“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. They’re trying to reach family. They want you to call his cell.”
“I ain’t his family.”
“Is that what you want me to tell them? You know what, Jasmine, forget it.”
“Wait,” she said. “Wait.”
I stood by as she dialed, listening to her half of the conversation.
“Yeah. Yeah. Where do I — okay. Soon as I can. Okay. Thank you. Bye.”
She raised the walkie-talkie. “Leon. It’s Jasmine. Where you at.”
Twenty-seven.
“I’m coming over,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”
Aight.
“Let’s go,” she said to me.
Aisle twenty-seven was lumber. Leon, an assistant manager in his fifties, said, “What’s up, Jazzy.”
“This man,” Jasmine said, pointing to me, “is from the hospital.”
I tried to look medical.
“They got my boyfriend over there. He got hurt. Is it okay if I go?”
“Sorry to hear that,” Leon said. “Yeah, that’s fine. I got you.”
“Thank you so much.”
“You bet, Jazzy. Tell him I hope he feels better.”
She led me to the locker room so she could clock out and get her bag.
Unlacing her apron, she said, “I need you to drive me, please.”
The social worker had told Jasmine to come to the Highland Hospital ER. By the time we arrived, they’d already started prepping Trevor for transfer to critical care.
He shivered, cocooned in blankets, staring at nothing. Several weeks’ worth of dirty beard fuzzed his hollow cheeks, and he didn’t recognize Jasmine or respond to his name. She was fighting tears as the ER doc told us that BART police had found him passed out on the train and revived him with Narcan. Most addicts responded immediately, waking up irate at the loss of their high. But Trevor remained listless, and the intake exam recorded a fever of 104.4.
Jasmine, crying now, said, “Is he gonna die?”
“It’s okay, honey,” a nurse said. She was swapping out a bracelet that read John Doe for one with Trevor’s legal name. “We’ll take good care of him.”
We rode with the gurney to the ICU. The orderly had us stay in the hall while he wheeled Trevor in and they got him set up.
The doors sealed automatically.
“Be right back,” I said.
I walked off a ways and called Amy. “Hey. I’m gonna be late. Sorry.”
“I thought it was Regina’s night.”
“Something came up. Any chance you can get the kids?”
“I’m in session till six-thirty,” she said. “Let me ask my mom if she can do it.”
“Thanks. If it’s an issue, don’t worry, I’ll figure it out.”
“It should be fine. I’ll text you. Everything okay?”
“Yeah. It’s nothing dangerous. Just work crap. A potential witness OD’d.”
“What a coincidence,” she said. “One of my clients OD’d, too.”
“See how much we have in common?”
The double doors opened and Jasmine hurried through.
“Gotta run,” I said. “Love you.”
“You too.”
The nurses had propped Trevor with pillows to prevent aspiration. His eyes were shut. Jasmine was curled up in a plastic chair, watching him jerk in his sleep like a dog.
There was no second chair. I fetched a spare from the adjacent room.
“You don’t have to stay,” she said.
“Do you want me to leave?”
She didn’t answer.
Silence isn’t always acquiescence. But sometimes it is.
I sat down.
Chapter 30
Over the next few hours Trevor tossed and turned and mumbled while hospital staff shuttled in and out. I stuck around in case he woke up and I could extract something useful. Jasmine poked spitefully at her phone.
The hospitalist stopped in. He was chipper, optimistic the patient would improve once they’d gotten some fluids and antibiotics into him.
The insurance coordinator came by to enroll Trevor in emergency Medi-Cal. Jasmine answered as many questions as she could, though her concern for him had lost out to fear that she’d be held financially responsible.
“I don’t know what y’all expect me to do,” she kept saying.
No, she didn’t know his Social Security number. His parents’ names, either.
I said, “Larry and Suzanne Vogel.”
The insurance coordinator said, “And you are?”
“A friend. I can give you their number.”
“That’d be great.”
I found it on my laptop, along with numbers for Trevor’s sisters.
The insurance coordinator thanked me and left.
“How you know that?” Jasmine said.
“I called them when I was looking for him the first time.”
“What’d they say?”
“They don’t talk to him.”
Jasmine snorted. “Join the club.”
I worked through the lulls. I sent the new shoreline map to SFPD Winterholz and emailed a contact at Emeryville PD to inquire about disturbances at the marina. I texted with Regina, reordering priorities. On Monday she’d visit Redwood Yacht Club for a look-see.
At seven p.m. I went to the cafeteria and brought back sandwiches, sodas, chips.
“Thanks,” Jasmine said.
She unwrapped her food. “Trevor said you bought him lunch.”
I nodded.
“Why?” she asked.
“He looked hungry,” I said.
“That what you think about me?”
“I think it’s dinnertime.”
We ate in noisy silence.
Every so often I would glance over at the body in the bed and think about my old job. Dead flesh on slabs. So many fallen prey to mental illness and addiction. I thought about my brother, Luke, twenty years ago, six-four, wasted to 135 pounds. In those days he kept his money in his shoes. Once he came to following a bender and discovered himself barefoot. So he stole another addict’s shoes, along with their money. He got drunk and high, stole a car, and tore down International Boulevard at seventy-five miles per hour, killing two women.
He’d served serious prison time, and a lot had changed since then, almost all of it for the better. But even today, his feet were a mess. He had scars, chronic fungal infections, was missing several toenails.
I thought about Trevor, asleep on a park bench in mismatched sneakers.
He was barefoot now. A plastic bag on the floor held his torn jeans and a T-shirt.
He twitched and rolled over, muttering, “Bitch.”
Jasmine glanced up and emitted a short, morbid laugh.
She put her phone away, arched her back. We’d been sitting together, mostly without speaking, for close to four hours.
“You talked to him about Adam,” she said.
I nodded again. “I wanted to understand their friendship.”
“What’s there to understand?”
“Did you know him?”
“Adam? Not really.”
“You told me he and Trevor loved each other.”
“I mean, yeah. It went way back.”
“I wondered if things ever got sexual between them.”
She gave me a funny look. “Trevor’s straight.”
“Right.”
“Adam, too.”
“How do you know?”
“I met his girl.”
“Olivia.”
“I guess. The blondie. She came looking for Trevor, just like you.”
I sat up in my chair. “When was that?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Before or after Adam died?”
“Must’ve been after. I told her, Trevor’s in jail.”
“What did she want with him?”
Jasmine shook her head. “She didn’t say.”
“How’d she seem to you?”
“What do you mean.”
“Was she upset?”