AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m scared, too, Lloyd.”
He turned around. “Of what?”
She took a deep breath. “It turns out that you were right about Mel. He is on drugs. We still love each other and he has agreed to get help, but times will be tough for a while.”
Lloyd seemed lost in thought for a moment and then massaged his temples. “So, Mel is going to face his demons. That makes him more of a man than I am. Will you please stay on at PWE?”
Adrienne patted him on the arm. “Yes and don’t beat yourself up. It took Mel a long time to stand up. You’ll get there, too. I’ll help you.”
He smiled gratefully. “I’m lucky to have a friend like you.”
“Of course you are, Lloyd. I told you that seventeen years ago.”
They laughed, and then Lloyd gave her a quick, friendly hug. “Yes, you did, and I’ll never forget it again.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
A week later, Debra stood outside the curtain that was closed around Mel’s hospital bed, holding a pair of new jeans and a sweater for him to wear home. Inside, Mel submitted to the doctor’s final examination.
“Let me see you move that shoulder.” Mel raised his arm gingerly, wishing that they were sending him away with a painkiller that was stronger than Tylenol. Although the pain was no longer white-hot and throbbing, there was still a dull ache sometimes from the top of his left shoulder down to his fingertips. I’ll probably feel it on every rainy day for the rest of my life, he thought. The doctor made some tsk-tsk sounds and wrote something on Mel’s chart. “Turn over,” he said.
Mel turned over on his stomach, lifted the white hospital gown, and submitted to the doctor’s probing fingers, which inspected the wounds in his backside. “These are healing nicely,” the doctor said. Mel didn’t answer. Everyone at the bar and around the card table probably knew that he had been shot three times in the ass. It was undignified and embarrassing as hell. After checking his pulse once more, the doctor wished him luck and pulled the curtain back.
Mel had lost at least seven pounds from his already lanky frame, and when he stepped out of the bathroom after putting on the clothes Debra had bought for him, she told him, “You look like the devil done danced witchu.”
“Yeah, I know.”
His backside ached as he shuffled from the hospital room, clinging to his sister’s arm. He leaned on Debra’s shoulder as they made their way past the nurses’ station, into the elevator, and out onto the street. Mel waited on the sidewalk while Debra stepped off the curb to hail a taxi. Suddenly, Mel knew that if he went back to Debra’s house, it would be impossible to turn his life around. He waved his one good arm to get her attention just as a cab pulled up.
“I’m not going home with you,” he announced firmly.
Her eyes widened. “Are you crazy? Adrienne’s liable to meet you at the door with a baseball bat if you try to go back home right now.” She opened the car door. “Stop this foolishness, Mel. Your wife done tole you she needs time to think all this out. You need to get off your feet and go lay down in the back room.”
“I can’t.”
Debra slammed the door, and the taxi driver gave them both the finger before
pulling away.
Debra looked worried and scared. No matter what, he was still her baby brother. “Mel, what’s the matter witchu? It must be that medication got you acting like this.”
Mel shook his head. “I’m going to Dan and Charlene’s house. I need help, and Charlene will help me get it. She’ll know what I should do next to get clean.”
“Why you gonna do a fool thing like that? You can’t just show up on your brother-in-law’s doorstep without even calling first. Don’t worry, I’ll take care you.” Her voice was tender. She stroked his face. “Just like I always have.”
Mel took her hand and kissed the work-roughened palm. “Not this time, Debra.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Mel had paced outside Dan and Charlene’s apartment building on West Fifty-second Street for what seemed like a hundred times, but he knew he’d only been standing outside the entrance for about twenty minutes. He watched the people come and go, mostly white, their faces open and curious, others closed and wary. They watched him as they passed, as if they knew he didn’t belong there, a black man poorly dressed against the cold, shamefaced and weary on the busy street. Occasionally, a burst of laughter would drift down from an open window. Mel wondered when he’d be able to laugh like that again, deep and soulful without a trace of grief. He counted ten breaths, long, calming breaths; then he stamped his feet and pushed the buzzer to their apartment. Best to get on with it.
He buzzed again and waited for an answer. He hoped Charlene and Dan would cut him slack. It only took his nearly dying once to get the point. Life was too precious, no matter what was lost, what might not ever have been given. Mel thought about his mother, who had died unhappy, and his father, who had left Debra and him and never looked back. And he thought about Delilah and all the love he’d held for that child, his firstborn, his daughter, and for the woman he had loved, who loved him back. After Delilah died, he knew he had stopped living, but today he was going to try to put things back on track, at least in himself if nowhere else.
“It’s me, Mel,” he answered when Charlene buzzed him in. When he got upstairs, she and Dan were waiting for him, the door open, the inside of the apartment bright and warm.
“Glad to see you, brother. You worried us for a moment.”
Mel didn’t know what to say. He wanted to hang his head, but Charlene ushered him in and took his light jacket.
