Prologue #3
My body moved before my mind did. I grabbed my keys, clutched the card against my chest, turned off the lights, and locked the door with trembling hands.
Collapsed.
The word followed me all the way to my car.
In the driver’s seat, my breathing turned ragged. I fumbled with the screen, my clumsy fingers nearly dropping the phone before Leilani’s line finally rang, the endless tones stretching my panic thinner.
“Lani!”
“What is it? Cee, what happened?”
“Jamal.” My voice broke. “He collapsed at work. They’re taking him to the hospital.”
“I’m on my way,” she said immediately. “Me and Onyx. Just drive, sis. We’ll meet you there.”
The city fought me at every turn—every red light a personal insult, every slow car a roadblock. My hands clamped onto the steering wheel until my knuckles ached. Beneath the seat belt, the card pressed against the frantic hammer of my chest.
Prayer spilled out between jagged breaths, stripped of eloquence and pretty church language. “Please let this be a mistake. Please let him be sitting up. Not Jamal. Not my husband. Please, God. Please.”
I whipped into the Self Ridge Memorial parking lot just as Leilani and Onyx skidded in right behind me. Barefoot and clutching her sandals, Lani ran toward my opening door. I crashed into her arms so hard we staggered, but she locked her grip around me.
“I’m here, sis.” Leilani’s voice was a whisper against my ear.
Then Onyx steadied me before my knees could give out.
“We got you,” he whispered.
The sliding doors opened to a rush of bleach, cold air, and fluorescent light. Somewhere, a vending machine whirred; a child cried down a hallway. Life kept moving in ordinary noises, and I hated every one of them because mine had stopped.
I sprinted to the desk with Jamal’s card clutched in my fist.
“My husband, Jamal Coleman. He was just brought in by ambulance. Please . . . I need to see him.”
The nurse’s fingers clacked over the keyboard. As she scanned the screen, her expression shifted.
“Yes, ma’am. He’s here. They took him back to trauma. The doctors are with him now.”
My chest tightened. “What does that mean? Can I see him?”
Before she answered, a doctor in teal scrubs approached from the hallway.
The doctor asked, “Mrs. Coleman?”
“Yes?”
His voice dropped to a calm, careful register. “I’m Dr. Patel.” He gestured toward a small alcove with vinyl chairs just off the main hallway. “Please, come with me. Let’s sit down for a moment.”
My feet glued themselves to the linoleum. If I sat, it meant accepting whatever gravity he was about to pull me into. “No. No, thank you. Just tell me. Where is he?”
Dr. Patel didn’t push. He took a half-step closer, dropping his hands to his sides so he looked completely accessible yet entirely anchored.
“Mrs. Coleman, I need you to hear me. Your husband collapsed at work after complaining of a severe, sudden headache. By the time the paramedics brought him to us, he was slipping in and out of consciousness. Because of his symptoms, we ordered an immediate emergency CT scan.
“The images showed a catastrophic brain aneurysm—a massive, sudden bleed inside his brain. While we were evaluating the scans to see if emergency surgery was possible, the pressure became too great, and his heart stopped. We did everything we could to resuscitate him, but the damage was too severe. Your husband has died. I am so incredibly sorry.”
The words entered me without mercy.
A sudden, absolute quiet swallowed the room. The phones and monitors went dead; Leilani’s gasp vanished. The world shrank down to one suffocating second of silence, and then a primal sound tore from my chest, folding me in two.
“No. No, God, please no.”
Onyx caught me as my knees gave out, his arms locking around my waist to slow my fall to the floor. The impact shot a distant pain through my legs, but it was irrelevant compared to the shattering inside my chest.
Then, the sound broke free. A ragged, animalistic wail tore from my throat and burst past my lips—a loud, unchecked noise that splintered the quiet air of the hallway.
Leilani dropped beside us, wrapping herself around my shoulders.
I could hear her sobbing into my hair. I could feel Onyx’s hand trembling against my back.
A nurse said something gentle nearby, but none of the words reached me over the echo of my own ruin.
I tried to stand and couldn’t. Tried to breathe and couldn’t. Tried to put Jamal’s name in my mouth, and it came out broken.
“He was just with me,” I whispered. “He brought me flowers.”
My voice sounded small. Childlike. As if that simple fact should have changed the outcome. As if flowers could prove a man was too present, too needed, to be gone from the life he had filled that morning.
Time lost its shape. Hands lifted me into a vinyl chair, and a paper cup of water was pressed into my fingers. I never drank. The card stayed crushed in my fist, my thumb rhythmically tracing the softened edge of the envelope, the only thing in the hospital that still felt like Jamal.
Finally, I wiped my face with trembling hands, forcing words past the wreckage in my throat.
“I need to see him.”
Dr. Patel’s compassionate nod made me want to scream.
He guided us through a clean, blinding hallway full of closed doors and whispered voices.
I walked, but part of me remained in my shop, staring at the fresh bouquet.
Leilani held my waist, and Onyx stayed close, holding me upright as we crossed the threshold.
Inside, the world stood still.
Jamal lay motionless under the glare. His face was peaceful, a terrible contrast to the storm in my chest. My memory fought the image, reaching instead for the husband who kissed me goodbye and prayed over our children.
Above the sheet lay his familiar hand—the one that had gripped mine through hard days, good news, and a lifetime of shared prayers.
I collapsed over the bed, a stranger’s sound tearing from my chest.
“Baby, what am I supposed to do without you?”
When I pressed a kiss to his forehead, his skin was still warm.
That lingering heat wrecked me—a cruel lie told by a body that hadn’t yet realized its own ending.
A wild, desperate hope flared inside me, begging God to open a door if I just found the right words.
I squeezed his broad hand between both of mine, every muscle in my body straining as I waited for his fingers to twitch in response.
They stayed entirely still.
I pressed my forehead against his, weeping until my ribs ached. “Jamal, wake up. Please, baby. Please don’t do this.”
In the corner, Leilani covered her mouth, her shoulders heaving. Onyx drew her into his side and bowed his head, but his frame shook. I had seen Onyx anchor rooms that would have broken other men; seeing his collapse made the finality of the room press like lead against my throat.
I curled over Jamal, trying to weave my body into a bridge to pull him back across. Fifteen years of devotion, five children, a concert ticket waiting on the dresser, and a card still damp with my tears should have bought us more time.
Looking up through the blur, I forced a rasped whisper into the sterile air.
“Heavenly Father, You gave me a love that looked like You. I don’t understand, but I trust You.
Help our children. Cover their minds. Fill our home with angels, because I don’t know how to walk when my other half is gone.
Give me strength I don’t have and peace I cannot reach. Please.”
The prayer fractured. I kissed his brow again, slow and lingering, trying to leave my love on his skin for the journey. “I choose you still,” I whispered. “Always.”
A sharp buzz cut through the quiet. Across the room, my mama’s name glowed on Leilani’s screen. Lani looked at me, eyes swollen, already lifting the phone to her ear, but I shook my head.
“No. I’ll tell her and the kids myself. They need to hear it from me.”
Saying the words tore a fresh, jagged hole through me.
My babies. JJ carrying a man’s weight on boy’s shoulders.
Kayden with his quiet, guarded heart. Maya, who felt everything too deeply.
Zuri and her warm-toast love. Little Skye, folding her hands to ask for angels.
I saw their faces one by one, and the floor tilted beneath my feet.
I buried my face in Jamal’s chest, listening for a heartbeat I already knew was gone. My breath turned to groans. In my fist, the card was a damp, ruined clump, the ink smeared where my fingers had dug deep.
But beneath my thumb, the last line remained legible:
I choose you right back.
I held those words while the room trembled, while the harsh lights exposed my ruin, and while somewhere beyond these concrete walls, my five children still lived in a world where their daddy was coming home.
Jamal Coleman had loved me out loud. He had loved me in kitchens, in grocery aisles, in quiet prayers, and in the crowded hum of my salon. Now, with my future shattered into glass at my feet, I clung to the only truth the dark couldn’t swallow.
Nothing could make that love silent.