The Girl Without a Name (17 page)

J
ason is whistling again. “What are you up to for Thanksgiving?” he asks.

“Going over to Scotty's. How about you? You going down to see your parents?”

“Nah. Going over to Dominic's.”

I sit up in my chair. “Shut the front door.”

Jason raises one eyebrow. “You can say the word ‘fuck,' you know.”

“Seriously, Dominic's house? As what? His good friend?”

“Boyfriend.” He shrugs, a smile tugging his lips. “He came out to his parents last week.”

I turn back to my review book. “That ought to be a comfortable meal.”

Dr. Berringer joins us to round then. “How about we start with Chloe for a change?” he asks.

She sits in her bed, reading a long letter with pages of flowery handwriting. She has gained two more pounds, which is a leap for mankind when it comes to Chloe. Five more and she can be an outpatient. It's a one-eighty-degree turnaround from her hunger-strike stance.

“Don't even say it,” she warns us. “I know what the scale says, and I don't want to dwell on it.” She has on thick, black eyeliner, which means she must be feeling a millimeter better.

I mime like I'm zipping my lips and earn a black-eyelined eye roll. “I'm happy for you. Am I allowed to say that?”

She allows herself a smile. “You want to know my secret?”

“Sure,” I answer.

Dr. Berringer busies himself with her chart, giving us space, and Jason stands by him.

“I made the decision that I
had
to get out of here. Even if I didn't feel well, I had to
pretend
to feel well so I could get out of here.”

“Fake it 'til you make it kind of thing?”

“Whatever you want to call it,” she says.

“We don't have to label it. Just keep it up.”

Another eye roll.

We spend another few minutes going over her various therapies, talking about her latest family visit, then it's off to the next patient.

“What do you think she meant by that?” I ask Dr. Berringer, once we're well down the hallway. “
Pretending
to feel well?”

He shakes his head with a cockeyed grin, his own version of an eye roll. “You know what, Zoe? I've given up trying to figure out that girl.”

While this may be true, it seems an odd admission for a psychiatrist, and I'm still pondering this when we get to Jason's patient Manuel, a sixteen-year-old who moved from Puerto Rico as a freshman. Decided to kill himself when his parents read text messages from his boyfriend and discovered he was gay. Luckily, he went the pill route. One good stomach pumping and he was no worse for wear, but he earned himself a stay at the County. Jason shared his own coming-out story with him. When his mother didn't speak to him for a year. Manuel called him “simpatico.” Jason fairly glowed. For the very first time, I could see why Jason went into psychiatry.

“Manuel,” Jason says, “how're you doing?”

“Good.”

“Did you see your parents yet?” Dr. Berringer asks.

“Yeah, they come in this morning,” he says with a heavy accent.

“How'd it go?” Jason asks.

He shrugs. “Not too bad, actually. They say they not exactly happy about it, but they going to get used to it.”

A semi-happy coming-out story. We spend a few more minutes with him, plan out his pending discharge, then make our way over to see Candy. She had been lethargic but responsive all weekend and through this morning, when I saw her. But when we reach her room, she is lying stiffly on the bed, moaning.

“What…how…?” I stammer. “This morning she was—”

“Not like this,” Dr. Berringer answers, madly flipping through her chart. “Did someone give her sedation?”

“No. I didn't order any.”

“Jason?”

“No. I didn't hear she was agitated or anything.”

“Aaaagh,” she moans, repetitively, her mouth cartoonishly open. Not like she's in pain, more like a motor.

“She was so much better this morning,” I say.

“Aaaagh. Aaaagh. Aaaagh.” It sounds like a mantra.

Dr. Berringer shines a penlight in her pupils and lifts up her head to test for meningitis. No sign of stiffness there. He crinkles his lips, like he just tasted something sour. “This is a fluid state, Zoe. Things can go up and down in an hour.”

“Yeah, but…” I shake my head, at a loss for words.

“Hit her with some more Risperdal. If it doesn't work, we're trying ECT.”

“You think it's time?” I ask.

The room answers with her moaning.

T
he little girl bounds up to me, her sparkly red-beaded cornrows swaying around her head. A smile fills up her face, and she cradles a mound of pills in her hands, so many they are slipping through her fingers.

“No!” I call out. “Daneesha!”

But before I can stop her, she pops the whole handful in her mouth and starts chewing.

She chews forever, her dazzling smile fading, dimming. I watch her helplessly then, as her chewing slows.

“Daneesha?”

She stares at me with confusion and sadness, her head falling, her knees bending, collapsing to the floor like a dropped puppet. I run to her, try to lift her up, but she's too heavy.

“Dr. Goldman,” she whispers, her lips glazed with blood.

I lean in to hear her. The bitter scent of the pills hangs around her mouth.

“Dr. Goldman?”

“What?” I am an inch from her face.

Her eyes are flickering shut, but she opens them wide for one second. “Find my sister.”

I
'm halfway through some god-awful cafeteria chili when my phone rings. I don't recognize the number.

“Zoe? It's Dr. Koneru.”

I take a quick swallow. “Oh, hi!”

“I'm calling about that picture you brought me. You remember, with the scar?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You know, it was bothering me, this picture. I couldn't stop thinking that I'd seen it somewhere before.”

“Okay?”

“So I was looking through my files, and I found one that was very similar. From a girl who died of an overdose two years ago.”

“Really?”

“Yes, how can I…?” I hear her fumbling with the phone. “Can I text you the picture?”

“Sure, that'd be great.”

Her voice echoes onto speaker. “Wait, I can't figure out this stupid phone. My daughter said ‘It's so easy, Mom,' but it's not easy at all. I like to just push the buttons and you talk to someone. I don't need all of these apps things—”

The phone quacks in my ear. “Wait,” I interrupt her. “I think it came through.” I examine the picture. There's no doubt. Same circle, same scar. “Is it on the ankle?”

“Left ankle. Just like your girl.”

Some nurses walk by with fried chicken, the smell wafting up from their trays. “Do you have a name on her?”

“Yes I do. Eliza Sapierski. Sixteen years old.” She gives me her date of birth and medical record number. “She was Jane Doe for a long time until someone called the hospital looking for a missing girl. She was an overdose, so I don't think the police worked very hard on it.”

“Who ID'd her?” I ask, shifting in my chair and somehow spilling chili on my sleeve in the process.

“It was a cousin, I think. The girl was adopted.”

“Adopted?”

“Yes, that's what I have written down. It's my own file system I keep. I don't have that much information, but you can get the chart from Medical Records if you need it. I'll text you her photo at least.”

I have an hour before we round, so I throw away the rest of my chili and decide to make a trip down there.

Medical Records is a stuffy little room, full of anguished doctors in cubicles laboring over piles of charts. And of course, we doctors always leave them until the last minute, when we're fifty charts late and about to lose privileges, before venturing down into this circle of hell. It could be a scene from a Bosch painting.

An officious, middle-aged woman with a diamond-shaped birthmark on her cheek grabs my slip with the patient's information. “Eliza Sapierski,” she reads off, and takes a quick look at her computer screen. “We'll have to get these in Archives.”

“Archives? Really? It was only two years ago.”

“Archives,” she repeats.

“How long will it take to get it from Archives?”

“Ten to fourteen days,” she says as if she's given this answer a hundred times already today, which she probably has. I take my sheet back and slump down in one of the chairs. A GI doctor nods at me and continues his rapid-fire dictation.

I give Scotty a quick call, and he confirms he's found nothing on the scar.

“Just some scar fetish sites came up. So thanks a lot for that one.”

I laugh.

“And I got ahold of some more banks, too.”

“Banks?”

“Yeah, you know, for the Treasury bonds.”

The GI guy fumbles through another chart, whipping through pages, dashing off signatures. “I thought you were done with all that.”

“Yeah, I just gave it one more try. Called some places in Syracuse. They said they have a record of his account but can't do anything without his death certificate.”

“Hmm. I have no idea where that would be.”

“Yeah, me neither. I'd probably have to get another one from city hall, and that's going to be a fucking nightmare.”

“And so continues the hunt for the phantom Treasury bonds.”

“Yeah,” he says with such utter dejection that I could hug him through the phone line.

“Well, keep up the good fight,” I encourage him. As we hang up, a doctor plops an armful of charts onto the desk behind me. Grumbling, he cracks open a chart. I decide to call Detective Adams to let him know about Eliza Sapierski.

“Zoe!” he answers. “Got an update on Candy.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, crunching again. The man must live on potato chips. “I got in touch with the adoption agency that Candy and Janita were processed through. It's a place called New Promises, in Toronto.”

“Where Heaven's from,” I say.

“That's right. It appears they were sent to a foster family in Toronto and adopted soon after. But then the trail goes cold.”

“Who adopted them?”

“Brown. Linda and James Brown. But the number they gave us is disconnected. So we're still looking. Isn't easy. There's fifty-seven thousand Browns in Canada.”

I grab my patient list and write some notes on the back. New Promises. Linda/James Brown. “But I don't get it. They just lost track of them?”

“It appears so. The woman at the agency said it's not that uncommon. Sometimes a family moves, and they don't really keep tabs.” Someone calls out his name, and he shouts back at them. “Zoe, I have to get going.”

“Wait, before you go,” I say. “I found something, too.” I tell him about Eliza Sapierski and the scar. “I can text the picture to you, if you want.”

“Go ahead. I can have someone look into it, but honestly, Zoe, it's not a lot to go on. A similar scar. There could be a million reasons for that.”

“Maybe. But it's weird, isn't it? And she's adopted, too.”

“True. But it's still not much of a link.” His name is called out again, this time with annoyance. “Okay, I really do have to go. Just caught a case. But I'll let you know if anything comes up.”

The answer jumps out at me while I'm sitting in the library.

Serotonin syndrome.

I know the answer before I even look at the choices. Not catatonia. Serotonin syndrome. I dial Dr. Berringer's number as fast as my fingers can dial.

Hi, you've reached Dr. Berringer. I'm not here right now…

Grabbing my satchel, I run up to the floor, hoping to catch him before he leaves for the day. When I get there, he's on his way out, buttoning his long navy coat.

“Serotonin syndrome!” I blurt out, breathless from racing down the hall.

He loops a merlot-colored scarf around his neck. “I assume you're talking about Candy. And yes, I've considered it.”

“It fits. It does. She's moaning, confused, diaphoretic. She's on an SSRI.”

“All true. And a good thought in the differential.” He spots his untied shoe and perches his foot on the chair to tie it, unraveling his scarf in the process.

“But?” I ask.

“But it doesn't fully make sense,” he says, rewrapping his errant scarf. “We just started the SSRIs. And she was only febrile once.”

“But we can't just ignore it.” I take a deep breath. “We've been focusing on catatonia. But what if it's not catatonia? What if it hasn't been all along? What if it's encephalopathy?”

He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Confused, but not catatonic?” he asks, seeming to consider it.

“Right.”

“I don't know,” he says, debating. “I've stopped her benzos. Her labs all look good. Nothing smells like encephalopathy to me.”

“Let's repeat the EEG,” I say, thinking of it just then. “If it's consistent with encephalopathy, maybe we can take off the SSRIs for a bit. Just in case it's serotonin syndrome.”

He shrugs. “Fine. It can't hurt. And we'd need one before ECT anyway.” He pulls his hand out of his pocket, looking at the blue-and-red watch. “Off to AA,” he says.

“The O-club?”

His look is puzzled for a second. “Right,” he says. “I forgot I told you about that.” He taps his watch with a resigned smile. “Can't be late.”

Christmas music, Pink Martini–style, fills the air as I browse through my e-mail in my favorite eggplant settee. Mike sits next to me, drinking coffee (he has coffee in his veins) and reading an ER board review book. No e-mail from Detective Adams yet. Googling “Eliza Sapierski,” I gather a few hits. Instagram photos of a woman making pierogis and one Vine of a thirteen-year-old doing an impressive skateboarding trick. It was from a month ago, so that can't be my girl. I add “adopted” to the search, but nothing comes up.

A young couple with matching laptops and facial rings comes in through the door. They sit at the table across from each other, unfold their laptops, then proceed to ignore each other completely. Mike coughs and turns a page while I search for New Promises next, pulling up some rehab facility in New Haven as well as the Toronto adoption agency. I plug her name in the agency's search box.

The website is a hodgepodge of photos, pretty much what you'd expect—happy youngsters and babies, with every race equally represented. They also have a staff page of headshots with “fun facts” about each person below.

His picture reveals an overweight man with a gray-white beard and some poorly treated rosacea, so I can see how this would fit. He's even got the right name for the job. Donner, and Dancer, and Prancer, and Blitzen. I flip through a few more pictures from the website. Mike stretches and puts the book down. He sits down on the edge of the settee.

“So I've made a decision,” he says.

I look up from the computer. “Okay.”

“I'm taking a couple weeks' vacation and going to stay with my mom for Thanksgiving.”

“Oh.” I'm not sure how to take this, but my stomach churns. “When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow, actually. Sort of a last-minute thing; I got a cheap flight. Sort of.”

“Well, that's nice of you. To go see her.” I'm hoping I sound supportive and not nervous.

“My brother will be there, too, and Samantha. And my mom's been bugging me.”

“Good. Definitely. You should go.”

He takes another sip and puts his cup down with a clink. “So, while I'm there, I'm probably going to meet with the urgent-care people. Get in an interview.”

I nod and notice he's looking away from me.

“You have one set up already, you mean?”

“Yes.” He meets my eyes this time.

“Okay?”

“Just to keep our options open,” he adds, “until we've come to a decision.”

“Right.” I stifle a twinge of anger that I know is misplaced. As he said, sometimes doing nothing is the same thing as doing something.

“Anyway, we'll see,” he says, standing up and leaning over my computer. “What are you looking at?”

“That adoption agency I was telling you about. New Promises.” I go back to the home page, to the montage of baby and kid pictures. “Success Stories.”

“Hey,” he says over my shoulder, pointing at the screen.

“What?”

“The blond girl. She kind of looks like that picture you showed me…”

“Oh my God, you're right.” I widen the screen to a picture of a young girl with blond, shoulder-length hair and blue eyes. Pulling up the photo Dr. Koneru texted me, I see the same smattering of freckles on her nose and the same cool blue eyes staring up at me from the dead face of Eliza Sapierski. I stand right up. “I've got to call Detective Adams.”

I'm already dialing when Mike points to his watch with a rapid head shake.

“Hello?” The detective's voice is gravelly and tired. “Zoe?”

I figure out Mike's miming then and realize it's nearly eleven. After the last texting fiasco, I did promise not to call him after nine p.m. Oops. “Hi. I got some news.” I head to the back vestibule so I don't bother the other patrons. “I just thought I should share it.”

“Okay,” he says with a groan and yawn combined. “What is it?”

“Remember Eliza Sapierski?”

He pauses so long I wonder if he's fallen back to sleep. “Hello?”

“Yeah, yeah. The girl with the scar. The adopted girl.”

“Yes. Well, she's on the New Promises website.” The laptop couple walk by me, laughing, on their way out the door.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

He clears his throat. “How sure are you that it's her, this girl?”

“I don't know—ninety percent? It's a good likeness. Plus what are the chances that they have the same scar, both ended up in Buffalo, and both were adopted? It's got to be her.”

“Yeah,” he admits. “Pretty solid reasoning.” A car idles outside with its hazards on, blinking a yellow rhythm into the rain. “I'll look into it tomorrow, okay?”