Compromised (24 page)

A
fternoon sunlight seeps through the blinds. I rub my eyes and hope that when I open them, I'll be back in Reno. I listen to the noises around me: the beeps of machines and rustle of paper gowns and doctors' masks. I breathe deep and smell floor wax and pee. Somebody says a prayer. Somebody breathes heavy. Somebody mumbles.

I open my eyes to a curtained cubby and know that none of it has been a dream.

And I know that Klon is dead. And Nicole—Nicole! I sit up, and my head feels like it's been filled with exploding nanotubes.

“Take it easy, honey. You're gonna need to take it one breath at a time. Your body's been pretty hammered.”

Black pinpoints dot my vision and I lie back down until my world stops spinning. When I open my eyes again, I see Billie—the social worker.

“Where—” I start to ask.

“Garden City Community Clinic.”

“How long?” I ask, my voice hoarse but throat feeling better.

“Two days.”

“My friend—is she…?” I can't finish the question.

“She's alive. She started to go into organ failure and has slipped into a coma.”

I try to digest her words. “Will she—”

Billie sips on a cup of coffee and clears her throat. “I'm not going to sugarcoat this, okay? You look like you're too smart for that.”

I nod.

“She might not make it.”

“She'll make it,” I say. “She's strong.”

Billie nods. She doesn't believe me. She's seen Nicole's scars. She knows this isn't the first time. But it's different now. Things will be different.

I rub my head. They've cut my hair, and I scratch at the short curls.

“They had to cut your hair. Lice.”

I shrug. I was looking like a chia plant with dreads, anyway. “Our things,” I say.

Billie takes the box and Nicole's bag of things out of a locked drawer and hands them to me with the keys. I hug them to my chest, turning away from Billie. “Why are you here?”

Billie smiles. “I was worried. I'm just glad I was here when you woke up.”

“Who are we to you?” I bite my tongue before I say more. I'm starting to sound like Nicole—jaded.

“You got to her just in time. You saved her.”

What did I save her from?

“Was she at the Garden?”

I turn away from her and nod.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Billie asks.

“I wouldn't know where to begin,” I say.

“What about the box? What's in there?”

I stare at the crushed box. “I'm not sure anymore.”

We're quiet, listening to the sounds of other patients. “Where is she?” I ask. “Where's Nicole? Can I see her?”

I slip and say her name. Nicole would kill me. Rule
number two. Or was it rule number three? I get them all mixed up.

Billie nods. “She's at St. Andrew's. Only family's allowed to visit a minor. Do you know about any family?” she asks.

I hold Nicole's plastic bag in my hands. Seven years of postcards from a crackhead mom trying to give her daughter some hope. Lies. “Yeah,” I say. “Me. I'm it.”

Billie says, “We would like to know your full names, where you're from.”

I turn away.

She follows my gaze and stands in front of me. “You have somewhere to go?”

“I'm not sure.”

“A mother? A father looking for you? Someone?”

I shake my head. “No one's looking for me. But—” I sigh and close my eyes. I don't know what to say to anyone anymore. Can I trust her? “I have an aunt who I'm trying to find.”

Billie sips her coffee. “Where does she live?”

“If I knew that, I don't think I'd be in this mess, okay?” I say.

We're quiet. She opens her mouth to say something, then closes it. “There's a shelter. The one you found the
other night. It's better than the streets. A bed. Food. A safe place to be. For now. Until you find—”

Why do I always feel like people think I've invented Aunt Sarah?

“Is it far from St. Andrew's?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “You can take a crosstown bus.”

“Okay.”

“So you'll come?” she asks.

“I'll come.”

Billie checks me out of the clinic. I can hardly walk, I'm so weak. I clamber into the van, and we pull up to the shelter.

Home sweet home, I think.

W
hen I open my eyes, I notice for the first time there's a security guard sitting behind a window, staring at me like I'm in some kind of aquarium. I sit up and stretch—the only one in the room. The other beds are stripped of their sheets and blankets.

I creep out to the front desk. The same guy is there who helped Nicole and me the other night. A sign about God's light and salvation hangs in the window. Stacks of pamphlets are piled on a wobbly card table. Family violence, paternity rights, drug abuse, sexual assault, stalking—the pamphlets each have a little cross on the upper right-hand corner that says “Find your way by following His light.”

“Hove I slept long?” I ask. My voice is hoarse but my
throat is feeling much better.

“Since yesterday afternoon.” He looks at the clock. “About eighteen hours.”

“Eighteen hours?” How is it possible after having slept two days at the clinic? That's gotta be a record. Maybe Nicole's right and I have a sleeping disorder. I better get that checked.

“And my friend?” I ask.

“Alive,” he says.

I sigh.

“First things first.” He hands me a fresh pair of underwear, sweats, a towel, generic shampoo and soap, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. “Go wash up and come back out here. I'll give you the rules to the shelter.”

The steaming water pours over my body, and I lather myself everywhere. I get out and wipe away the steam to see myself in the mirror but turn away from the gaunt face that stares back at me. I run my finger across the layers of grime that cover my teeth and brush for about twenty minutes.

I still can't believe I forgot to pack a toothbrush.

Like that matters anymore.

I go back out to the front desk.

“I'm Jim. You need to eat. And we need to talk.” Jim takes me to the kitchen. “This is an exception. There is no eating here outside of assigned hours.” He points to the shelter schedule and looks me up and down. “When was the last time you ate?”

“I don't remember.”

He hands me a cup of broth. “Start with this. At dinner, maybe you can have toast, too. Five o'clock.”

I sip the broth.

“No weapons; if you want to stay, you're going to have to enroll in the community volunteer program; and a kid your age needs to be studying to get her GED; no smoking, drugs, or alcohol are tolerated; curfew's at eight o'clock at night; during meals, you get your own food and you clean up your mess. We have circle time with the psychologist after dinner. You don't have to talk, but you're expected to be there. Any questions?”

“Do you, um, have to report me—” I start to ask.

“We're here to keep kids like you off the streets. If we report you, you won't come. We don't report. You're off the streets. You might be smart enough to get a diploma and get the hell out of this mess you're in. Got it?”

I nod, and he serves me another bowl of broth—this
time with some noodles in it. “My friend?” I ask.

“At St. Andrew's. That's all I know.”

We sit in silence at the table until I eat everything. He serves me a third bowl. “Take it easy.”

I slurp it down. It tastes like heaven.

“Are you planning on staying?” he asks.

I nod.

He hands me a folder. “You can get a job at these places. They work with us. It's more like an internship. They pay transportation and give you a meal. In return for volunteering your services, you get to stay here. Off. The. Streets.”

Nothing could be better, I think. I browse through the pages and find Boise Public Library. “I'd like to work here.”

He nods. He goes and gets a letter. “You plan on telling them your real name?”

I smile. He doesn't realize that I have about twenty. “Sure,” I say.

“Sure,” he says.

 

The librarian at the reception desk smiles and says, “I'm Miss Foley. We'd love to have you here,” then goes
into a spiel about being responsible, on time, respecting library property, blah blah blah. But she's nice. Real nice. And she sends me to work in the computer lab the first day. She comes back after a while. “I can tell you know what you're doing,” she says. She pauses. “You're different from most of our volunteers. I don't get why you're here.”

“I think there are lots like me out there,” I finally say. “Too many.”

She stares at me. She sees me. It's like somebody really sees me for the first time in months.

We set it up so I work in the afternoons, study in the evenings, and spend my mornings outside Nicole's window, crouched in some twig bushes. The days get shorter, colder—the nights longer. Billie always wants to hear my story: Why I ran away, what happened on the streets, blah blah blah. I don't really want to tell it. She's not pushy. I guess she's used to finding broken kids and not knowing how to piece them back together.

After a week of volunteering at the library, I bring the box. “Miss Foley, I have to find somebody. Do you think I can come in early to do some research?”

Miss Foley looks at the letters in the box. “Absolutely.”
Then she leaves me alone. She always gives me space. It's a good job.

Today I stand outside Nicole's window and put my hand against the pane, hoping she'll know that she's not alone. It's weird. I haven't done a procedure or hypothesis since, well, for a long time.

And I feel better. No more plans or procedures—just living day-by-day, waiting for things to come. Because that's all I can do now. Wait. Wait for her to wake up.

I clap my hands against my thighs. The clothes from the shelter aren't nearly as warm as I wish they were. The doctors and Billie say I'll warm up when I gain weight.

“She knows you're here, you know.”

I stand up from the bushes. “Oh. Um sorry. I wasn't doing anything. Just…sorry.”

“You're here every day.” The woman wraps a scarf around her neck and zips her coat up.

“Yeah. I—” I turn to leave.

“Don't go. She needs you.”

I stare at her. She has kind eyes.

“Tomorrow my shift starts at six o'clock in the morning. She could use a friend. Maybe you can go and talk to her.”

“I'd like that,” I say.

“You okay?” she asks.

I'm getting a little tired of people asking me that. But I nod. I'm going to see my family.

I
get to the hospital before six o'clock and wait. She pulls up in a hybrid and shuffles down the frozen walk toward the doors. She looks my way and waves me over. I follow her.

“I'm Catalina.” She pulls back her long black hair into a ponytail and slips on a white coat.

“'Tis the season, Dr. Ramirez,” a man says, passing Catalina in the hallway, handing her a bunch of charts. “Curtain one, alcohol poisoning. Curtain two, salmonella—dumb bastards made homemade eggnog. Every Goddamn year,” he whispers.

Catalina shrugs.

“Curtain six”—the man looks at the chart—“you
don't even wanna know.”

“Ho-ho-ho,” Catalina says dryly and flips through the patients' charts. “Ewww,” she says.

“Yep. Told you so. See you tomorrow.” He winks. “Happy Rounds to you, Ramirez.”

Catalina hands me a hot chocolate.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Follow me.” She turns on her heel. We push past the chaos of the emergency room and walk down a quiet hallway. “Technically only family is allowed in. So you're family, okay?” she says.

“Yes,” I say. I don't even hesitate.

She leads me down the hall. “She can hear, you know.”

“Will she get better?” I ask.

She looks at the chart. “She's emerging. She's starting to respond to things we say and physical touch. We hope it's today or tomorrow. The sooner she wakes up, the better.”

“After that?” I ask. “Where does she go?”

“All the kids…” Her voice trails off. “All the kids they find in the Garden are taken to Willow Springs on suicide watch. These cases are pretty sad,” she says. “She has no family to contact.”

I hold Nicole's postcards in my hand.

“Come on.” Catalina leads me to Nicole's bedside and then leaves me there.

“Hey, Nicole.”

She looks like she's just in a deep sleep. I look at the window and can see where my nose and fingers left prints on the pane.

I lay my head on Nicole's bed and close my eyes, pretending I'm her—stuck in silence. I listen to the sounds of the hospital: footsteps patter in a distant hallway, machines beep, telephones ring, somebody breathes heavily, somebody says a prayer.

The room smells like ammonia and cinnamon spice incense. Some carolers jingle-bell down the hallways. I don't think anybody should allow carolers into a hospital at Christmastime. It's pretty depressing.

“Hi,” I say. “I wasn't around for the first few days because I fell asleep. Big surprise, right? You'd think I have some weird sleep disorder.”

The carolers stand in the doorway and belt out “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” jingling bells and wearing stupid Santa hats. When they finish, the other patients offer them quiet applause.

“You know, Christmas was probably in September,
not December. In the year seven
B.C
.—the year most people think Jesus was born—Saturn and Jupiter moved to within a degree of each other when he was born. It's only ever happened three times in the history of the world. I mean, it's probably happened a lot more, but only three times since man has started counting. Anyway, if we take all the facts, it looks like Christmas was mid-September.”

Silence.

“I'm volunteering at the library. In the afternoons.” I sigh. “I kinda needed access to computers and stuff.”

Silence.

“I'm studying at this alternative ed high school. The shelter doesn't give us much of a choice. We've got to volunteer and study to stay. So my classmates are mostly pregnant teens, ex-felons, and runaways. Probably the only place I'd have a real shot at homecoming queen. Funny. I don't miss high school. And at this school, everybody's pretty laid-back. It's kinda nice to be anonymous. It's nice to be Jeopardy.

“I think I got on some homeschoolers' list, though, by accident. Last week, the Boise homeschooler association invited me and my ‘guardian' to an ice-cream social. They
want to make sure the homeschooled kids don't come out all socially retarded or something. As if high school did wonders for my social skills, right?”

I pull Nicole's blankets up and take her hand in mine. “Please,” I say. “Please wake up.”

Her hand remains limp. Lifeless.

I clear my throat. “About the postcards.” I pull out her plastic bag. “I'm sorry I lied. I just didn't want—” What? I didn't want her to know everything she believed in was a lie? She was bound to find out sometime. Why did I lie?

“It's just. It's just sometimes lies aren't all that bad. And maybe your mom does that to give you hope.” I clear my throat. “Maybe she's trying to make up for something. So she created a dream. Kind of like my dad with the box of stuff.”

I sit with her in silence. There's nothing to say. Not really. “I miss you,” I finally say. “I miss your stories.” I lay my head back down on her bed and close my eyes. I listen to the evenness of her breathing and try to think back to where everything went so wrong.

Genesis, I think. It was all wrong from the beginning.

“It's time to go.” Catalina taps my shoulder. “You can
come back tomorrow—I have a six
A.M
. shift again.”

I squeeze Nicole's hand and say, “It wasn't your fault, you know. That he died.

“I'm trying to find where he is. So he just doesn't become a John Doe, you know?” I get up to go. “It wasn't your fault. It was mine.”