warnings: hospital stuff, mention of heroin overdose
Chapter 32: Angelica
In which Angelica gets a phone call
It's just past noon when Angelica gets the phone call from the hospital.
Is this Angelica Turing?, they ask.
She should be on her lunch break right now, but she's not, because there's too much paperwork, too many cases.
"Yes, it is," she says.
Hello Ms. Turing, they tell her, they're calling about a patient who's currently on ventilation in the ICU following what appears to be a heroin overdose. He is in serious condition. He had no ID on him but he did have her business card in his pocket, and if she would be able to come down to the hospital and try to help identify him...
Angelica has already grabbed her keys.
o - o - o
She doesn't recognize the boy in the hospital bed. He's a teenager, maybe eighteen or nineteen, pale, with stringy brown hair and a tube down his throat. Half of her is relieved to find that he isn't one of the children she's worked with over the years. The other half wants to cry at the sight of any child in this situation.
She wonders where he got her business card. Probably from Jonas, she thinks, which means he's probably homeless.
She sighs, pulls up a chair beside his bed, and listens as they tell her what happened: how he was found unconscious in an alley by a couple police officers, who were able to administer Narcan in time to get him breathing again. How his respiration was still severely depressed when he arrived at the emergency room, which made intubation necessary. How they're not sure how long he went without oxygen before being discovered.
"But will he be alright?" Angelica asks tentatively.
They're hopeful, is all she's told.
Angelica nods, and sweeps some of the boy's hair off his forehead. He looks so young. She wonders if anyone misses him right now.
She stays as long as she can, until she has to return to work.
Before she leaves, she squeezes the boy's limp hand. "I'll be back this evening," she whispers to him. "Alright kiddo? Just hang on, okay? I'll be back."
She tries to imagine that he hears her.