15. Quasim
Quasim
Past
Recommendation: Listen to ‘chasing cars’ by The Wind and The Wave
I sat in the emergency room with my legs shaking as I waited for them to tell me something.
Anything.
I got the call from her mother that she had been shot and dropped off in front of her house. When she called me hysterical, my chest became tight, and I couldn’t breathe for the first time in a long time. The panic rose in my chest like a bothersome cough that you couldn’t get rid of. Cherie told me she was going over to her mother’s house with Harley, and I didn’t think anything of it. Shit, I had business to handle, and she always came home with a plate of her mother’s food.
How did she go from her mother’s house to being shot and tossed in front of her house. It was something that I spent the entire ride to the hospital thinking about, sick to my stomach. When I arrived, they told me to sit in the waiting room and they would come out to talk to me. What the fuck did they mean they would come out and talk to me?
My baby was back there with a gunshot wound and they expected me to sit tight and pretend like I was calm and cool about the shit. The hospital always made me feel sick, like nothing good happened here.
I knew it wasn’t true because my daughter was born in a hospital, and she was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Standing up, I walked around the room while wringing my hands and trying to calm myself down.
“What the fuck happened?” Blaze ran over toward me, and I stopped and looked at my brother, who was confused.
“Cherie was shot… her mom said a truck sped by and tossed her out the back, not even stopping.”
The same look I’m sure I had in my eyes, my brother had in his as he looked around, not knowing what to say or what to do. “They came and spoke to you yet?”
“I got the Gods moving Vanessa and Harley… they said anything about how she’s doing? Vanessa said she was breathing when she found her.” My father walked over, with a few Gods trailing behind him.
My chest felt like it was about to cave in each time someone said how she was found. Cherie didn’t deserve none of this shit. “Who the fuck would do this shit to Cherie?” Blaze was trying to make sense of everything.
“She was with Rich… went to see him.” My pops handed me her phone, and I looked at the messages between her and Rich.
I sat down and scrolled the phone with my hands shaking in the process. Cherie reached out to Rich and told him that she had to step back, and he needed to stop calling her. She loved me, and we had a family, and she and him would never be.
She was nice about the shit.
Too nice.
That was Cherie, though. She was always too damn nice to the wrong people, never knowing how to say no, or choose herself. Where she should have come at this nigga crazy, she had grace and class to end things and tell him that she couldn’t come around anymore.
Rich texted back and forth with her asking her what I had that he didn’t, typical pussy boy questions. He couldn’t take that I was the chosen one, and she didn’t want his ass the way she wanted me.
He asked her to meet up with him for lunch so they can talk and end things right, and she declined. Like the fucking roach he was, he continued to ask her, and then used his family to win her over. He made her feel bad because she was close with his family, and to know Cherie was to know that she had a big ass heart.
The last person she had been with had been Rich, so he was the only person that could have done this to her. I was sick to my stomach as I tossed the phone in the seat beside me while trying to steady my breathing. I wanted to rip that nigga’s head off his shoulder and shove it up his ass.
My father sat down beside me and lowered his head, saying a prayer. I came from a praying family, one that when life became too hard or confusing, we bowed our heads and said a prayer. I followed him and did the same, while Blaze sat beside me and joined us.
My heart was weak, and I struggled to take a breath because of the unknown. Why the fuck would she go and meet with him? I warned her to end shit with him, tell him to get the fuck on because he meant no good. None of those Vipers meant any fucking good, and now she was in this hospital, fighting for her life.
The sound of the huge wooden doors opened, and we all stood up. I watched as the doctor walked across the room, coming directly to me. The sorrow in his eyes reached me before his feet did, and deep down I already knew.
My baby was gone.
He couldn’t play poker to save his life, because I read every emotion from this man. Then again, I had always felt others emotions so strongly, always knowing when something was wrong. “I’m sorry, she didn’t make it… we tried everything, and she coded twice. The last time, we couldn’t bring her back.”
I felt my father’s arm on my shoulder, and my brothers on the other one as my knees started to give out. Blaze and my father held me up as I looked at the doctor with tears in my eyes. My chest was on fire. Fear, anger, and sadness all riddled my body like bullets as I clutched onto my brother and father while I screamed out in pain.
The pain of knowing that my baby’s soul was floating away while her body was still in the back lifeless. She was leaving her daughter, something she swore she would never do.
“Stop fucking lying to me… she wouldn’t do that shit to me. Cherie wouldn’t fucking leave us!” I screamed at the doctor, lunging at him, and Blaze had to pull me back.
I tried hard to beat the shit out the doctor, even knowing none of this was his fault. My father was zoned out, taking in what the doctor had said. He snapped out of it while helping Blaze keep me from beating this doctor’s ass.
Security had come over as I called this man every name in the book like this was his fault. Like he told Cherie to meet up with that nigga. “Pop, you need to calm down… chill out,” my father spoke in my ear, calling me the nickname he had called me since a kid.
Only he got away with still calling me Pop every once in a while. “She not gone… she wouldn’t do no shit like that to me.” I broke down in my father’s arms as he held me tightly while Blaze stood there with tears in his eyes, unsure on what to do or what to say.
“Yo.. you can come to the back to see her if you would like, give you and your family some privacy.” The doctor stammered.
“Thanks.” Blaze said.
My father continued to hug me while I sobbed on his shoulder like a fucking child, so broken and hurt. Eventually we made it to the back, and the doctor stood to the side, while my father and Blaze both fell back, allowing me to go into the room.
Everything was blurry as I looked into the room, seeing her covered in a sheet. I walked slowly into the room, tears falling down my face as I saw her hand. I stopped short, staring up at the ceiling, needing all the strength to see her like this.
They tried to clean her up as best as they could, but I could see some of the blood on the fresh white sheet. I walked slowly over toward her and sniffled as I looked at her favorite butterfly necklace that I had bought her. Cherie loved butterflies. It was her favorite thing, and when we met, she actually had a butterfly clip in her hair with her curls pinned up.
It was the slices under the pendant that caught my attention, and I removed the sheet, showing more slices all on her body. Like someone was using her skin to sharpen their knives. “I…I’m sorry, bab…baby,” I whimpered as I covered her body up and kissed her on the forehead.
I didn’t want to leave her.
Climbing onto the other side, I didn’t care that she was gone. In my heart, she was still here, and my chest felt calm feeling her next to me. It was like I knew she was gone, but my mind refused to believe the shit. I held her in my arms as tears fell down my face onto hers.