We keep walking, and a little devilish voice inside my head whispers, So, Vicky, where would you rather live, all things considered? In your big, cold house with an alarm, a fence, a heated swimming pool in the backyard, and central air, or here?
“Why are you smiling?” E.M. asks.
“I’ll tell you someday,” I say. If we make it out of here alive.
Rudy’s apartment is the last on the hallway. E.M. puts his ear against the door before knocking. He shakes his head to tell me he can’t hear any sounds and then he knocks. The knocks are polite, considerate. Inside we hear a man yell.
E.M. grabs the doorknob and begins to shake the door. I think he wants to kick it in, until the man’s voice on the other side shouts, “Okay, okay, hold on to your shorts. I’m coming!” E.M. stops and looks at me, triumphant. “Lalo?” the man asks, or rather slurs.
“Yeah!” E.M. responds. He shrugs and lifts his eyebrows at me, then shakes the door again impatiently.
“Wait a second,” the man pleads. There’s a noise of someone fumbling clumsily with a door chain, then he opens the door. It’s Rudy, but he seems to have aged twenty years since I last saw him in the cafeteria. He looks like he’s having trouble keeping his eyes open.
E.M. steps into the apartment as if he owns the place and I follow behind him. “Hey, you’re not Lalo,” says Rudy, trying to focus. “Do I know you?”
“Where’s Mona?” E.M. asks.
To the right as we enter the apartment is the kitchen and eating area. The sink overflows with dirty dishes, and the small wooden table has a box of Cheerios that has tipped over and emptied its contents. To the left is an old corduroy sofa, a La-Z-Boy with the stuffing coming out, and cans of beer scattered around. A reality show without any sound plays on a flat-screen TV propped up on a couple of chairs. I can see three doors down the hallway between the kitchen and the living room. Only one of them is open.
Suddenly, Mona staggers out of the open door. She looks like she’s about to fall. E.M. rushes to grab her and hold her up. “Something’s wrong with her,” he says, laying her down gently in the hallway.
“Hey, I know you. You’re one of those psychos from the hospital.” Rudy stumbles back a few steps and grabs on to a kitchen chair.
“What you give her? She’s not right,” E.M. says. Mona is having trouble keeping her head up.
“She’ll be fine,” Rudy says.
I step over to Mona and hold her face so that her eyes can focus on mine. “Mona, it’s Vicky. Can you hear me?”
Rudy stumbles toward the kitchen. “I’m just gonna get a glass of water,” he says to E.M., who is watching him carefully.
“Vicky,” Mona whispers, barely audible, “I didn’t mean to.”
“It’s okay, Mona. We’re here.”
“I saw her, Vicky. I saw Lucy.” Mona’s eyes are fully open, her pupils the size of dimes. She’s animated suddenly, a current of energy traveling through her. “She lives in San Antonio with a foster family. I waited for her to come out. I knew she would.”
“Mona, you can tell me later. What did you take?”
“I waited for her to come out. I was going to take her. Then … she came out. With this lady. Lucy was skipping … pulling her hand, talking a mile a minute.”
“I found out whereabouts the kid lived,” Rudy says from the kitchen. “Cost me a thousand bucks. I drove her up there and back, and she was a mess. Needed to party a little, get her mind in a different groove, know what I mean? She’ll be okay.”
“I followed them.” Mona makes an effort to lift herself up. Her head wobbles from side to side.
“Here, stay down. Do you want a glass of water?”
E.M. hears me. He grabs the glass of water that Rudy has been holding and gives it to me. I raise Mona and try to get her to drink, but she shakes her head.
“They went to this park.” Her eyes begin to slowly shut and then she jolts herself up.
“Shhh. You can tell me later.” I dig into my pocket and take out my cell phone.
“What you doing?” It’s Rudy, alarmed.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
“Hey! No ambulances! No police!” he shouts. “She’ll be fine.”
“What you give her?” E.M. asks, moving closer to him.
“Some sweet stuff. Just enough to party. Chill.”
I turn Mona’s arm, and on the underside, there’s a purple bruise from an injection. I don’t know much about drugs, but I know this is bad.
I want to give the phone to E.M., but Mona lowers her arm. “In the park, first she got on the swings.” Her lips are so swollen she has trouble getting the words out. “I watched her. She was so happy. Sooo happy.”
Her eyes flutter and then she closes them. Her breathing gets heavier and then it stops. I drop the phone on the floor and push on her chest and she breathes again, but barely. “E.M., I think we’re losing her. Call 9-1-1!”
“No! No 9-1-1!” shouts Rudy.
E.M. kneels down and picks up my phone. What happens next is like a bad dream you try to wake up from but can’t. Rudy grabs a kitchen ax, the kind Juanita uses to dismember a chicken, and staggers toward E.M., who is concentrating on the phone. It takes me a moment to realize that is real, that the next thing I will see is an ax stuck in E.M.’s back.
“E.M.,” I gasp. I mean to shout but there’s not enough air in my lungs. But the sound I make is enough for E.M. to move. The ax misses him and comes crashing down on the back of the sofa.
E.M. stands there frozen, looking at Rudy in disbelief. Then he punches him on the jaw.
“Ow! Ow!” Rudy groans, rubbing the side of his face.
“E.M. 9-1-1,” I say.
“You broke my tooth, man,” Rudy mutters, spitting blood.
“Drop the ax,” E.M. tells him. “Why you want to kill me for?”
His words seem to remind Rudy of what he was about to do. The ax goes up again, but E.M. grabs Rudy by the throat with one powerful grip and pushes him against the wall. The ax drops and Rudy’s face goes from white to pink to red. I can’t see E.M.’s face from where I am, but I can sense his power and his rage by the bulging muscles of his neck and the steel tension in his arm.
“E.M.,” I whisper. Rudy’s feet in their white socks are dangling off the floor. His face is turning purple. “E.M., no!” I shout.
E.M. lifts Rudy higher up the wall. Then he throws him to the floor, where Rudy immediately begins to cough and gasp and wriggle in pain like a worm cut in half. E.M. kicks the ax away and looks at me with the expression Gabriel had earlier, a look of not knowing where he is.
“9-1-1,” I remind him. He nods. He looks around for the phone. “In your other hand.” He looks at it, surprised, and then begins to call.
“Oh, oh, oh,” Rudy moans, squirming on the floor.
“Shut up!” E.M. tells him. “My friend’s hardly breathing. It looks like an overdose,” he says into the phone and then gives them the address.
Mona’s teeth begin to chatter as if she’s cold. I get a sarape hanging over the sofa and use it to cover her. E.M. goes into the back room and then comes out again. “There’s a whole drugstore back there,” he says to me, and then to Rudy, “You stole all that from the hospital?”
“Mona, can you hear me?” I ask. “Hold on. You’re going to be all right.”
Rudy is crawling, going for the ax. E.M. sees him and steps on his outstretched hand. “Okay, okay,” Rudy whimpers. “Let go. Let go.”
“Is this what you gave her?” E.M. waves a small, empty vial in front of Rudy.
“Yeah, man, yeah. Let go my hand!”
“What is it?” I ask.
“What is it?” E.M. asks Rudy, stepping harder.
“Ow, ow. Ow. It’s morphine, morphine sulfate. Let go.”
E.M. moves his foot and Rudy crawls away from him. He leans back against the kitchen wall, sticks his fingers inside his mouth, and comes out with a molar. “I’m gonna sue you for ruining my face,” he says
.
“Your face got ruined when you were born,” E.M. tells him.
At the exact moment the paramedics burst into the room, Mona stops breathing. One of them immediately performs CPR. E.M. and I stand in front of the kitchen table. When Mona begins to cough and gag, we both exhale, relieved. “You know what she took?” the second paramedic asks.
“She injected morphine. I don’t know how much.” I point to the vial on the kitchen table. Rudy wants the paramedics to look at his throat and hand and tooth. They ignore him.
Two police officers come through the open door. One of them scans the room and speaks directly to me. “Who called 9-1-1?”
“We did,” I say, taking a step toward her and reading her badge. Her last name is Longoria, just like my teacher at Reynard. “Our friend overdosed or had a reaction. She injected morphine. The drugs are in the back bedroom.”
Officer Longoria motions to her partner, who heads down the hall to the bedroom. “Who’s he?” She gestures to Rudy.
“He’s the one that stole the drugs from Lakeview,” E.M. tells her.
“He busted my tooth. Tried to choke me.” Rudy points a crooked finger at E.M.
“Self-defense,” E.M. says.
“Oh, yeah?” Officer Longoria stares at E.M.’s tattoos suspiciously.
The paramedics have Mona on a stretcher and are wheeling her out. “Can I ride with her?” I ask one of them.
Officer Longoria says, “No, I need you to stay here and explain all this.”
“Take her to Lakeview,” I tell the paramedics. “She’s a patient there. Her doctor is Dr. Desai. I need to go with my friend,” I say to Officer Longoria.
“In a few minutes,” she says. “Let’s see if we can clear all this up.”
The police hold all of us for an eternity while we explain what happened. There really is a drugstore of illegal pills in the bedroom. It is clear that many of them were stolen from patients at Lakeview. Finally, we are done and we can go. Officer Longoria gives Rudy a wet dish towel to wipe his nose and then handcuffs him.
I want E.M. to drive fast to Lakeview, but I’m also afraid to get there. I’m afraid of what is to become of Mona, and I am afraid for Gabriel, if the voice is angry at him for disobeying it. At one point E.M. stretches out his hand, the one he used to punch Rudy, and it is shaking. “I wanted to kill him,” he says, opening and closing his fist. “It was so hard not to squeeze his life out.”
“Good thing you didn’t,” I say.
I lean my head back and feel the air rushing through the open window. It is cloudy and the streets are wet. It rained at some point while we were in the apartment.
I close my eyes and speak to Gabriel’s God.
Help Mona get well, please. And Gabriel — let him be. You don’t need to talk to him. He’ll find you on his own. I’ll help him look for you. We’ll search for you together. You need people like him. You need people like me.
“We’re here,” E.M. says. He has pulled up in front of the emergency entrance. “I’ll go park the car.” I open the door and step out. “Hey, Huichi,” he calls after me. I stop. “You did good … for a spoiled rich girl.”
“Thanks,” I say. “You did good too.”
I check with the nurses in the emergency room to make sure Mona is there. The nurse tells me she was admitted and is being taken care of. Her condition is still critical. Then I take the elevator to the fifth floor to see Gabriel.
Antonio is sitting alone in the reception area in front of the nurses’ station. He stands when he sees me. “He’s sleeping,” he tells me. “When I saw him, one moment he is here and the next his mind goes. But when he was here, he said yes to the medication.”
“That’s good,” I say.
“Yes, it’s good.”
I tell him about Gabriel’s voice, about what it was asking him to do, about the conversation I had with him before E.M. and I went searching for Mona.
“Thank you,” he says.
We sit next to each other. Antonio says, “I saw Juanita last night. Did she tell you?”
“No,” I say, surprised, delighted.
“I pick her up at her friend’s and bring the two of them to my house. They like it. They like Chona, and Chona like Juanita. We decide to move her tomorrow. She comes to live with us, with me and Chona … and Gabriel.”
“Yes.” I try to say more, but I can’t. There’s a knot of tears in my throat that is keeping me from speaking.
After a while I go down to the ER and wait with E.M. for news on Mona. Another hour passes before Dr. Desai emerges. Her hug is long and strong. “Her condition is delicate but her vital signs are getting stronger. She’s very lucky. If the paramedics hadn’t gotten there to administer the overdose reversal medication … I don’t know. You found her just in time. And you, Vicky? How are you?”
“I’m all right,” I said. She keeps her eyes fixed on mine. “I’ll be all right,” I repeat. “And Gabriel?”
She frowns. Then, “He has a long hard road ahead of him. But he’s willing to accept treatment. The antipsychotics will take a few days, but he took them. Did you have something to do with that? Margie said you came to see him this morning.”
“Maybe,” I say. Maybe I did. Maybe my words somehow reached Gabriel.
“I want you to come see me.” She pauses. “No matter what happens here. I want to see you next week.”
“All right,” I say. I think of my father. What will he be like next week? If he says no, will I have the strength to insist on seeing Dr. Desai? If I’m as tired then as I am now, the answer is no, I won’t have the strength to fight him. But maybe I can find it again.
“Did you pick up the prescription I left for you?”
“Yes. But I didn’t seem to need any pills today,” I say.
“Adrenaline will do that to you,” she says. She hugs me again and I hold on to her, afraid to let her go. Or maybe she’s afraid to let go of me.
E.M. and I wait, I don’t know for how long. I go through the day and everything that happened. The drive with my father and all I said to him. Did my words hurt him? Was I truthful or just getting back at him? I decide the words were true and came from somewhere deep in darkness, and it was good for them to see the light of day.
“Vicky!”
I open my eyes and see Becca walking toward me. Behind her comes Father. “How did you know I was here?” I say.
I stand and we hug. “Miguel came to get me at the airport and told me about you taking off with some guy.” She glances down at E.M., who grins at her. “Anyway, you told Miguel you needed to come to Lakeview to see a friend who was sick, so I asked him if we could come straight here.” She leans close to me. “He and I had a little talk.”
Father stands next to Becca. “Hello,” I say to him.
He nods. In that small nod I see that he respects me for what I said in the car, and maybe even believes some of it to be true, but he’s not happy with what I’ve done. And yet he’s here with Becca to see me, to support me. For my father, that is huge.
E.M. stands and offers his hand. My father takes it, reluctantly. “How is your friend?” Father says. He seems to have difficulty with the word friend.
“The friend I came to see this morning is on the fifth floor. He’s sleeping. We’re waiting to hear about Mona, my other friend. She’s in the ER.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Becca asks.
“She overdosed,” I say, looking at my father. He shakes his head. “Some things happened this afternoon that I have to tell you about.”
My father finds a chair and sits. Becca and I sit next to him. Becca says, “I like your new haircut.” She giggles.
“I could get you one just like it,” I say.
“So what happened?” my father asks before Becca can say anything more.
I’m about to answer when E.M. jumps in. “Your daughter, man, she’s brave. She saved a life today, maybe two. When we got here, she convinced Gabriel — he’s the one up in the psych wa
rd — to stay in the hospital because he was ready to leave and go out and get himself killed maybe. Then we went looking for Mona and got there just as she was about to expire from an overdose, but first we had to subdue her junkie boyfriend.”
“Expire? Subdue?” I ask, smiling. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard E.M. put so many big words together.
E.M. ignores me. “So that’s two lives, right. Gabriel, because she got him to stay when he was ready to go out and die, and Mona, because we got there in time and the paramedics pulled her out of the overdose. Maybe three, ’cause she kept me from killing the worm that gave Mona the drugs.” He stops then, remembering. “Not to mention that she jumped in the rapids and pulled me out of the river back at the ranch when I was drowned. So how many lives saved does that make?” E.M. counts with his fingers. “Four. Four lives are here today because of her. Not too bad, verdad?”
My father looks at me the way he is looking at my mother in one of their wedding pictures: like he can’t believe that she is with him now and will be with him forever, that she has chosen to be with him out of all the men in the known world.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” he says.
I tell them about Lakeview and the ranch, and I can see in my father’s face his struggle to understand how it all was good for me, was needed. About an hour after my father and Becca arrive, a man in light-green scrubs comes out of the swinging doors that lead to the ER.
“You all are here for Domonique Salas?”
“Yes,” I answer, standing up. E.M. stands as well.
“She’s not out of the woods yet. But we got her stable and awake. You can go in and talk to her for a few minutes.”
“She going to be okay?” E.M. asks.
“Good as new,” the doctor says. “After her body is clear of toxins, I’ll hand her over to Dr. Desai.”
“Thank you,” I say. The doctor nods and walks back the way he came. He looks exhausted.