4. Autumn Shaw
Autumn Shaw
These third shift clinicals are gonna be the death of me.
Four weeks of three p.m. to midnight before it flips. The only good thing is that it’s only seven hour shifts with an hour break, and because this hospital is understaffed, they’re paying me extra, but still. I didn’t think being away from my family would be this hard.
The nurses here are nice enough, besides this one bitch who I already know Ima snatch up on my last day, so at least it’s easy to keep my head down.
This is my last clinical rotation before I graduate with my BSN.
It’s been such a long journey for me, to get to this moment, and some chicken head bitch isn’t gonna keep me from realizing my dreams.
I still knock into her shoulder as I walk past, feigning an apology before going to an on-call room. I lock the door and lean against it, trying to center myself. I don’t like any bad energy bleeding into my nightly phone call with my girlfriend and son.
Patience Fox is a stereotypical Pisces. She’s a dreamer, and puts me on a pedestal.
And I let her at first because I needed that.
I needed someone to see me as this perfect person and love me the way I deserve.
She had no one, and I became her world. I could be whoever I wanted to be with her, and I loved that shit.
I was her alpha and omega, and got drunk on her love.
But I’m not who she thinks I am. I’m not this perfect, sweet, kindhearted girl. I’m not a woman scorned, someone who was broken because a past lover cheated on me over and over, like how the legion of Turk’s hoes whisper. I’m not the person she needed when she was lost, but I let her believe I was.
And then the illusion shattered in the absolute best way, and Pay is finally starting to see who Autumn Shaw really is.
My worst fear came true. The love of my life not liking what they see when they see me.
I’m used to being misunderstood. It’s more normal when someone doesn't like me than when they do. But I couldn’t handle the looks Pay would give me, her button nose turned up, mouth pinched, disgust in her eyes.
She was slipping away from me. I lost count of how many arguments we had over Turk before she started staying in our guest room.
I had nightmares daily of me coming home to an empty house after my clinicals.
There were so many times I picked up my phone to call Shad to switch me from this assignment in the system.
But then for once, the universe threw me a bone. Out of what she described was “flaming bullshit on a stick” came the one thing she wanted more than me and Deuce; a baby of her own.
Poetic justice for her. Divine timing for me.
She left home for two weeks. When she came back, I thought she got rid of our baby. Instead, she gave me a list of fifty conditions I had to adhere to, or she’d leave and take our baby from me. The two biggest ones:
Absolutely, positively, no fucking my baby daddy.
Do not, under any circumstances, tell him he’s the father of her child.
Both of these things are harder than childbirth, for different reasons. I hadn’t fucked Turk since before me and Pay got together, but one hit had me feigning. I literally have to stay fifty feet away from him at all times. Me being a few cities away lets me breathe easier.
Not telling him about the baby though? My conscience tugs at me constantly.
He was there for me every day when I was pregnant with Deuce, and is the best father to our son.
And despite how much he and Pay are at each other’s throats–confirmed sexual foreplay, if I’m being honest–he’d wait on her hand and foot.
She needs that. She needs someone who will hold onto her just as much as I do.
Because we’re more alike than she thinks.
Not these made up selves we present to each other.
The cold, dark, ugly selves we both hide.
Patience doesn’t talk about her childhood.
At all. She acts as if she was born eighteen.
Her background checks out; parents dead, undergrad down south before coming back for KSU’s med school program.
She’s in real tight with Dr. Enoch, and he hates everyone.
I can usually spot trouble, and I understand running away from your problems, so I let her make it.
But it’s a new dawn in our relationship, clearly, and if my skeletons are seeing the light, well dammit, hers are, too.
I go to my Favorites and tap Deucey then tap facetime. My baby’s face takes over my screen immediately, and all is right with the world.
“Hey, Mama.” Deucey smiles into the camera. The lights are dim, but his face is illuminated from the tv so I know he’s not in bed. It’s Friday, anyway, and one thing about Deucey is he’s gonna stay up if he doesn’t have school.
“Hi Deucey. How was your day?”
“It was good. We learned about tigers today. Pop-Pop made biscuits and gravy, and Daddy brought some home for Mama Pay.”
“Your dad? Not Uncle Nutty?”
My sweet boy shakes his head. “Daddy got me from Pop-Pop’s. Him and Mama Pay had dinner and he promised we could go to the park this weekend.”
On the outside, I’m smiling and nodding. On the inside, I’m reeling. Nutty had one fucking job, and he couldn’t even do that right!
“Oh okay, sweetie. Daddy still there?”
“No. He left. When are you coming home?”
My bottom lip pokes out before I can catch it. “I told you Mommy has to be out of town for awhile. But in a couple weeks Auntie Wyn can bring you down here and we can go to the movies, just us. How does that sound?”
Deucey’s snaggletooth self smiles. “Okay, Mama.”
“You know everything Mama does is for you, right? You’re the–”
“Wind beneath my wings.” My baby boy blushes after completing my affirmation for him.
Deucey, much like his father, saved me. He gave me purpose, and is the reason I fought so hard to finish school without Turk’s help. Watching him grow into an intelligent, compassionate, kind, handsome, funny boy is so rewarding.
“I’ma call Mama Pay. You don’t stay up too late, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I love you Deucey Doo.”
“I love you, too, Mama.” When I hang up, I sigh and roll my eyes before going to call his knucklehead twin.
Then I remember I’m blocked, and hold in a scream.
I need to know just how pissed off Pay is. I try to talk to her calmly, because I love her and because she’s with child. But she really got one more time to snap at me before I forget all that shit.
But shit, in the spirit of shedding my masks, maybe I need to be a little less Auty and a little more Haze.
Biting the bullet, I facetime my baby. When she answers, she’s bundled up in the bed like she usually is at quarter to ten with her old ass.
“Hey, bae,” I coo.
“Hello, Autumn.”
I hold in my sigh and keep my voice as cute as I can. “Did Nut bring you–”
“Autumn, you know damn well Royce brought me my dinner. Stop playing with me.”
“But, in my–”
“No!” she growls, cutting me off again. “You sold me a fucking dream, just admit it. When we got together, it was supposed to be me, you, and Deuce. I did not sign up for this.”
“Pay, he’s Deuce’s father. I told you he was active in his life and would be around.”
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about. Stop fucking gaslighting me!” We got our room soundproofed when we moved in, so I turn the volume down on my phone because this is going downhill very fast.
“Calm down, Pay. Stress isn’t good–”
“Don’t fucking tell me what’s good for this fucking baby! I’m the doctor! Not you!”
Oh. This bitch is tripping. She’s still going off on me, but I’ve tuned her ass out. Counting to ten in my head doesn’t help the rising fire in my chest, so I count backwards back down to one.
“Are you even listening to me, Autumn? What the fuck–”
“Aight. Stop fucking talking to me like you ain’t got no sense.”
Her eyebrows shoot up damn near off her face. She’s never heard me talk like this to anyone, and definitely not her. But she’s testing me, hiding behind these delusions of hers and I’m not spending the rest of my break being yelled at.
“Who–”
“You, Patience. I’m talking to you. Now I get it. You’re pregnant, and you can’t keep anything down, but you doing too much.”
“I’m doing too much?!”
I stand up straight. “Yes! You are! If I remember correctly, you initiated everything that night. I ain’t make you fuck that nigga, I ain’t make him nut in you, and you and you alone decided to keep that fucking baby, bro.”
“So if I got an abortion, you would have stayed?”
“YES!” I boom. I’m pacing now, rubbing my free hand over the top of my head, no doubt messing up my slicked bun. “Stop putting all this shit on me! You wanted that baby, just like you want Turk!”
There. I said it.
Her eyes balloon as she sits all the way up, tv forgotten. “What the hell did you just say?”
I stop in the middle of the room, exasperated. Last time we argued like this, I held everything in, because I felt guilty. Felt guilty for how much I enjoyed our night together, and how it undid years of self-restraint.
“Patience. You want him. You rant and rave about the twinkle in my eye whenever I see Turk, but you have the same fucking twinkle, bae. You want him. More than that, you like him. And you want this baby. And the sooner you accept it the faster you can get to enjoying your pregnancy.”
She’s quiet, just staring at me with her upper lip twitching. She’s beautiful, dimples going in even when she’s scowling. Hair in a colorful bonnet. Wife beater stretched, with half her right titty out.
“I can’t believe you’re projecting your unresolved feelings for your baby daddy on me.
That nigga has been a third in our relationship since it started, and I haven’t said shit about it.
And the one time I call your ass out, you try to turn it around on me!
You wanted the threesome with Royce for your birthday, Autumn.
You wanted Royce to be the father of our second kid!
Why am I even here, why do you both waste everyone’s time when you both should just be together! ”
Her chest heaves as she screams her last words.
All that hot air she blowing and still hasn’t denied what I said, only deflected.
But that’s partly my fault. Again, I allowed her to see what she wanted instead of the real, and now, in my last year of nursing school, hours away, isn’t the time to have the conversations we need to have.
I’ve come too far now in school to be going back and forth with Pay because she lying to herself. I can’t be distracted by this shit.
“Do you wanna be with me, Pay?”
She blanches at my tone, but it’s her looking away from the camera that tells me everything I need to know.
“Bet. I’ll move my shit out when I’m done with clinicals.”
“Aut–”
“I’ll work out a schedule with Turk–”
“Bae–”
“No, Patience. I literally cannot right now.” My anger gives way to hurt and my voice cracks. I know she sees how glassy my eyes are, even if the service isn’t that great this deep in the building. “You hesitated,” I whisper.
“I just need time!”
Someone knocks on the door, and my pager vibrates on my hip, signalling the end of my break.
“Well, you got three and a half months. And word of advice, Turk isn’t the dumb thug you think he is.
You should tell him sooner rather than later.
” I hang up in her face and go to my burner app.
It’s still some complimentary minutes, so I dial up one of the only numbers I know by heart as my pager vibrates again.
After a couple rings, the phone goes silent, but I know it’s been answered. He just never speaks to an unknown number.
“Nigga you got til I get home to unblock my number.”
He chuckles, and dammit I hate even with all the anger and hurt and resentment swirling in my belly, my nipples tighten at his voice.
“You gone play ball, baby mama?”
“Yo gripes with Pay have nothing to do with me anymore. We broke up.” I hiccup on the last word and curse myself. A breakup in the middle of your shift is diabolical.
“I’m sorry, Auty.”
I hate that he actually sounds concerned. I hate that there’s no humor whatsoever, and that if he were here, he’d let me cry in his arms and rub my feet, like he used to do, way back when I first started dating women, and it was bust after bust.
“Just have me unblocked.” I hang up and slide my phone into my pocket, trying to regulate my breathing.
When someone bangs on the door again, I go and snatch it open. Of course it’s the bitch who don’t like me.
“Are you done?” she leans on her hip and folds them bony, ashy ass arms of hers.
I lick my lips and smile. “Yup.”
She steps to the side so I can pass, and I look her up and down before I get back to the nurse’s station.
Seventy more work days until I can mop the floor with that bitch’s wig.
That thought, and that thought alone, gets me through the shift.