Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
She hadn’t been expecting me, but she wasn’t surprised when she found me at the other side of her door. I took this to mean that she’s heard about what happened to Lauren.
Monique’s eyes were sympathetic when she nodded me into her office. I didn’t want her sympathy, though. I wanted answers. She waited until I sat down before taking her own seat behind a dark wood desk. I hardly got a word in before Monique huffed, her tone almost whiny.
“You know they didn’t want me to operate on her at first? Her family, I mean.”
That wasn’t surprising at all. Adding her husband’s last name to hers didn’t make her any less of a Montgomery. And given the likely culprit behind Lauren’s shooting, I could understand why Lauren’s family wouldn’t want Monique operating on their daughter.
“I’m the best emergency surgeon in this hospital, and they thought that I might want to, ‘Finish what my father started.’ Can you believe that? How do they even know Daddy had something to do with this? Isn’t he a thousand miles away, in Memphis, right now?”
“He did set it up,” I pushed past this revelation quickly, eager to get to the point. “Silas said he was gonna make me watch her die. And it looks like he made good on that promise.”
Monique had nothing to say to this. My sister, while in the dark about a lot of things pertaining to our father, was not stupid. If I said he was involved, it wouldn’t be difficult for her to wrap her head around.
“Well…” She found it difficult to piece together her words, hesitant to tell me whatever it was. My anxiety fired up. “Well… because her family didn’t want me in on the surgery, they had to call an off-duty surgeon in, half asleep and bleary-eyed.”
I knew bad news was coming.
“He was heavy handed, puncturing her left side lung during the bullet removal.” I leaned forward onto the edge of my seat. “I had to be called in to help last minute, and we couldn’t fix it. What was supposed to be a simple bullet removal turned into a very complicated pneumonectomy.”
“A what?”
“We had to remove one of her lungs. Her body is getting acclimated to the loss, and she can’t breathe on her own right now. To make for an easier recovery, she’s been induced into a coma, where she will stay until she learns to function efficiently with just the one lung.”
I didn’t even realize my eyes were watering until Monique reached across her desk and pulled a tissue loose. I declined the offer, clearing my throat before asking, “Can I see her?”
“Oh, Kain,” she whispered softly, shaking her head, “You know I can’t—”
“Please.” I wasn’t too proud to beg.
Monique sat back, drawing the tissue she’d offered earlier to her own eyes. “Kain, go home.”
“Monique—”
“Kain, go home,” she repeated, pushing out a frustrated sigh. “Go home, wash up, change out of your bloody clothes, and come back after visitation hours have closed—that’s after ten o’clock—and… And I’ll see what I can do.”
***
July 31st, 2016, was the longest day of my life. After getting cleaned up, I sat in the parking lot of Jackson Memorial, watching the sky, very slowly, grow dark. The hours passed like years—a prison sentence of guilt, of depression, pure torture.
At exactly one minute after ten o’clock, I was sitting in the hospital lobby, just outside a gift shop where Monique had told me to wait.
I thought about buying Lauren flowers, ultimately deciding against it because I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave them with her.
Every odd second or so, I checked the time on my wrist watch.
Monique was six minutes late, and after waiting several hours for this, each minute she wasted felt cruel. It was her hand on my shoulder that snapped me out of whatever haze I’d zoned out into.
“Come on, follow me.”
Maybe it was all in my head, but I could’ve sworn that as Monique lead me further and further into the back of the hospital, the air around me got colder. She stopped at a door, scanning around us for any prying eyes.
“I told the staff on this floor to give you some leeway. But I can’t do anything about her family,” Monique explained. “So as a favor to me, make sure you’re out of this room before visitation begins tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. Please.”
“You mean… You don’t mind if I stay through the night?”
“I figured you might want to since—”
Without warning, I pulled my older sister into a hug, a silent thank you. On a day filled with so many disappointments, this opportunity was, as sad as it may seem, a silver lining. Monique held open the door nodding me in with a final reminder.
“Be out of this hospital by seven fifty-nine.”
She shut the door behind me, leaving me in a room that was mostly dark aside from the bedside lamp off to the side of where Lauren lay. I followed the light, pulling a chair against the wall closer to the side of her bed, my eyes never once veering away from her face.
Lauren had been poked and prodded, tubes in her nose and mouth, breathing for her because she could no longer do it on her own.
My favorite thing about watching Lauren sleep was the way that she used to breathe, the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest used to be hypnotizing.
And now, with the help of a machine, her breathing was now measured, mechanic in its timing.
In and then out, a predictable beat that was all too unnatural.
I took a seat, my hand finding hers tucked under the sterile, white hospital sheets.
“Hey,” I whispered, leaning forward and resting my head on the space left in the bed beside her.
Her fingers were warm, an oddly comforting observation.
Warmth meant that she was still alive. Even if there was a loud ass machine doing all the breathing for her, there was still something I could hold onto. All was not lost. She was still here.
So I spoke to her.
“I did some Googling online and read that patients on life support have a low probability of bein’ able to hear things that are said to them, but there are some cases where they wake up, say they heard it, and remember it all.”
I let my fingers caress the skin of the back of her hand. I might’ve hoped for a squeeze or a twitch of her fingers to give me some sign that she could hear me, but there was none of that. Still, I kept talking.
“Do you remember our first date? When I found out you get down with catfish?” I chuckled at the memory. “I remember tellin’ you I don’t like seafood, and you were outraged to hear it. I remember thinking to myself, ‘What is she so outraged for? Catfish ain’t seafood, it’s lakefood.’
“And then you said something along the lines of, why would I agree to go to a restaurant called Catfish Carol’s if I knew I wasn’t tryna eat fish.
I didn’t say at the time, ‘cause I thought it would’ve come off wild corny, but…
I just wanted to see you again. Though, I felt that should’ve been obvious.
“Then there was the time we had that first self-defense lesson. There’s this thing you used to do when I got real close—you’d hold your breath—and you thought I didn’t notice. I did. I’d take one step back, and suddenly you were gasping for air. It was cute.”
I sniffed, bringing the back of my free hand to my eyes. As comforting as it was to be here, to see her, that didn’t make the view any less heartbreaking.
“Last night you asked me what I would do if I lost you, and I said I didn’t know.
No more than five hours later, I held you in my arms as you started to die, and for a brief moment, I caught a glimpse of exactly what I would do if I lost you.
It felt like a piece of me just… broke. I got numb, and the sounds around me grew muffled.
I just…separated. It was like I stepped away from the scene and was looking at myself from further away.
Nothin’ felt real, and so in turn, nothin’ felt like it mattered. ”
I thought I hit rock bottom the night Amir died.
Nope.
Evidently, there were still a million more miles I could fall.
“I think I might do the therapy thing.” I swiped a thumb across the backs of her fingers, a little consoled by the feel of her hand in mine. “Actually, I’ll bargain with you. If you make a full and speedy recovery, I will do whatever you want. Just start breathing on your own.”
Despite the intrusive beeping that sounded off from the machines keeping her alive, when I laid my head back down on the space that she left, sleep eventually did come. Even in a coma, Lauren’s presence still put my heart at ease.
When I woke the following morning, the sun was beginning to creep up and into the sky. I looked at the watch on my wrist, noting that I didn’t have much time. Reluctantly letting go of her hand, I rose to my feet, brushing her hair away from her forehead before saying goodbye with a parting kiss.
“I’ll be back later,” I whispered against her hair—a promise. “I love you.”
And I did come back that night.
And the next night.
And the next.