Have You Found Her

by Janice Erlbaum

  “Thanks.”

  Perfect. I left my bag in her room and started trolling the hallways for more familiar faces. The short Indian nurse nodded at me when she saw me coming. “She’s downstairs getting an MRI,” she said, before I could say anything. “She’ll be back up soon.”

  “Oh, thanks, but I’m actually looking for her doctor.” I smiled, ingratiating. “Is there someone around who I can talk to about her condition?”

  The nurse peered over her desk down the hall. “I think Dr. Rice is in the doctors’ lounge.” She pointed to an open door. “She should be there; if not, I can page her.”

  “Thanks.” I headed toward the door she indicated. Okay, Dr. Rice. Tell me something good.

  Dr. Rice was a tall, thin woman with straight, sandy brown hair and bangs, about my age, currently sipping a cup of coffee and glaring at the pager on her hip. I’d seen her around the floor, though we’d never had a chance to speak. “Excuse me, Dr. Rice, I’m a friend of Samantha Dunleavy, and I was wondering if you had a minute. I’ve been trying to get some information about her prognosis—”

  “Oh, right, hi.” She turned to face me. She recognized me, too; I was the girl in the chair by Sam’s bedside all last month. “I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”

  “It’s Janice Erlbaum. I’m her health-care proxy.”

  “Oh, her proxy, great. So, yeah, okay.” She leaned one shoulder against the wall, and I faced her, doing the same. “So, the main problem she’s having, obviously, is the recurring infections—the bacterial sepsis, the fungemia, the other opportunistic infections she keeps manifesting—and we’ve been throwing everything we can at them. We keep changing the antibiotics, you know, and for a few days she’ll get better, but then she’ll just…” Dr. Rice made a nose-dive gesture with her hand.

  “Right,” I agreed. “Which is why I was surprised that you guys had discharged her to Westchester. I mean, she keeps getting so sick.”

  Dr. Rice raised her eyebrows a little, defensive. “Well, she had made a lot of improvement, and you know we can’t keep her here forever.”

  Well, you won’t have to keep her here forever, I thought. Just until she dies.

  “So what’s the course of treatment now?” I asked. “Just continue to treat the infections, and…”

  Dr. Rice turned up an empty hand in frustration, shook her head. “Well, if we knew the source of the infections, I might have a better answer for you. Unfortunately, we can’t seem to figure out what’s causing them. We’re still waiting on the results of the lung culture, to see if maybe some of this was airborne….”

  I tried not to let my eyes bug out. She didn’t know what was causing Samantha’s multiple opportunistic infections? Did she need to go to remedial doctor school? “Well, it could be stemming from the AIDS,” I suggested.

  Dr. Rice frowned. “But she doesn’t have AIDS. We’ve tested her twice, and she’s negative. Believe me, that’s the first thing we thought of. I mean, this would all make a lot more sense if she were HIV-positive, but she’s not, so we’ve had to look for other potential causes.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re telling me she doesn’t have AIDS?”

  Dr. Rice’s eyes were as wide as mine. “Not to our knowledge, no. That’s one of the first tests we ran. We even reran it two weeks ago, just to make sure. Because it’s definitely an immune disorder, we’ve just never seen anything like it.”

  I interrupted her, stunned, my ears ringing like I was standing inside a bell. “You’re saying she’s HIV-negative?”

  What had Sam just told me on our last visit? My T cells are practically gone, but the antivirals are finally getting a chance to work—at least my viral load’s gone down. She couldn’t be HIV-negative; she was dying of AIDS, and everybody knew it—me, Maria, the social worker who’d been wrangling with her benefits, the spinal-tap nurse with tears in her eyes.

  I shook my head violently. “She’s not HIV-negative. She can’t be.”

  “So you’re under the impression that she’s HIV-positive?” Dr. Rice was looking at me, brow fully furrowed. “Because that would explain a lot. If there’s been some kind of mistake—”

  “There’s definitely been some kind of mistake. There’s definitely been a mistake.” This goddamn hospital, I thought, my confusion flaring into anger. They probably mistested her, or the doctors weren’t communicating. Samantha had AIDS; this was obviously a mistake on their part. It had to be.

  Dr. Rice reached out as if to steady me. “Did she tell you that she’d tested positive in the past?”

  I nodded. “First week of June. She was living at a halfway house in Brooklyn, and she was diagnosed at a hospital in Bushwick—”

  “We’ll get their records,” Dr. Rice interrupted. “Go on.”

  “She was in Bushwick for a week or two back in April for acute pneumonia following a punctured lung, and she was doing follow-up there for her asthma and her kidney dysfunction, and they wondered why she kept getting hospitalized for infections, so they tested her. And they told her she had full-blown AIDS—multiple, virulent strains. They said she had less than a hundred T cells.”

  Dr. Rice’s eyes were trained intently on mine. “We just tested her T cells the other day. They were normal.”

  “No.” I shook my head, frustrated. “No. She just told me the other day, she’s got less than twenty. She’s been dealing with Dr. F. since she’s been here, maybe if we call Dr. F.—”

  Her eyebrows inched even higher. “Dr. F.?”

  “Dr. F.—she has a long, foreign name, hard to pronounce. Samantha said they call her Dr. F. She’s—”

  “I don’t know any female doctors on the floor named Dr. F.,” said Dr. Rice.

  “You don’t…maybe she’s…she’s the AIDS specialist, she’s…”

  She’s in her mid-fifties, blond, stout, slight accent, Eastern European. Of course I’d never seen her, but this is how I’d pictured her, every time Sam told me, “I spoke to Dr. F. this morning,” or “You just missed Dr. F. I really wanted you to meet her.”

  Dr. Rice shook her head, looking almost as lost as I must have looked. “There’s no Dr. F. here. Something very strange is going on.”

  Oh, yes, it was. Something very strange, supernatural, even. “I can’t believe…this has got to be a mistake.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” said Dr. Rice. “But I’m glad we’re having this conversation right now. If you’re telling me she’s tested positive in the past, then we’ve got to retest her again, as soon as possible. All of her symptoms are consistent with late-stage AIDS, and if we’ve missed that somehow, then the whole strategy changes.”

  She’d already straightened her posture; she was looking over my head, ready for action. Her surge of confidence was inspiring. I straightened up as well, snapping to, all business. “So you think this is some kind of false negative test, you think this is a mistake.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know how, but it must be.”

  “Or…” Or what? There couldn’t be another explanation; this had to be a mistake. And yet a nagging doubt was squirming its way from my queasy stomach into my brain. Sam and her pranks—the way she bragged to me, back at rehab, I held my breath until I passed out—they thought I had epilepsy! The day she told me, Tell Maria I’m doing real bad, I’m back in the ICU. And just last week, when I called from Bermuda—You remember that night nurse, who was such a bitch to me? I loosened the leads on my monitors… “I mean, she couldn’t have…she couldn’t have faked all of this somehow, could she?” I forced a little laugh, to suggest how crazy the idea was, but the laugh felt like a retch.

  Dr. Rice smiled wryly. “Fungemia in her eyeball? No, she’s definitely not faking it. Listen, I know this is confusing, but let us retest her, and you should be able to get the results when we do. If we can test her this evening before dinner, we should know something within twenty-four hours.”

  “Okay. Okay.” I nodded. Okay. Twenty-four
hours. And then maybe they were going to tell me that Sam was okay. They might tell me that she was all right, and she didn’t have AIDS, and she wasn’t going to die.

  Which would mean that she’d been lying to me for the past four months.

  Dr. Rice started to move toward the nurses’ desk, but I stopped her. “Wait, if you could just…” Now I was scared that Sam would be angry with me, that I’d said too much and betrayed her confidence. She didn’t want everybody to know about her AIDS; she could have been using the false negatives to lie to the doctors, to lie to herself. “Please don’t tell her we had this talk. Samantha’s incredibly protective of her privacy, and she hates talking about her AIDS. She’s been in a lot of denial about it; she hates it when other people talk about it. If you could just tell her you need to retest her, okay, but don’t tell her we talked—I’ve spent a lot of time trying to earn her trust, and—”

  “I won’t,” Dr. Rice assured me. “But listen, you did the right thing. Now maybe we can get to the bottom of this and find out what’s really wrong with her. She’ll be up from her MRI soon, then I’ll request the blood sample before dinner. You can wait in her room until she gets back, and neither of us has to say anything about this discussion. All right?”

  Dr. Rice strode off to the nurses’ station, picked up the phone, made a call. I was standing there staring at her, and she gave me a high sign with her chin—I’m on the case; go wait for her in her room.

  In Sam’s room: her messy sheets, a teddy bear from Maria, a children’s library book about the building of the U.S. railroad spread open facedown on the night table. Her orange sweatshirt with the frayed cuffs and collar on the chair. It was like the scene of a crime—all the evidence of her life, but no her.

  If I was panting when I showed up at the hospital today, I was hyperventilating now. I was dizzy from overoxygenation. I needed a paper bag, stat. I needed six or seven joints. I needed to sit down, but I had to pace. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called Bill at work.

  “Hey, babe,” he answered. “What’d the doctors say?”

  I braced one arm across my chest, smiled a vicious, hard-breathing smile. “Well, they say she doesn’t have AIDS, is what they say.”

  “Wha-at?” His voice broke with surprise. “What the hell?”

  “Yep. They say they’ve done two tests on her, and they’re negative. Negative. They just did her T cells the other day, and they’re fine.”

  “What the…this has got to be a mistake. You’re telling me she tested…” I heard his hand slap the desk. “No. They fucked up. The hospital fucked up.” He’d called it—hospital error—and his voice went from bewildered to pissed off on my behalf. “No wonder they haven’t been able to help her, they’re a bunch of idiots who can’t run a simple series of tests. Jesus, honey, that’s gotta be—”

  “I don’t know, babe, I don’t know.” My stomach growled—fear, not hunger. I wished I was as desk-slapping sure as Bill was. Maybe it was a mistake, but whose? Dr. Rice’s? Mine? I was pacing in the tiny room, my eyes lighting on objects I could barely identify anymore—a water pitcher with flowers from Jodi, half-deflated balloons that said GET WELL SOON. None of them meant anything. They were all props in a play.

  “Look, it’s got to be the hospital’s error,” Bill said again, in his patented voice of reason. He laughed a little, ironically. “Don’t worry, honey, I’m sure she has AIDS.”

  “Hah,” I said, mirthless. “She better have AIDS, or I’m going to kill her.”

  There were voices in the hall, getting closer; Samantha was back from her MRI. I promised I’d call Bill back as soon as I heard something, and signed off. “I love you.”

  I was looking at Samantha as I said the words, snapping the phone shut as one of the transporters wheeled her into the room. Sam looked groggy and pale, but she smiled at me under her heavy lids.

  “Hey, babe,” I said.

  “Hey,” she said thickly.

  The transporter helped her into bed, her long, thin legs covered in scabs and scratches. He reattached her to the IV, the heart monitor, the breathing monitor. Her antibiotics were in a glass jar—they’d eat right through a plastic bag. On the jar, it said, DO NOT ALLOW CONTENTS TO COME IN CONTACT WITH MUCUS MEMBRANES OR EXPOSED SKIN. IF ACCIDENTALLY INGESTED, CALL POISON CONTROL.

  Sam lay back against the pillow, her eyes glassy from the pain meds. I moved over into my usual position by her head, petted her hair for a minute. The familiar smell of her warm skin made my throat close. “How’s it going today?”

  “All right,” she said, sniffling. They were giving her opiates again, I could tell by the junkie sniffle. She scratched the side of her face. “Pain’s been bad, but they gave me some meds….”

  “I can see that.” I attempted a smile. “So how was the MRI? Did they tell you what they found?”

  Something was wrong with my voice. That was supposed to sound sympathetic, and it came out suspicious. “It went okay,” Sam said, looking at me with those penetrating, preternatural eyes, the dark bags beneath them. “I’m…it’s been a hard day.”

  Yeah, I knew what she meant. The transporter finished adjusting the various tubes and plugs, pushed the beeping buttons on the IV, left us with a nod. Sam lifted her head to inspect the job, then sank back again against the propped-up pillow, let her head loll to the left.

  “So listen,” I said, “I want to have a talk with one of your doctors—”

  “Can you hand me that pillow?” Sam interrupted, gesturing to the other chair, where an extra pillow sat next to a bag of Tootsie Pops from Maria. She wrinkled her nose like a rabbit, wiped it with the side of her hand, scratched her face. Just like the redhead on my corner would do, right before she started to nod.

  “Sure thing.” I passed her the pillow. I tried to meet her eyes, but they were off, unfocused. “So listen, I’ve been trying to get in touch with one of your doctors….”

  “Uh-huh.” She put her hand over her stomach and sat up with a grimace. “Sorry, I’m just feeling so…” I reached out and stroked her back. She belched and scowled. “Uhhhh…”

  Samantha looked over at the puke trough. My eyes followed hers, but I didn’t reach over to get it for her, as I normally would, trying to anticipate her needs and meet them before she could even speak. She noted my negligence, pressed her hands against her stomach, and moaned some more.

  “Should I call the nurse?” I asked.

  She shook her head, dizzy and pained. “No, I’m…I’m okay, it’s just—”

  “Yeah.” I cut her off. “You look awful. Listen, I definitely think we should get one of your doctors in here. I think we both need some explanations. They’ve got to do something to help you out.”

  “No-oo!” Her protest came out in a whine. I’d heard her whimper, during spinal taps and the like, but I didn’t think I’d ever heard her whine. “I’m all right! It was just the test, and everything…just let me…I’m all right….” She lay back weakly. “It’s just been…a hard day. I think I just need to sleep. Maybe today’s not the best day for a visit…”

  Oh. No. I was not dismissed. I smiled a tight little smile. She was lying about something, and she thought I wasn’t going to figure it out? I didn’t care how much denial she wanted to be in, or how much she wanted to manipulate her own treatment. She was not lying to me and getting away with it.

  “I understand,” I said soothingly. “You get some rest. And I’m going to try and find one of these doctors, because I really think they need to give us some answers here. You shouldn’t be suffering like this.”

  “No, but, the doctors, they’re doing everything they can!” She was whining again, and her face was screwed up like I’d never seen it before. She sniffed, rubbed her nose, and scratched, more viciously this time. She was frustrated and high, she just wanted to lie up in bed and have someone read to her about the U.S. railroads, and I wasn’t playing along.

  “Well, I’d still like to talk to someone. I’ll just ask the n
urse who’s on duty, and maybe we can all have a chat.” I removed my hand from her mop of hair and strode with purpose out to the nurses’ desk. Action. The watchword of the day.

  “Can you please page Dr. Rice and ask her to join us in Sam’s room when she gets a chance? Thanks.”

  The nurse gave me a quick nod, picked up the phone. “Dr. Rice to room 1015, please.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sam heard it, too. I reentered her room, and she was sitting up, scowling like a gargoyle. “I don’t feel so good,” she said, hand on her belly again. “I think I have to throw up.”

  I handed her the trough and assumed my usual position at her side, one hand patting her back as she dry heaved. “Oh, this sucks so much,” I crooned. She heaved again, but it was forced; it wasn’t coming from her stomach, she was just throwing her torso forward and pretending. Dr. Rice knocked and entered, looking concerned. She shut the door behind her.

  “Hey, Samantha, how are you today?” Dr. Rice met my eyes as though we didn’t just speak in the hallway ten minutes ago. “Hi there. You’re her health-care proxy, right?”

  “I am.” I smiled. “Janice Erlbaum.”

  She shook my hand and took the chair with the bag of Tootsie Pops on it. I sat in the other chair.

  “So how’d it go with the MRI?” asked Dr. Rice.

  “Good,” said Sam warily. She sniffled. “I mean, I’m kind of exhausted, but I’m glad it’s done. Maybe they’ll be able to tell me something.”

  “Well, that’s what we’re hoping for.” Dr. Rice’s eyes met mine, then flicked away to Sam’s. “Anyway, I’m glad Janice is here, because I think it’s good if we can all be up-to-date on everything that’s going on.”

  Sam’s glassy eyes were open about a foot high, and her skin was like wax. “Can we…do we have to talk about this now?”

  “It’ll just take a minute,” Dr. Rice assured her. She turned to me, and repeated what she’d said in the hallway as though for the first time. “Of course, the main problem Sam’s having is the recurring infections, which we keep treating with antibiotics, but they keep coming back. We’re still trying to figure out why she keeps getting them, but—”