Free Have You Found Her by Janice Erlbaum Page B

“You’re here to rest. You’ve got to get this damn hand fixed, already! How’s it going?”
    She indicated the twin bags of antibiotics flowing into her arm, the infected vein, vivid with poison. “It hurts like hell. And they’re trying to keep me off the opiates, but they’re giving me a little bit today, ’cause the pain’s…” She trailed off.
    “Pretty bad,” I said. “It looks like it. God, I’m sorry you’re going through this.”
    “It’s all right. I’m just really glad you’re here. It makes it a lot better.” She breathed deeply, trying not to flinch.
    “Yeah, obviously.” I frowned. “Is there anything they can do for you? Do you want me to talk to your doctors? I mean, who’s been dealing with them—Nadine?”
    Unlikely, I realized, with Nadine’s caseload; Jodi’s was just as full. So who was this teenage girl’s medical advocate? Who was holding her remaining good hand throughout this, helping her make decisions? Was there anybody who could stand up to the doctors and say,
Recovering junkie or no, how about you guys up the painkillers?
Or,
What the hell is she going to do if you have to cut off a limb?
    She shook her head again, with difficulty. “No, I’m dealing with them, but it’s cool, I understand what’s going on. They been good about explaining it to me. It’s this blood infection called sepsis, but hopefully the antibiotics will kill it. Right now they think it looks pretty good that it’s working.”
    “That’s good,” I said, freaking out inside.
Jesus Christ, people die from sepsis
. I wondered if they’d been fully honest about that with her. She didn’t seem like someone who’d been informed of the potential consequences of her condition—coma, amputation, death. She seemed like someone who was told she had a really shitty flu and was bummed that she might miss Christmas dinner.
    Well, if they weren’t telling her, then neither was I. “I’m glad they’re taking care of it,” I said.
    “Me too,” she agreed. She fixed me with her wide brown eyes. “And I’m really glad you came.”
    Her voice—so childlike, so blunt. So unlike the hard-ass ’hood rat who’d been stalking the counselors’ office that Saturday just two weeks ago, bragging about how easy it would be for her to get a gun and lay a bitch out. “I’m glad I came, too,” I said, smiling.
    “I mean, I didn’t think anybody was going to be able to visit me. You know, the staff’s real busy, and I called Hericka’s cell”—Hericka was St. Croix’s given name—“just to see if she could bring me some of my clothes and books and stuff from our room, but she hasn’t called me back.” Sam looked genuinely hurt. “I mean, I know we’re not best friends or anything, but we been roomies for, like, a month now, and we talked a bunch of times in our room at night, about guys we been with, and shit we been through…”
    Guys?
I could have sworn, up until that moment, that Sam was gay—with her baggy clothes, her loping stride, and her jutting lower jaw, she was as butch as the hardest butch dykes on the floor (AG’s, they called themselves, for “aggressives”). That’d teach me to judge by appearances. “Well, you know, it’s only two days until Christmas. She’s probably running around.”
    “Yeah, I know. Everyone’s busy.” She nodded, almost to herself, and cast a glance up at the IV monitor. It was getting toward empty, I noticed, wondering if maybe someone should be doing something about that. She turned back toward me, her pale face and glassy eyes on mine. “That’s why it’s so awesome that you’re here. I asked Nadine to tell you, in case you might be able to come, but I didn’t think—I mean, I know you’re probably busy, too.”
    “Here I am,” I assured her. “And if you thought hanging out with me at a homeless shelter was fun, you’ve never hung out with me in a hospital.”
    She smiled, and this time there was no grimace behind it, just a