She laughed. It was not a laugh.
"My tooth broke," she said again. "That's all. A molar. I cracked it on a popcorn kernel at the movies in August. I didn't have the money, I don't have dental, I kept thinking I'd save it up. Then it got infected. I went to the urgent care and they gave me the amoxicillin and said see a dentist, and I called nine dentists and the soonest anybody on Medicaid could see me was December. And it's been, I can't tell you. I can't tell you what it's been. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't lift residents right, I was so tired, I almost dropped Mrs. Bellweather on Saturday. And Deb at work, she saw me holding my face in the break room, and she said, girl, I've got something for that, and she gave me two. In a little baggie. She said they were Percocet, her husband's, from his shoulder. She was being kind. She was being my friend. She's the only one there who ever covers for me when Emi's sick. And I said no. I said no for three days. I said no on Saturday and no on Sunday and on Monday I said no again. And today it was so bad I was crying in the supply closet, and I came home at two and I looked at that pill for an hour, and I thought, it's medicine. It's a prescription. It's not like before. I'll take half. I'll just take half and sleep for one hour."
"It wasn't a prescription," Lazaro said.
"I know that now."
"It wasn't Percocet. It was pressed. Fentanyl, probably, maybe something else in it too. Half of one of those can kill a person who isn't used to it. You haven't used in six years. Your body didn't remember how to handle any of it."
"I know." Her eyes went to the curtain, beyond which, somewhere, was the woman with the legal pad. "And here's the thing I need to ask you. Here's what I wanted to say before I talk to her."
He waited.
"If I tell them about Deb," Celestina said, "they'll fire her. And they'll fire me. You can't be a CNA and take somebody else's pills on shift, or before shift, they'll say I was impaired at work, they'll report me to the registry. And Deb will maybe get arrested. She has two kids, and her husband's out on disability, and she's the one who keeps that house going. She didn't know. I swear to God she didn't know what those were. She thought they were his Percocet. Maybe he thinks so too. Maybe somebody sold him something in a parking lot and he thinks it's Percocet." She took a breath. "So what I was going to tell that woman out there is that I relapsed. That I bought it on the street. That it's just me. My mess. And they'll do what they do to me, and maybe I lose Emi for a while, and maybe I lose my job, but Deb doesn't lose hers. And I was going to ask you not to tell them what Emi said about the lady at work. Just not to bring it up. I know I don't have any right to ask you anything. I'm asking anyway."
There it was.
Lazaro looked at her for a long time. The monitor beeped. Somewhere a few bays down a man was arguing with a nurse about whether he could have a sandwich.