Hold the Line

The call came at 3:14 a.m. Nadia had the headset on before the second ring finished.

"Poison control. This is Nadia. Tell me what happened."

The woman was already running out of air. "My son. He got into my mother's pills. The white ones. He's two."

"Okay. You're doing fine. Pick up the bottle and read me the name on it, exactly as it's printed."

"I can't, he's sleepy, he was not sleepy before—"

"Ma'am. One breath. Then the label. I'm not going anywhere."

A drawer opened. A sob. The clack of a bottle set down on tile. Nadia wrote the name, the strength, the count. The bottle held sixty. Twenty-eight were left.

"How many were in it last night?"

"I don't know. Maybe half."

"Then we count thirty. Thirty is workable. Is he awake?"

"I think so. He's watching me. He's quiet."

"Quiet is not the same as gone. Does he answer when you say his name?"

A pause. Then, small, from somewhere past the phone: "Mama."

Nadia let the breath go where the woman couldn't hear it. Her voice came back half a beat late. She wrote it off to the hour, the way she always did.

"That's your job now. Keep him talking. What's his name?"

"Emil."

"Emil, ask him what he had for breakfast. Whatever he says, ask him more. The ambulance is four minutes out. Can you hear it yet?"

And she could. The woman heard it.

"Four minutes," Nadia said. "I'll stay for all four."

She stayed for eleven. Emil threw up twice in the driveway, the second time on the paramedic, which Nadia would file, later, under good signs. His mother called back at six to say he was asking for toast.

Nadia closed the case and opened the low drawer of her desk, where she keeps a card for every child who lived, and the other drawer, the one that stays locked, where she keeps the rest. She put Emil with the living and went back to the phones.