Mehar
“What’s on your mind?” I asked Quest as he sat in the chair next to my bed staring straight ahead at nothing.
Something was off with him and I couldn’t figure out what.
I knew the war was eating at him. I knew he wanted to be out there with Justice and Prime putting in work instead of sitting in a hospital room watching me heal.
But this was something else. Something he was carrying behind his eyes that he wasn’t giving me access to and that bothered me because Quest didn’t keep doors closed with me.
That was our whole thing. No walls, no secrets, no hidden rooms. At least that’s what I thought.
“Nothing. Just this shit with the Rios.”
“Do you blame me?” The question came out before I could filter it. “If Mateo was never my client, none of this would’ve happened. He would’ve never come into our lives and his family wouldn’t be trying to kill us.”
“I don’t blame you.” He shifted in the chair, leaned back, crossed his arms. Body language that was trying to look relaxed but wasn’t. “I had beef with Mateo outside of you.”
“Then what is it? She’s doing better. The nurses say she’s improving every day.
We’re going to be okay.” I reached for his hand because I needed him to look at me and when he did I needed to see the truth.
He took my hand but something in him snapped to attention, like I’d tripped a wire he was trying to hide.
“I promise there’s nothing wrong. I just got shit on my mind. We’ve been through a lot, Mehar. I’m worried about you. I’m worried about Aziza. This war with the Rios isn’t going away and I need to handle it but I can’t leave y’all here alone. That’s it. That’s all it is.”
“I understand,” I said. But I didn’t believe him.
Not fully. There was something tugging at him underneath the surface and I knew this man well enough to feel it even if I couldn’t name it.
After three weeks on an island together I could read Quest the way he read financial reports, line by line, looking for discrepancies. And something in him wasn’t adding up.
But I let it go because pushing Quest when he wasn’t ready to talk was like pushing a wall. You’d exhaust yourself before it moved.
“I’ll be right back. Gonna hit the bathroom.” He stood up and stretched. “You want anything? I know you’re done with hospital food.”
“A crab cake sandwich and a caesar salad from Miss Shirley’s.”
“Miss Shirley’s? You getting bougie on me?”
“I just had a whole baby cut out of me on a Caribbean island, Quest. I deserve bougie.”
He gave me his best smile but it didn’t reach his eyes the way it usually did. “Say less. I’ll have it delivered. Gonna make a few phone calls too.”
He kissed my forehead and walked out. I stared at the door for a minute after it closed, trying to decode what I was feeling.
Something was wrong. I didn’t know what, couldn’t prove it, couldn’t articulate it beyond a gnawing sensation in my gut that told me Quest was holding something back.
But my gut had kept me alive through Ahmad, through Janelle, through a plane crash and an island and a hurricane. I trusted it more than I trusted words.
· · ·
I picked up my phone and FaceTimed Zainab because I needed to hear a voice that wasn’t attached to a monitor or a medical chart or a man who was lying to me about something I couldn’t identify.
“Zainy!” I screeched when her face popped up on the screen. God, it felt good to see her. A glimpse of normal life in the middle of all this chaos.
“Girllll,” she said, adjusting the phone. She was in a kitchen I didn’t recognize, which meant the safe house, wearing a bonnet and a Living Single sweatshirt with what looked like baby food on the collar. “How you feeling? You look better.”
“I’m healing. Slowly. The stitches itch like crazy and these pain meds have me constipated, which is a conversation I wish I wasn’t having but here we are.”
“Welcome to motherhood, sis. Say hi, Yusef!”
Yusef appeared behind her looking like he’d grown three inches since the last time I’d seen him. His voice had dropped and his face was thinning out and he was starting to look less like a kid and more like the man he was becoming.
“Hey Aunt MiMi,” he said with that shy half smile that always got me.
“Hey Yu! Boy, what are they feeding you up there? You look like you grew a whole foot.”
“Just eating, Auntie. Tell Uncle Quest I said what’s up.”
He disappeared back to whatever teenage thing he was doing and Zainab tilted the phone to show me the twins in their high chairs. Kheris was eating Cheerios one at a time with intense focus. Idris was asleep in his high chair with his face in a bowl of applesauce.
“Idris is literally sleeping in his food,” I laughed.
“That boy can sleep through anything. Gets it from his daddy. Prime could sleep through a hurricane.” She paused and her face shifted when she realized what she’d said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“Girl, stop. I survived a real one. I can handle a figure of speech.”
We caught up for a while. She told me about being stuck in the safe house with Riot’s security guys who apparently ate everything in the fridge within two days.
I gave her updates on Aziza. Her oxygen levels were improving.
The nurses were talking about possibly transitioning her from the ventilator to CPAP soon.
She was gaining weight, slowly, fraction of an ounce at a time, but gaining.
“And Serenity?” Zainab asked. “I talked to her yesterday. Sarai is getting so big already.”
“I know. She’s thriving.” I said it with a smile and meant it.
Serenity deserved every bit of joy that baby was bringing her.
But for a split second before the smile there was something else, something I didn’t want to name because naming it would make me a terrible person.
My niece was healthy and growing and breathing on her own in a bassinet next to her mother while my daughter was three pounds in a plastic box with a tube down her throat.
I was happy for Serenity. I was. But the jealousy came first, just for a flash, and I hated myself for it.
Kheris chose that moment to launch her Cheerios bowl off the high chair tray and scream at a pitch that made my stitches hurt through the phone.
“Lord, let me go deal with this. I love you, sis. Kiss my niece for me.”
“Love you too. Hug the twins and Yu.”
The screen went dark, the room went quiet. I was alone again with the monitors, the IV drip, and the feeling in my gut that wouldn’t quit.
· · ·
The door opened about thirty minutes later and Quest walked in followed by three men who made the hospital room feel about four sizes too small.
Cannon came through first, tall and broad with that quiet energy he carried everywhere, a gift bag in one hand and a teddy bear the size of a toddler in the other.
Creed was behind him looking like he’d stepped off a GQ cover even in jeans and a hoodie, holding a bouquet of flowers and a pink gift bag.
And Riot brought up the rear with a balloon bouquet that barely fit through the doorframe and a grin that could light up a room at midnight. He also had a huge pink gift bag.
The King brothers. My brothers-in-law by extension even if the wedding hadn’t happened yet. Seeing them walk through that door filled something in my chest that I didn’t realize was empty.
“Look at the three wise men,” I said. “Bearing gifts and everything. Which one of y’all brought the frankincense?”
“I don’t know what frankincense is but I brought you some edibles in case the pain meds aren’t cutting it,” Riot said, pulling a small bag from his pocket. “Don’t tell the nurses.”
“Boy, put that away before we all get arrested.” But I was laughing and it felt so good to laugh that my eyes watered.
They each hugged me gently, the way large men hug women who’ve been through surgery, with careful arms and soft grips.
Cannon held on a beat longer than the others and whispered, “We got you, sis,” against my ear and I had to blink fast to keep from crying because those three words from a man who didn’t waste them meant everything.
“Can we see her?” Creed asked. “I’ve been looking at pictures but I need to meet my niece in person.”
“I want to go too,” I said. “I want to tell her goodnight.”
Quest helped me into the wheelchair without being asked.
His hands were gentle on my waist, careful around the stitches, and for a second when he leaned down to adjust the footrests his face was close enough to mine that I could see the exhaustion in his eyes and the thing behind the exhaustion that he still wasn’t sharing with me.
We took the elevator up to the NICU. The whole crew, Quest pushing my chair, three King brothers walking behind us like the world’s most intimidating entourage.
The nurse on the floor looked at the five of us approaching and her eyes went wide but she buzzed us in without argument because something about the energy of this group communicated that arguing wasn’t going to be productive.
They stood at the incubator and went quiet the way everyone went quiet the first time they saw her.
Aziza had that effect on people. Three pounds of sleeping baby could silence a room full of grown men who’d done terrible things with their hands.
Cannon pressed his palm against the glass and shook his head slowly.
Riot’s jaw tightened and he looked away for a second before looking back.
Creed just stared at her with an expression that made me think he was seeing something beyond a premature baby in a box, maybe seeing the fragility of everything they were all fighting to protect.
“She’s perfect,” Creed said quietly.
“She’s a Banks,” Quest said. “She’s supposed to be perfect.”
I reached through the port and touched her arm and whispered goodnight to her the way I did every evening. Her fingers twitched against my touch but she didn’t wake up and that was fine. She needed the sleep more than I needed the acknowledgment.
· · ·
Back in my room, Quest helped me into bed and sat on the edge while the King brothers waited in the hallway.
“I’m going to head to the hotel with them. We need to talk strategy. Creed has intel I need to go through and we need to plan some things.”
“Okay.”
He reached behind him and pulled something from his waistband and set it on the bedside table next to my water cup.
A Glock 19. Compact, black, familiar. He’d taught me to shoot on the range back home and I was better than decent with it.
The weight of it on the table changed the energy in the room immediately.
“You’ve got two guards on this door and two on the NICU floor,” he said. “But I need you to have this. Just in case.”
“Quest.”
“If anything feels off, anything at all, you call me first. Don’t hesitate. Don’t second-guess yourself. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. I’ll be back first thing when visiting hours open.”
He held my face and kissed me. It was a real kiss, not a quick peck, not a drive-by.
It carried weight and intention. It felt like he was memorizing the taste of me in case he didn’t get another chance.
When he pulled back his eyes were soft but his jaw was set and I could see the war sitting right behind his tenderness.
“I love you, Peach.”
“I love you too. Be safe.”
He kissed me once more, quick this time, then stood and walked out.
I heard him greet the King brothers in the hallway, heard their voices fade toward the elevator, heard the doors close.
Then there was nothing but the monitors, the gun on my nightstand, and the silence filling up the spaces where Quest used to be.
I looked at the Glock. I looked at the door. I looked at the ceiling and listened to the hospital hum around me. Distant beeps, footsteps down the corridor, muffled voices carrying through walls that were too thin for a building that never fully slept.
Something was wrong with Quest. Something beyond the war and the Rios family and the stress of having a baby in the NICU. I could feel it the way you feel weather changing before the sky shows it. A pressure drop. A shift in the air. Something coming that I couldn’t see yet.
I just didn’t know what it was.
The gun sat on the nightstand next to my water cup like it belonged there, and maybe in our life it did.
My daughter was two floors above me sleeping in an incubator, my fiancé was somewhere in Baltimore planning to kill people, and I was lying here with fresh stitches and a feeling in my gut that wouldn’t let me close my eyes.