. Tell her they moved me back to Intensive Care.”

  “I will tell her no such thing,” I replied sternly. “She’s fine,” I reported into the phone. “She’s even feisty today. She’s going downstairs for another eyeball shot soon.”

  “Ugh. All right. Wish her my best, tell her I’ll be down there this evening. And if we don’t overlap, have a great wedding on Sunday. I wish we could be there!”

  Me too. What I wouldn’t have given to see Sam there, even in her wheelchair with an IV pole rolling beside her, but it was not to be. Instead, I spent the penultimate day before my wedding watching (or not exactly “watching,” more like “cringing in the vicinity of”) Samantha getting another eyeball injection. “Ow!”

  Maria and I did in fact overlap that evening, and she gave me one of her smooches for luck. Sam grinned at me from her bed. “Congratulations, Janice, it’s gonna be so great. Bill’s such an awesome guy. Remember, you said you’d save me a piece of cake!”

  I held her hand, reluctant to let it go; her scarred and bony hand, so much bigger than mine. “Okay. But if I get a chance tomorrow, I’ll call, and if anything happens—”

  “Go!” said Maria, laughing. “And don’t call. You have to get married this weekend; that’s your job!”

  “All right.” I leaned in for smooches of my own, laughing back through the tears in my eyes. “I love you, and I love you. I wish you could be there on Sunday! I’ll miss you!”

  “Love you, too,” said Maria, and Sam echoed it, waving good-bye like she was on the deck of a receding cruise ship.

  “I love you, too, Janice. Bye!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I Did

  I woke up at 7 A.M. on my wedding day with a head-splitting fever, body aches, nausea, and chills.

  I’d known it the day before, running around to get manicured, buying baby’s breath for my hair and foot pads for my shoes: I’m getting sick again. I tried to write it off as nerves, as excitement, but I knew what was happening—I’d come down with this same virus twice in the past six months. I washed my hands constantly at the hospital, always made sure to dress in layers so I could go in and out of the air-conditioning comfortably, popped vitamin C and zinc lozenges that tasted like rust on my tongue. And still, it was my wedding day, and I was fucking sick.

  I let Bill sleep and drew a hot bath, sat trembling inside the tub until the water cooled. Every swallow was a sharp pain, every sound and beam of light pierced me right through the sinuses. I struggled out of the bath and tried to down some Tylenol, only to heave it up five minutes later.

  I redrew the bath and started to cry. This was so unfair; why today? I felt like I could barely move; couldn’t we have this big party we’d been planning for months on Tuesday? I’d be feeling so much better by Tuesday. I just needed some antibiotics. Run me up to the hospital, stick Sam’s tube in my arm for a day or two, and I’d be raring to go. Fucking shit. I felt so angry, so cheated, so sorry for myself. I didn’t deserve this, not on the happiest day of my life.

  Bill woke up, unhappily assessed the situation, tried to get me hydrated, watched me heave up the water. He called my folks. “Are you sure it’s not just nerves?” they asked. “Maybe there’s a doctor who makes house calls.”

  I dragged myself back to bed, my whole body throbbing. Slept for a fitful hour or two, woke up in a sweat. Tossed down the Gatorade Bill had supplied me, managed to keep the Tylenol down this time, and lit a joint. The all-purpose cure. My arms and legs still ached, clenching without my say-so, but I thrust myself into the shower and packed my bag for the hotel.

  “I am going to get my hair done,” I announced. “I don’t care how shitty I feel—this is my one excuse in life to wear flowers on my head, and I am taking it. I will see you back here in an hour and a half, and then we’re going to the hotel. Okay?”

  Bill kissed me gingerly, his germy bride-to-be. “Sounds great, Shmoo. Call me from the hair place if you need anything.”

  My head was hot and pounding, but the lady at the hair place down the block made it look pretty nice anyway. I set off for home again holding it high, enjoying the looks I was getting on the street, in my jeans and sweatshirt and hairdo full of foliage. The spacey feeling of the virus was highlighted by the surreality of the situation—This is it. I’m getting married today. Holy shit. It’s happening.

  It seemed to be sinking in with Bill, too. By the time I got home again, he was looking a little pale and flustered himself, running around the house and double-checking his bag. “Cuff links…socks…collar stays…” My folks checked in by phone again. “Eat a banana,” suggested Sylvia, an ex-nurse. “They’re very hard to throw up.” I ate a banana, waited to make sure it stayed down, then we summoned the cats with a handful of tuna-flavored treats.

  “Mommy and Poppy are getting married today,” we told the tops of their heads as they ignored us, crunching and snarfing at our feet. “So be good, and we’ll see you in the morning.”

  Then we wheeled our bags across Union Square Park to the hotel. Sam, I thought, as we passed the dog run. How much I wished she was going to be there. I pictured Maria at her bedside, finishing off The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, or maybe they were watching Law & Order. The doctors didn’t tend to do too many tests or taps or injections on the weekends; it was probably an uneventful day. If I got dressed early enough, maybe I’d give a call.

  We checked in to the bridal suite, toured the banquet room, saw the florist arranging the bouquets Sylvia had helped me
choose. I clutched my vows, ink on my palms, muttering them to myself in a last-minute attempt to memorize them. I never imagined that I would find a partner like you. You are everything I wish for everyone I love. My folks arrived, as did Bill’s family; they installed themselves in their respective rooms, and we started to dress for the occasion.

  Whatever virus I had was now completely overshadowed by excitement and stage fright. Across the room, Bill buttoned his shirt, grinning at me. My hands were shaking almost too much to tie the strap of my dress behind my neck, and my feet wobbled in their high heels. I put in my earrings, and Bill came up behind me in the mirror, turned me around to face him. “You look so beautiful,” he said.

  It didn’t strike me as bad luck to be seen by Bill before the wedding. Bad luck would have been being separated from him. I tried to hug him without getting makeup on his suit. “I love you so much.”

  He smiled down at me, my tender and true-hearted man. “Well, then, maybe we should do this after all.”

  We went downstairs to the banquet room with our families to greet our guests.

  The next few hours were a dream. We were surrounded by dear friends and loved ones, all of them smiling—“We’re so happy for you!” My brother looked so handsome and grown-up in his suit. Bill’s best men surrounded him, clapping his back. About two hours into the affair, we took our places at the front of the room and exchanged our unofficiated vows.

  Bill, you show me so much patience, caring, understanding, and appreciation; you inspire me and enrich my life. I promise to be the best partner I can be….

  Janice, I want to spend the rest of my life showing you, every day, how grateful I am that I found you. You are my home, and I love you….

  Jake brought us our rings—I’d been missing mine all day, fingering the empty space on my right hand where I’d grown accustomed to fiddling with it. Now Bill and I took the rings and placed them on each other’s left hands.

  “Here we go,” he said.

  “Here we go.”