“I don’t need it either,” he said, reaching for me. “There isn’t anything I need that’s not here.”
The leaves crinkled under our bodies. Ash smoothed my hair and looked me in the eyes for a long time and then he kissed me. I ran my hands over the muscles on his shoulders, rubbed lightly along the back of his neck. We both kept our eyes open until we were too close and couldn’t see anything. His face was a blur. And then his hands were all over me. I helped him peel off my jacket, shirt, and pants and then he was inside of me. The carpet of leaves felt spongy and thick at first until we moved and I could feel tree roots stabbing me in the back. I winced and arched away.
“Is this the time I’m supposed to say I was thinking about this the whole time I was in that nature camp?” he said, lying on top of me. “Because I did think about this. The whole time.”
“You’re still a jerk,” I said.
“Almost the whole time,” he said.
“Uh, hey,” said Hope.
I jumped up and held my clothes in front, like blocking the view would make it seem like nothing had happened.
“You got anything left or you bogarting as usual?”
Ash reached for his pants and slowly stepped into them. He didn’t try to hide himself, acted like it was normal to be there, his small clamshell ass in Hope’s face. He took out a joint and passed it to her. I was in my clothes by the time it got to me and I handed it over to Fleet, who was fussing with Tiny’s cage, which was dented on one side. She reached inside and put him inside the sleeve of her sweater, where he dug in his pearly sliver of nails. I attached Root’s leash to my ankle and sat next to her, passing up on the joint. I had enough to think about, trying to take apart whatever had just happened. I tipped my head back and could see fog starting to filter through the tree branches above us.
chapter 16
I was lying on the dirt where we’d all passed out when I felt a slap on the bottom of my foot. A cop shined a long metal flashlight into my eyes and I reached for my shoes. Ash had forgotten to set the clock.
“Move on. No camping. You have ten seconds to get going.”
He began counting out loud. “One. Two.” He smacked Ash’s foot with the back of his hand. “Three.” He moved on to Fleet and Hope. We hadn’t bothered to get into sleeping bags so we stood and staggered away from the trees. “Four. Five.” Hope started saying that we were hanging out, not camping, it was a public park and we had a right to be there, but Ash grabbed for her arm and she stopped. There was no point bullshitting him, except to wait for Fleet, who was still curled on her side, “Six,” he yelled. Tiny cuddled in her arm. The cop poked the bottom of her foot again, but she didn’t budge. “Seven!”
“Better tell your friend to get up.” The cop rested his hands on his belt, near where his gun was holstered tight to his body. “Her ten seconds is almost over.”
I knelt down in the leaves next to Fleet and shook her shoulder, but she didn’t move so I touched her cheek, halfway between a pat and a slap. Her face was warm. I waited for her to tell me to get off her, give her a second, and I would say she couldn’t have that because the cop was about to cite us. Tiny backed up and hunched himself into a ball.
“Ash, help me get her up,” I said.
“You kids got dogs, now you got rats,” said the cop. His knees cracked as he bent down toward Fleet. He put his knuckles on her shoulder and pressed, like he was knocking.
“She’s really out,” he said, and reached for his radio. “10-52, east end.”
He aimed the flashlight at Fleet’s face and felt for her pulse. Tiny stayed on her arm, until the cop smacked him with the flashlight and he scrambled into the leaves. He dragged his right side where the cop had hit him. I tried to grab him, but he skittered away and it was too dark to see where he’d gone. I was still trying to make out where he was when an ambulance drove up on the grass, a spotlight aimed at Fleet. Two men, one carrying a small suitcase, ran to her. He took out a stethoscope, rolled her onto her back and cocked his head while he listened to her chest. He pried open one of her eyes with his fingers.
“She’s breathing, but it’s shallow,” he said. Then he turned to the three of us. “What did she ingest?”
“Nothing,” said Ash.
“Nothing isn’t going to put her out like this,” he said. “If you care about your friend, and I don’t know the answer to that, you’ll tell us what she’s on.”
“She’s not like that,” I said, loud. “She didn’t take anything besides what we all had.” Of course, she could have gotten anything in the park, but Fleet usually knew where her stuff came from. She didn’t buy from people in the park who would pass off anything, angel dust, X, doses cut with chalk or talcum. On the surface she could be friendly, huff whatever was offered, hang with anyone new at the shelter, but in the back of her mind she worried that they would turn on her. That’s why she had Tiny. Rats are smarter than dogs, she said. They had extra intuition. She’d said she was going to appoint him as official taster, give him food we found and throw out anything he refused to eat. He would know if something was wrong.
Despite the siren and the lights, Fleet still didn’t move. I thought about Shane, who’d spent his last minutes with me. Fleet didn’t know I was there with her either, but her eyes were closed, not staring up at the black sky. You’d think the medics would know enough not to leave her on her back, where she could suck whatever she heaved up into her lungs.
The man with the stethoscope reached for Fleet’s arm. “I’m going to give you something you’re not going to like,” he said, and tapped her wrist again hard.
“This will send her into withdrawal,” he said to us, loading up a syringe. “But it saves lives. We’ll take her in as soon as she’s stabilized.”
“She doesn’t shoot up or anything,” said Ash, “so whatever you’re giving her, she doesn’t need it.”
The cop told Ash to stand back and he picked up Fleet’s backpack and started taking out everything: her clothes, little wads of paper with food for Tiny, a few books, a plastic envelope that held what she called her important papers. He dropped them on the grass. There was a single dollar bill, more scraps of paper, a two-inch pencil stub.
“Anyone know her next of kin?” he said, shining his flashlight on the small pile he’d scattered. “Even her full name?”
“She has a mom in the East Bay, I think,” said Ash.
“You have a phone number?” said the cop.
Ash shook his head. I wasn’t sure what her last name was. Whatever, it didn’t matter. Fleet had told me about her foster mom. She worked for the city, as a clerk. I couldn’t remember which city. But I’d seen a picture of her once, sitting at a desk with a cigarette in her hand, her stubby legs crossed. I could probably find the spot where that picture was hidden in her backpack. But she and her mom were not talking right now. She’d told Fleet she wanted to give it a rest, live her life and Fleet could do as she pleased. And don’t expect any money or come calling for a place to stay. Fleet had gone to so many schools and she was tired of people who wanted to fix her. At least she told the truth, Fleet said.
“We are her next of kin,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m sure you are,” said the cop.
The medics, one at her feet, the other at her shoulders, lifted her onto a stretcher and rolled it over to the ambulance. Fleet didn’t move, even when they stuck another needle in her arm and held up a bag of clear liquid that began slowly dripping into her body.
“She’s going to General,” said the cop. “Since you’re her kin, you might want to follow.”
I tried to convince Hope to take Root but she said she was going to look for Tiny and then she had work to do. I reminded her that Root was usually good for work, that tourists gave more money if you had a dog. But she said she was too tired to drag him around the street all day. She didn’t know how to take care of anyone.
We tied up Root outside the hospital and I twisted a note around his collar. waiting.
I don’t bite. It was all I could do, but I thought about how I’d found him, alone, tied to a pole on the street. What if someone took him? I had to tell myself not to think about that. I was at the hospital, someone’s next of kin. But I had no idea what I was supposed to do. It hadn’t occurred to me, not seriously, that Fleet was going to die, until I walked into the hospital. The waiting room was smaller than I expected, especially for a hospital the size of a city. We had followed the signs, turning left and right and edging around sides of buildings, past offices where they took care of one single part of your body, kidneys or lungs or ears, until we found the door marked emergency.
I’d been in a hospital before to see my mother, but not in the emergency section. We had to take off our backpacks and put them through an x-ray machine. Then a security guard opened them up and sifted through our junk. He took the pocketknife Ash kept in his boot and told him he’d have to check it.
“No weapons,” he said, pointing to a sign written in about twelve languages. In case you didn’t get it, there was a picture of a gun with a line through it. Same with a bottle and a flaming cigarette. Another had a cartoon of a tiny baby lying in one huge hand, with the words safe surrender site. Did it mean you could have your baby there and leave, or maybe dump off a kid that you didn’t want? It bothered me that someone could drive up and leave a baby. They probably had a room where all the babies waited in cribs, screaming, expecting that someone would come and get them.
More signs said the room was only for patients and family, that we were being videotaped, that anyone could get care even if they didn’t have money. No cell phones. No littering. Rows of small black metal chairs sat around the edges of the room and there was a TV bolted to the ceiling blaring a local news show. Most of the light in the room came from three giant vending machines.
We got in line behind a man with a blue paper mask on his face, leaning heavily on a woman who looked like she was his mother. They had the same coffee-colored skin and creases around their eyes, except his were almost closed with pain. He coughed and she adjusted his mask and then patted his hair. A tall man with one crutch got in line after us. He kept shifting the crutch from side to side and groaning.
A nurse came out from behind the desk and took the arm of the man with the mask, guiding him toward a set of doors that automatically opened as she approached.
“We’ll get you registered inside,” she said. He looked confused, but then he nodded. The woman who was with him gripped his hand and I could tell she must be his wife and not his mother.
“Next,” called the woman behind the desk.
Ash explained that we were trying to find out about Fleet, that we were family. The woman tilted her head to one side, like she was going to say something about how stupid did we think she was. But instead she asked us to sign in on a clipboard and said that a doctor would come and talk to us when they were finished with Fleet. My whole body had felt like a balled-up fist and when she said Fleet’s name I relaxed a little. It meant she was alive. The woman at the desk typed the information Ash gave her into a computer.
“You’re her brother?” she said.
“Step,” he said. “That’s why we have different last names.”
“And you?” she said, looking at me.
“We’re married,” Ash said.
“Okay,” said the woman. “You need to sign too.”
I stared at Ash’s back while he talked to her. It felt like I’d known him my whole life, but there was no way I’d ever call him my husband, even though it’s what Hope said so guys would leave her alone. Pizza John was her husband and he was only around for a week. I thought back to what happened with Ash last night. My husband, at least in the hospital. It still didn’t sound right. Family. That’s what he’d told the woman.
“Maybe you should sit down,” she said, looking at me.
The bright lights, the sharp smell of disinfectant, hospital food, were making me dizzy and off-center. I put my head back against the wall. I was supposed to be thinking about Fleet, but I was trapped in the whirring sensations around me. I couldn’t think straight. Everyone in the waiting room was hoping someone would fix what was wrong, but I knew that might not happen. This was a place where everything changed.
“She’ll be okay,” Ash said, but when he turned around he could see I was holding onto the wall. I made my way over to a row of chairs. Ash sat next to me, but he was not trying to calm me down. My head was about to explode, blow up into a million pieces and settle in with all the diseases and germs and broken people in the room. I couldn’t calm Ash down either, even if we were supposedly married.
I was panic breathing, but I closed my eyes until it slowed down. Ash put his hand on my leg. I snuck a look at him and he seemed far away. He could at least be telling me that Fleet was going to make it. But neither of us said anything. Ash eventually turned so he could watch the TV. I tried to force myself to sleep, but it didn’t work. I don’t know how long we sat there. The swinging doors finally opened and a young doctor with moles all over his face announced that he was looking for Fleet’s family.
“Over here.” I waved.
He pulled up a chair and crossed his legs. He said they had seen ten other cases of black tar heroin the past week and he figured that’s what hit Fleet. But then he’d gotten the results of her urine test.
“She was lucky we got her fast,” he said. “She probably swallowed some combo, a pill laced with synthetic opiate. We’ll see how she does, watch her for more seizures.”
“How did she get that?” I said. “We were with her.” Which was mostly true, except when I was off rolling in the leaves with Ash.
“It’s in pills, you name it, and we’re seeing it cut into heroin. Someone sold it to her, or she found it,” the doctor said. “She tested positive for one of the benzos. And Fentanyl. I expect you know what I’m talking about.”
“She wouldn’t eat a pill,” I said. Ash was quiet, his hand still sitting on my leg.
“We’ll have to watch her closely for a while, but we are cautiously optimistic,” said the doctor. “There were no track marks that we could see. But you tell me what she was doing.”
“Can we go see her?” I said. It couldn’t be good that he used two words that didn’t go together. Cautiously optimistic. It was something people did when they wanted to throw you off. Even I knew that.
“She’s unconscious right now,” he said. “It will be a few hours before we know anything more. And the blood work will take a few days. I’ll let her know you came by. You are?”
“Ash and Maddy,” said Ash. “Her step-brother. And his wife. My wife. Tell Fleet we’re out here waiting,” said Ash.
“You kids live in the park?” said the doctor, who wasn’t far past being a kid himself.
“We do okay,” said Ash.
“Your friend didn’t look okay,” he said. “But I’m not going to lecture you.” He sat in a chair next to Ash. “Well, yes, I am. I see people in here all the time who are addicted or they got fired or thrown out of the house and it’s too hard to climb back and start again. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what to tell them. But you kids, when I see an OD like this one, it bothers me in a whole different way.” He took a deep breath. “I hope I won’t see you in here again.”
“Message received,” said Ash.
“We need to watch her and reevaluate her neurological status when the drugs wear off,” said the doctor. “That will give us more information.”
“We’ll stay,” I said.
“Can you fill in some blanks on the forms?” the doctor said. He took a paper from his pocket, unfolded and smoothed it. “You know the name of her parents or guardians?”
Ash and I looked at each other and said nothing. What were we supposed to do? I didn’t know how to reach her foster mom. If I did, would Fleet want to talk to her? Was she going to say, “Hey, I got poisoned, but don’t worry. Like you ever did.”?
I was relieved that Ash didn’t try to make
up their names.
“Her age?” the doctor said. “I assumed she lived in the park where the ambulance crew found her? You have a last known address?”
“She’s twenty-one,” said Ash. “She stayed in the park.” He corrected himself. “Stays.”
The doctor said he’d come back when he had something to report. He said the woman at the desk could get us water, that she also had a flier with some resources, if we wanted that. Ash put his arm around me and it seemed like he was shivering.
“What?” I said. He looked away.
“I should be here, not Fleet,” he said.
“You knew all this time what was going on with her?” I said, and pushed his arm away.
Ash said it wasn’t like that, he’d gotten one dose from the Colorado guys. One fucking pill. They’d said it was a downer. Fleet wanted it, so he’d handed it over. He was talking in a soft voice because people in the waiting room were looking over at us. How was he supposed to know? He’d take it back if he could. He’d swallow it himself.
I couldn’t look at him, but I put my hand on his arm. Fleet was lying in the hospital and Ash was sitting next to me, alive. It didn’t make sense. I turned away and looked at the TV news. A woman shot dead in Hayward, a bus crash on the 101, a hit and run in the financial district. The news lady, wearing a red suit coat, sat at a desk in front of photos of the murder scene and then the accident. A million terrible things were happening right now and Fleet in the hospital, unconscious, was just one of them.
I told Ash I was going to check on Root, mostly because I had to get away from him. Root was asleep, like nothing had happened, but he jumped up when he saw me. I had my head against his neck when Ash ran out to say that Fleet was awake. She knew her name and what year it was. The doctor said she needed to stay in the hospital, but she was going to be alright. I tried not to laugh when Ash told me, because she was never going to be alright. She started off whacked. But the test showed she didn’t have brain damage. I yanked Root into my lap and kissed him on the head. Ash handed me a bottle of water and the flier “Homeless Connections,” which the woman at the desk had given him. I tossed it on the pavement where Root had been tied up and we left to go back to the park.
At the Edge of the Haight Page 13
