“I’ll explain later. Just help her.”
A doctor appeared. Young, composed, moving with a speed that told me he’d already assessed the situation before he reached us. He checked the monitors, pressed on Mehar’s belly, and his face tightened.
“The baby’s heart rate is decelerating. We need to get her into the operating room for an emergency cesarean. Now.”
“I’m going with her.”
“Sir, I understand, but given the urgency of the situation I need you to wait here. We’ll update you as soon as we can.”
“I said I’m going with her.”
“And I need you to let us do our job.” He said it firm and direct and I almost grabbed him by his collar because nobody told me where the fuck I could and couldn’t go. But I looked at Mehar and her eyes were wide and scared and the monitors were beeping in a pattern that I didn’t understand but clearly meant something was wrong, and I realized that the best thing I could do for her right now was get out of the way and let these people save her life.
I leaned down and took her face in my hands. My hands. Sand still in the creases, cuts still healing on my knuckles, nails broken and jagged from weeks of survival. I held her face with the same hands that had held everything together on that island and I looked her in her eyes.
“You’re going to be fine. You hear me? You and our baby are going to be fine. And I’ll be right here when you come out.”
She grabbed my wrists and held on and I could feel her pulse hammering against my palms. “Promise me.”
“I promise. Now go have our baby, Peach. I’ll be right here.”
They wheeled her through the double doors and I watched until the doors swung closed and she was gone. The hallway was quiet. The fluorescent light buzzed above me. And I was standing there barefoot in a hospital I didn’t know, in a country I wasn’t from, with nothing in my pockets and nobody at the desk who gave a damn about my last name.
I didn’t know yet that the next four hours would be the longest of my life.
26
Zephyr
Bella bathed me in the handicapped shower we had to install because a bullet took my spine.
The water ran warm across my shoulders and down my chest and I could feel every drop above my waist, the heat, the pressure of her hands, the washcloth moving in slow circles across my skin. Below my waist there was nothing. My legs sat in the shower chair like props, dead weight that belonged to a body I used to live in. I couldn’t feel the water hitting my thighs. Couldn’t feel her hands when she washed between my toes. Couldn’t feel the drain grate under my feet. I only knew my lower half existed because I could see it, and every time I looked down I was reminded that the man I used to be had died from the waist down on the floor of Quest’s casino.
Bella was careful. She was always careful. Moving the washcloth gently, adjusting the water temperature, making sure the shower chair was stable before she started. She’d been doing this for months and she had the routine memorized, which somehow made it worse. My woman had a routine for washing a grown man’s body because that grown man couldn’t do it himself. She was twenty-six years old with a college degree anda daughter and she was spending her mornings scrubbing a cripple’s back instead of living her life. Was this bitch dumb for sticking around?
I caught her eyes and there it was. That look. The one that replaced everything I used to see when she looked at me. She used to look at me like I was the strongest man in any room. Like I was dangerous in the way bad bitches want their man to be dangerous, capable and protective and built for war. Now she looked at me with something soft and careful and soaked in pity, permanently fixed on her face like the beauty mark under her lip. I hated that look more than I hated the chair.
“Yo, why the fuck are you looking at me like that?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“You feel sorry for me?”
“What?”
“Do you feel sorry for me, Bella? Because if you do, you can save that shit. I don’t need your sympathy. I need my fuckin’ legs.”
“Why are you doing this? Why are you acting like this? I’m just trying to take care of you.”
“Take care of me?!” The words came out louder than I intended but I didn’t pull them back. “Bitch, I take care of you! You ain’t worked in years. Who pays the bills in here? Huh? Who keeps those Loubou’s and Jimmy Choo’s on your feet? Me! This chair don’t change that. I’m still the one keeping this whole shit running so don’t stand there with that sad face like you’re doing me a favor by washing my ass.”
I could hear myself. I could hear every word coming out of my mouth and I knew it was wrong and I couldn’t stop any of it. The rage was bigger than my self-awareness. It filled every space inside me where love, patience and gratitude used to live. It left no room for anything softer. Bella cared about me. Bella showed up every morning and bathed me and dressed me and fed ourdaughter and held this household together with two hands while I contributed nothing but anger. And I was repaying her by calling her out of her name in a shower that existed because I was broken.
“You’ve changed,” she said quietly. She set the washcloth on the edge of the shower bench and walked out of the bathroom without looking back. Her voice didn’t crack. Her face didn’t crumble. She said it flat and final, like she was confirming something she’d known for months and had just now decided to stop pretending otherwise.
“Ya think?! I can’t walk no more!” I hollered after her. The words echoed off the bathroom tile and bounced back at me and sitting in that echo alone, wet and naked and unable to stand up and follow her, was the most pathetic I’d ever felt in my life.
I heard her pick up Amara in the other room. Heard her putting on the baby’s shoes, talking softly to her in that voice she used when she didn’t want our daughter to absorb whatever ugliness had just happened between her parents. The front door opened and closed. The apartment went silent. I was sitting in a shower chair with water cooling against my skin and nobody to help me out of it.
