Chapter 6: Unwell
Rummaging through the garbage cans behind a Chinese restaurant, fifteen year old Kira Duchess began to try to find something that was still edible before the rest of the older kids showed up to pick through the leftovers that had been left by the adults who had already sorted through the trash earlier in the night. Out on the street, there was a hierarchy to abide by when it came to dumpster diving. The more fit you were the better food you got; the younger you were the less likely it was for you to eat something that wouldn't make you sick. More likely than not, though, if you were a young child who didn't have anyone to fend for you, you would go hungry. It had taken her a long time to get to the point where she could get some of the more choice pieces of garbage.
This restaurant was Kira's favorite one to come to on Friday nights. Tomorrow will be an Italian joint a few blocks away and Sunday would be a Japanese restaurant. That was how Kira kept track of the days, by the garbage that she picked through. That and where she slept. If it wasn't for that, she would have long ago lost track of what day it was.
Tonight she would go to the Carnegie Library here in Atlanta to sleep. She'd blend in with some of the students who were studying and find a good place to hide before they close for the night. At least it would be warm there. Thanksgiving was just around the corner and it was already getting quite cold at night. For Kira, though, it felt right chilly during the day lately as well.
Taking her cold meal of the day, Kira wrapped it up in a piece of paper and hid the food under her shirt and made sure it was tucked in so that the other kids her own age wouldn't know that she'd found her supper already. She didn't feel up to fighting for her dinner tonight. She usually won but recently she hadn't felt like herself. She was always tired and at times just lifting the dumpsters' lids seemed to be hard work lately.
No, she just wanted to get to the library, maybe find a couple of books to read through during the night, and sleep in her cubby that she had found months ago while scouting out the area when she was looking for places to sleep when it first started to get cool at night. Kira had found a panel in the ceiling in the ladies' bathroom that was loose and if she climbed onto the back of a toilet she could just barely pull herself up. Each week it was getting harder and harder to get into her hiding place. She might have to start looking for a new hide-out.
Kira pulled her backpack that she'd gotten out of the trash back at the end of the school year last summer up higher on her shoulder and started her long walk toward the library. It was starting to get dark and it would close soon and if she wanted to get to the building made of sandstone before it was locked up she needed to hurry. Otherwise she might have to go with her standby plan for Friday nights. Hospitals were great places to stay warm on weekends, too, since the waiting rooms were always full. But Kira knew better than to go to the same one too often; otherwise the guards would get suspicious.
When Kira finally got up to the library she briefly wondered if the rumors of tearing the old building down to make way for a newer library had any merit to them. If they ever did demolish the library that had stood since the turn of the century Kira hoped that it would be done in the summer time. She'd hate to lose her favorite place to bed down. She'd not only had a warm place to sleep at the library but she was also able to borrow books to read to help break up the day. She would also read through them when she couldn't sleep at night.
Kira loved to read. She found a rare enjoyment in going through the same books that she liked to imagine she'd be reading if she was able to go to school. Well, to go there more than to just sort through the lost and found bins; claiming that she was looking for her lost sweater or some other article of clothing that she might needed at the time. Of course going to the local gyms were a good place to look for clothes as well. It seemed that they always had a pile of unclaimed clothes in their back offices.
One type of place that Kira did her best to avoid was the shelters. They were a last resort. Yes she'd find some warm clothes, a nice meal, and a cot for the night but it was nearly a certainty that by the morning someone from the Division of Family and Children Services would be there to take her back to the group homes for her to stay while being processed and shipped back off to yet one more foster family.
Kira had lived through enough of those foster families to know that she didn't want to go back. If it wasn't Mama Selma it was the various uncles who tried one too many times to get more than just a bit friendly at night. Kira would take her chances out on the street for as long as she could before she let herself go back.
After Kira went into the library, she mulled through biography section as she waited for a chance to head off into the ladies' restroom unnoticed so that she could find her hideout for the night. When Kira finally slipped into the stall with the loose ceiling tile, she stood up on the back of toilet and did her best to lift her backpack up over her head to shove it up into the hidden cubby but she just couldn't hold it steady enough to toss it up. Giving up on the bag, Kira then tried fruitlessly to haul herself up instead but soon gave up on that as well. She just didn't have the strength to get up into the ceiling any longer. Instead, Kira put her backpack on the back of the door and pulled her feet up onto the seat when the librarian came in to look for any stragglers before closing the library down for the night.
Once the library was all dark and quiet, Kira snuck out of the bathroom and headed to one of the couches that littered the sitting area. She then pulled out the ratty old blanket that she'd found in a dumpster several weeks ago. The thin material wasn't much but it was better than nothing. Still, Kira hoped that it would hold off the incessant chill that she seemed to live with lately. She couldn't understand how she could have both the chills and night sweats when she tried to sleep; but sweat she did. In the mornings she would awaken to damp clothes which would cause her to pull out her one extra pair of pants and shirt before heading out to the cold air of Georgia's winter. Kira would then spend an exhausted day on the street until it was time for her to find lodging for the night.
Curled up on the uncomfortable couch, Kira pulled out her meager supper and began to nibble on the food that she'd brought with her to the library from the Chinese restaurant. She knew that she should have been starved but she really didn't have much of an appetite. Rather than feeling famished, she felt oddly full most of the time. It was something that she'd learned to appreciate since she was not always able to find something edible in the dumpsters. When she did, she was not guaranteed to being the one to actually eat the morsels, neither. Thus not feeling the hunger pains on those days had become a God-send. Still, on the days that she did have something to eat she would push herself to finish everything that she had. It would have to carry her to her next meal, whenever that would be.
After she ate, Kira leaned back to try to get some sleep in one of the few places the offered warmth on a cold night in the city for one without a home. A few times throughout the night she was awaken by coughing fits that had become her constant companions as of late. She suspected that she might be getting the flu since it was already that season again. She wondered if there was anything worse than being sick while living on the streets where no one wanted to know your name. She then decided that there was. Being sick on the streets were preferable to going back to the homes that she'd been placed in before she'd been able to escape to her life on the road.
With that in mind, she reminded herself that she would need to get up before the library opened so that she could hide back out in the bathroom until other patrons began to filter in for the day. Of course, with the way she was feeling, she just might decide to hang out among the shelves of books instead of leaving. As the night grew on, an unexplainable weakness began to take over her body and she doubted that she'd be able to keep on the move during the daylight hours. She'll just have to plan to stay in the library instead.
After daybreak, the head librarian made her way to work to see to it that the library was ready to open for the day. Her staff would be in shortly but she had always made it a point to arrive early so that she could see how her night staff had left the building before the others returned to work. Then she would mark down everything that she found and would address it at the next staff meeting. And she would bring up every single thing that she found, too. Whether it be trash in the study cubbies or chairs that hadn't been stacked before the carpets were vacuumed. It was her responsibility to see to it that the library was run professionally and efficiently and that was precisely how she would do things.
The librarian made her way toward one of the sitting areas after checking the cubbies and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw that there was an individual sleeping on one of the couches. This wasn't the first time that she'd found a homeless person who had stowed away overnight in the library but this was the first time that she'd found one so young. Filing away the need to reinforce the procedures for shutting the library down with her staff to ensure that this wouldn't happen again, the woman straightened her shoulders and went over to wake the sleeping girl.
Using a pencil to poke the girl's dirty clothes, the woman sighed when the girl didn't stir. She supposed that it would be better to call the authorities about the girl anyway before she woke up. A girl this young was bound to be a runaway and the Division of Family and Children Services really should be called in to take the child in off of the streets. She then headed over to the front desk to start making calls.
Nearly an hour later, Kira slowly began to wake up with a headache. As she blinked in the surprisingly bright room, the images of several adults, two of whom were police officers and another was her caseworker that she'd had for over a year, came into view. Panicking, Kira sat up quickly but knew that she didn't have a chance to leave on her own now.
Kira made a face as she rolled her sleeve down after the nurse drew her blood. She then opened her mouth for the nurse to take a cheek swab as well before waiting for the last of the examination to be over. She knew the routine well by now. Since she was showing signs of coming down with a cold (possibly the flu) she would likely be kept isolated at the orphanage until the people who ran it knew that she wasn't contagious before starting the process of trying to find a new foster home for her once again. In the corner of the room, Kira's social worker was standing with her ever present clipboard in hand and was ready to escort the frequent escape artist out of the hospital and to the state ran facility that held those children who were still waiting for a place to call home; even a temporary one.
Sandra O'Connell glanced through her file and tried to estimate just how long it would take for the young girl on the exam table to bolt and run back to the streets where she was more comfortable. She'd seen her kind often enough to know when a child was too damaged to be able to fully adjust to family life. If she had to wager a guess, the girl would likely be dead before she reached her eighteenth birthday. Many street kids fell into the trap of using drugs or alcohol to ease the burdens of their lives and for those that didn't, the hazards of living on the streets usually took far more lives each year than the number of kids that Georgia placed in permanent homes through adoption each year. The young teenager, in Sandra's opinion, seemed dead set on joining the numbers of the former rather than the later.
"Alright, young lady, that's all I need," the nurse said as she wrote her patient's number on the vials of blood and on the swab's packaging to make sure they were ready to head off to the lab. She turned to the social worker and added, "The doctor will speak with you outside."
The worker eyed the nurse but headed out into the hall where the doctor was waiting for her already. "So is she ready to leave yet?"
"Ms. O'Connell, I'd like to keep the girl for some more tests. She has a mild fever and her oxygen count is down. In addition, several of her lymph nodes are swollen, too. While doing an abdominal exam, I found that her spleen seemed abnormally large for her age as well."
"So you think that she is coming down with the flu then?"
"These aren't symptoms of the flu. Like I said, I'd like to run more tests to be sure of what is going on. Added to the fact that she seems unwell in general, I'm concerned about all of the unhealed wounds and abrasions. Did you see just how much of her body is covered with bruises?" The doctor clenched his jaw as he saw the doubt in the woman's eyes so he settled on one last argument. "Just until the bloodwork comes back. I know that the orphanage is full this time of year anyway. This will leave one more bed open for some other kid that is rescued from the streets."
Sandra considered the doctor's reasoning. He was right. The cooler months were harder to find adequate bedding for all of the kids that inevitably would find their way off of the streets, either of their own doing or not, so finding space was already getting difficult in the overcrowded shelters and orphanages. She could use the extra day or two to set up lodging for the girl. After all of the times that Kira had ran away from homes near the big cities, Sandra wondered if finding an orphanage in one of the smaller, back woods towns would be more affective in keeping the girl wherever she was placed. There was one such orphanage in a small town near the state line that seemed to have a good track record with wayward children. She would see if she could get the girl transferred to that one once she was released from the hospital.
"Alright, I'll talk to my bosses and tell them that she's being held here at the hospital for now. Though I find that cough of hers to be a little dramatic. I think she's just playing it up a bit."
"Maybe so but I'd rather be sure about it before I release her into your care."