Chapter 27 Legend Cartier
LEGEND CARTIER
Livia was laughing so hard through my Bluetooth that I almost hung up on her.
“She’s where?!” she cackled.
I dragged one hand down my face while I drove. “She’s in a fucking psych ward. She checked herself in.”
That made Livia laugh harder.
“Stop laughing, sis. This shit not funny.”
She sucked her teeth at me. “Don’t reprimand me. Reprimand yourself for steady knocking that girl up knowing she can’t take it anymore.”
“I thought she was good now since she got the procedure.”
“You should consider getting a vasectomy.”
“Fuck that shit. I heard male dogs get weird after they’re fixed.”
Livia started cracking up laughing again. “You are not a dog, and your wife is going to get worse than weird if you don’t get fixed because clearly nothing will stop her from getting pregnant. She’s like the Virgin Mary.”
That made me chuckle, despite being concerned for my wife.
When Livia first came into the office saying Aria was gone, I thought the worst. All I could think about was my mother running away from our home to get away from my father and getting murdered in that hotel.
I had Jamir on the street cameras trying to follow where she went. He was already pulling feeds and building a route when the psych ward called and let me know Aria had checked herself in because she had listed me as her emergency contact.
Even with that call, I still didn’t feel right, and I wasn’t going to until I got eyes on her. I pulled into the facility’s lot, killed the engine, and looked up at the building. It looked like a prison, so plain and beige under floodlights and no warmth. I hated that my wife was in there.
“I’m here,” I told Livia. “I’ll call you back.”
“Call me back as soon as you know how she’s doing.”
“It’s almost one in the morning. I don’t know how long I’ll be in here.”
“I don’t care. Call me back.”
“A’ight, a’ight.” Then I ended the call and got out.
I rushed towards the front door. Even though it was now March, it was still cold as hell.
Once inside of the facility, I went straight to the front desk where the receptionist looked up like she was already tired of dealing with people at this hour.
“I’m here to see my wife, Aria Cartier.”
“It’s not visiting hours,” she replied robotically. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow at 9AM.”
I reached into my pocket, pulled out a few hundred dollars, and laid it on the desk.
She glanced down at it, then back at me.
I said, “I didn’t ask what time it was.”
Her mouth pressed into a line, but she took the money and told me to have a seat.
A few minutes later, somebody came to get me.
They walked me through a set of locked doors and down a bright hallway that was impressively clean but depressing at the same time.
Then I saw Aria. She came toward me in one of those facility-issued sets, pale blue scrub pants, a loose matching top, white grippy socks, and a plastic ID band around her wrist. Her hair was up in a sloppy ponytail.
Her eyes were too wild, restless in a way I knew meant her nerves were still all over the place.
She looked beautiful to me anyway. She just also looked like she was losing her shit.
The second she got close enough, I pulled her into me. I wrapped both arms around her and held her tight before kissing her softly on the lips. Then I leaned back just enough to look at her and laughed. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
She blinked her eyes so slowly that I knew she wasn’t herself. “I had to go somewhere nobody could get me out of, not even my husband. You would figure out how to get me out of jail, and I was scared I’d kill myself.”
“And I’ma get you outta here too.”
Aria rolled her eyes. “See.”
I just looked at my wife, shaking my head in disbelief that she had taken things this far. “You are dramatic as hell.”
“How did they let you back here this late?” she asked. “It’s not visiting hours, and I just got back here. I just finished intake like five minutes ago.”
“I have money,” I reminded her.
Before she could say anything else, a nurse came up beside us holding a chart. “Ms. Cartier?”
“Mrs.,” she corrected. “Yes?”
“The pregnancy test you took during intake was negative.”
Aria frowned. “Huh?”
“It’s routine to take a pregnancy test during intake for women of age. Yours was negative. Since you said you had just taken a test that came out positive, I used the blood we drew for your labs and had them run your hCG. There wasn’t any. You are not pregnant.”
Aria just stared at her.
Then she looked at me.
Then back at the nurse.
“Are you serious?” she pressed.
“Yes. You more than likely got a false positive on the at-home test.”
Aria’s shoulders dropped, and her eyes shut for a second. Then she let out a relieved breath. “Okay. Good. Great. Then I can go home.”
Suddenly, the nurse looked reluctant. “No,” she replied, cautiously. “You are on a seventy-two-hour hold because you presented as suicidal. You have to stay.”
I lost it. I laughed so hard I had to turn away for a second.
She glared at me. “The joke is on you, baby. I just got a three-day vacation from the kids.”