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She typed. “I have four that meet that criteria.”
“Can we look?”
“Give me a few minutes, okay?”
“Of course.”
I sat heavily on one of the two plastic chairs in the small lobby. “Oh, God. I can’t do this.”
“Yes you can, Violet. I’m here for you. You know that, right?”
Tears burned but didn’t fall.
“You did everything you could for your mother.”
“I should have done more.”
Will sat next to me. Took my limp hand. “There was nothing more you could have done,” he said. “You can’t force people to get help. If you can’t accept that truth, you can’t work with me.”
“Everyone else? I accept it. But she’s my mom. My mom...”
I jumped when Shelley returned. “Follow me,” she said and led the way down a long, cool corridor. We turned once, then at the end of that hall Shelley used her card key to unlock wide double doors. They swooshed open. “Is your mother white?” Shelley asked.
I didn’t answer her. I looked at the huge room filled with stainless steel drawers that held the dead. They were eight high, and a rolling ladder was used to access the higher levels. There were rows and rows of bodies on gurneys, covered with sheets.
“Yes,” Will answered for me. He took my hand, held it tight.
“That eliminates two of the four. We’ll start here.”
She pulled out a drawer on the bottom near the middle of the first row. I stared and my bottom lip quivered. A strangled sound escaped; I couldn’t speak.
Will said, “That’s Jane Halliday.”
I turned and buried my face in Will’s chest.
Shelley let me wash in the employee’s bathroom. Then we sat down in her cubicle and she brought up the file. She changed the records to confirm identity and next of kin, and asked what I would like to do.
I didn’t know what she meant. “Do what?”
“I can give you a couple of days to make arrangements. You should contact a funeral home—they will claim the body. You need to decide if you want her remains cremated or buried. You can talk to the funeral home about costs of each and what kind of service you’d like.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Like I said, I can give you some time to make these decisions. I know it’s difficult.”
“How?”
“I can give you a list of funeral homes.”
“I mean, how did she die?”
Shelley looked at the file. “She was found unresponsive on the beach in Venice Beach. Medics were called, but they were unable to revive her. The autopsy showed she died of hypoxia. That means—”
“I know what it means,” I said with more anger than I wanted.
Opioid users who overdose don’t get enough oxygen, go into a coma and die. Narcan can save them if administered soon enough, but when you’re riding high or with others who are too high to notice, you simply lie down and die.
Addicts that have been resuscitated even once by Narcan and go back to using have a thirteen times greater chance of dying within a year. My mother was now part of that statistic.
