by C. L. Donley
Kenya had to give credit to her mother for one thing, and that was teaching her to take care of her hair, which was thick and beautiful and healthy. And unfortunately either pulled back or under a headscarf for most of her adult life. When she put a perm in it for the sake of convenience after working long days, the two women almost had a falling out.
“He seemed to like the way I was when we were dating,” Kenya defended herself against her mother’s prejudices. “He liked me being low-maintenance when his mom wouldn’t lift a finger to help us with the down payment on the house. Or when I was caring for him day and night when he got back from Afghanistan. That’s why I’m not even mad. I just wish I could be a fly on the wall the first time he tries to lean on this chick and she just looks at him like he’s crazy.”
“He’s not gonna be like that with her, Kenya, that’s what I tried to tell you. You gotta train these men how to treat you.”
“I’m convinced don’t none of y’all know what the hell y’all are talkin’ about. Every single one of y’all divorced. Aunt Dorrie had the nerve to tell me…” Kenya stopped right there and didn’t even go on, as she gave her mother a furrowed perplexed look. Kenya’s mother snickered, knowing her own sister’s dismal history with men.
“The motherfucker wanted to leave, so he left. Called the bitch while I was cryin’ in the bathroom about my marriage being over.”
“Were you talkin’ like that while he was there?”
“Worse.”
“Kenya, that mouth.”
“Yes, it was my undoing okay? I’m going to live my life alone.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Maybe that’s what I want.”
“You don’t mean that. You’ve been dreaming about babies since you were a baby.”
“I can still have a baby.”
Kenya’s mom didn’t even go there.
“Well, now you’re back to square one! Eight years, gone! That was a perfectly good man, Kenya. Debt-free, black, beautiful, stable—”
“Abusive, a liar, entitled, disrespectful—”
“When was he abusive??”
“He didn’t have to beat me to be abusive, mama.”
“Lawd!” her mother shook her head. “Women these days, I can hardly believe it. Four years a’ marriage, you talkin’ bout ‘abuse.’”
“No, it was nothing like what daddy put you through, I agree,” Kenya dared to mention. Her mother wasn’t mincing words either, as much as she might’ve thought she was. “I mean I love Cecil. More than that, I was willing to love him, but that…“ Kenya kept “that” vague, for the sake of her mother, at least. “I just don’t have the stomach for it. I don’t. I tried, and if I really needed him, then… maybe you’d have a point. But this here’s America. I got a degree, I got ten years at my job, and there’s adoption, there’s sperm donors, and it’s toy shops on every corner downtown. So he can kick rocks and swing his dick in somebody else’s face.”
Kenya’s mother laughed at her wicked declaration.
“So you just gon’ thug it out, huh,” her mom dared to use some new lingo.
“That’s right,” Kenya laughed. “What else I’mma do?”
“Well. Marriage ain’t for everybody, I guess,” she relented. Kenya left it at that as the twosome laughed.
The next day, Kenya was having a thankfully uneventful day at work.
“We got a frequent flyer raising hell downstairs. They’ve been waiting for an hour.”
“An hour? What the hell’s happening in triage?”
“This is what happens when the MA moves you.”
Kenya went down to the third floor. It wasn’t her job but she’d gotten all her charting done, and she was curious since triage wasn’t even swamped. When she got there, a sickly looking woman was holding her stomach sitting in the waiting room, an angry man in a jean jacket who looked to be her husband had the clerks in a shouting match.
“What seems to be the issue here?”
“My wife is burning up, and all these people can do is tell us to wait.”
“Has she been admitted before?” Kenya asked, already knowing the answer.
“Twice,” said one of the clerks.
“In the last six months?”
“July was the last.”
“Bernice, fast-track them to the second floor, get them a room. I’ll get their chart myself.”
“If you insist.”
The husband softened as he calmed down, looking apologetic.
“Thank you, miss…”
“Nurse Hamilton. Bernice will take care of you.”
“Another crisis averted,” Gwen said when Kenya returned.
“Honestly, it’s not even the busiest part of the night.”
“It’s getting harder and harder to find good help.”
“Well, at least our jobs are secure as fuck.”
“Unless we quit,” joked Gwen.
Kenya shook her head as she grabbed the charts from the inpatient tray. Gwen was her closest friend at work and one of her top three favorite white girls ever, with her college roommate Melanie and her high school principal rounding out the list. She was the nurse she gossiped with and complained to about everyone else and vice versa.
As of now, Gwen was the only one that knew what happened between her and Cecil. But news traveled fast in the hospital, especially juicy news. She’d given up on privacy long ago.
“How’s it feel to be back at work?” Kenya asked.
“About the same,” Gwen sighed.
“How can you stand to be away from him?”
“Oh, the baby? It’s not hard, knowing he’s with my mom. I could use the break,” Gwen mused.
“If I had a baby I’d probably have to quit. So I probably shouldn’t have a baby right now.”
“Are you kidding? With the schedule you have now, you could totally do it.”
“If I’m still working nights when I find a magical sperm donor, conceive, and deliver, please shoot me.”
“So does that mean if a day position opens up, you want it?”
“Honestly I don’t know,” Kenya replied pensively. “So much of my life has been in flux lately.”
“You mean…Cecil?”
“I mean Cecil.”
“Maybe the change will do you good.”
“I don’t know. If I’m awake at the same time he is, it will drastically increase my chances of running into him— or them— from impossible, to one in a million. It’s too big of a fuckin’ jump.”
“I hear ya,” Gwen sighed. “But you’ve already been on the rotation longer than anyone else. I’m afraid if you pass up the next opening, you’ll lose your mind.”
“Looks like I’ll be losing it either way.”
“So you might as well see the sun, huh?”
Kenya shifted her weight on one foot.
“I suppose you’re right,” she conceded. “Put me on the list.”
“What am I, your secretary? Tell Denise,” Gwen snarked. Kenya made her a goofy face.
“Kenya, there’s a claims adjuster here to see you?” one of the nurse’s aide’s approached the desk.
Kenya went hot, followed by a clammy cold.
She looked at Gwen. It’d been a week since “the incident,” and while she anticipated a call, she found the visit unusual. Were they going to arrest her? Is that how they did it?
Great, she thought. The black nurse gets arrested at work. For selling drugs? No. She keyed a bitch’s car. Sounds about right.
“Did you tell him I’m kinda busy?” Kenya asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“It’s 7 at night,” Kenya marveled.
“Police don’t have shit on the insurance companies, apparently,” offered Gwen.
With the carefree, immature feelings of childish pranks having long subsided, pangs of guilt and embarrassment took their place.
At work, she was professional and respected. She was now going to face another grown ass professional who woul
d never get to see her that way. Because no matter how many lives she may have saved the night before, this claims adjuster knows the real her. And the real her carves epithets into cheating ass bitches’ cars, and makes insurance companies investigate it.
She walked to the lobby of her wing and saw a white, boringly well-dressed man waiting at the counter.
He was odd-looking to the point of being attractive, like a high fashion editorial but without the high fashion. Big sad puppy eyes, a wide mouth, pouty lips, and pronounced bone structure. His gaunt features were balanced by his conservatively cut and boyish brown hair. They were about the same age and he looked like the exact future of one of her stoner high school classmates.
“Kenya Hamilton?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Kevin Hayes,” he said, “I work for Arizona insurance—”
“Walk with me,” she said, ignoring the rabid curiosity at the nurse’s desk. When they were out of earshot of nosy personnel she continued.
“How did you people find me?”
“I take it you know why I’m here.”
“Yeah. About the, uh… vandalism.”
“It wasn’t hard at all, I’m afraid. I… spoke to your husband.”
“My husband?”
“Cecil Hamilton?”
She’d already heard his name more times than she wanted to tonight.
“I see… you guys keep peculiar hours,” Kenya remarked.
“I’m here in an unofficial capacity, you could say. The claim was filed by me. It was my car.”
Kenya’s neck jutted forward and her eyes widened, mostly in disbelief.
“Your car?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my gosh,” she quietly moaned, a fresh wave of guilt hit her. She shook her head at her own stupidity, at her own inability to revenge properly.
“Shit. I’m so sorry. Fuck…” she slowly ran both hands down her face. Her eyes darted back and forth a bit as she began to connect dots she felt uncomfortable connecting.
“So… that’s… I don’t think I understand. Was she—”
“The ‘whore’ you were writing about is my wife,” he said.
Kenya squinted.
“My wife is fucking your husband.”
Kenya’s neck quickly retreated backward from its forward position. She blinked her eyes.
“Well… fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck. I… that’s… I’m sorry about that,” she said, furrowing her brow. “I guess? I don’t know, I’m not sure what the appropriate etiquette is, here.”
“Not really a Hallmark card for this one.”
“No… nor should there be,” Kenya remarked.
She relaxed, a little too much because she felt the urge suddenly to laugh. She failed to suppress a smile.
“So I probably shouldn’t laugh then,” she added, giving him a sly look as she wrinkled her pug nose.
“You definitely shouldn’t,” he deadpanned, taking a moment from his gloom to tease her.
“No,” she smiled, looking at the floor and biting her lip until the urge to chuckle subsided. She smoothed out her brow with her fingertips. “You spoke to him? To Cecil?”
“More than I would’ve liked to. When I got home he was still there.”
Kenya’s jaw dropped as she covered her mouth with her hand.
“He was with my wife when I got home, waiting for the police to arrive. Apparently, you’d already left.”
“So we just missed each other,” Kenya pointed out. He chuckled a little as he nodded a confirmation.
Kenya continued, feeling an odd camaraderie that apparently comes with being cheated on. It felt good to laugh. She could tell he was having a similar revelation.
“You seem to be holding up well,” she remarked.
“You too.”
“My secret? Vandalizing cars. Sorry about that, by the way. I’ve never been good at revenge. It always ends up biting me back, but there’s not usually collateral damage.”
Kevin let his smile lower in wattage as he remembered his mission, which was mostly to get a good look at the other side of this love square, this supposedly dismal partner with which this lowlife shackled himself with.
Instead he met a sharp, pleasant, mild-mannered nurse wearing colorful, patterned scrubs and looking very busy. She was attractive with a gorgeous smile, she didn’t look to him like some bitter life sentence that would cause a man to do what he did.
“You know, now that I’m here, talking to you… I think I’m just gonna drop the claim.”
“What? No. Don’t do that. I’ll comply with everything,” Kenya protested, a concerned wrinkle across her forehead.
“No, I mean… you’re clearly not… you would have to go to court and everything and… I don’t wanna put you through all that. You’ve been through enough, I think.”
“Me? So have you,” she replied.
Kevin backed away, looking as though he were emotional.
He was. He wanted to cry on her shoulder. She was a stranger, and the perfect height to lower his head and bury it into her neck, that looked soft and probably smelled like band-aids, like antiseptic. The smell that signified help was on the way, the brutal kind that you didn’t want, but the kind that was needed.
The aching tone of her concern was causing his arid insides to crack open. He had to get out of there.
“I’m gonna go home now. Sorry to have bothered you, Nurse Hamilton.”
“Call me Kenya. And hey, Kevin, right?”
“Right.”
“Send me the bill. Please.”
He nodded, sending her a faint smile before he turned and walked out of the front entrance, through the automatic doors.
As she watched him hurriedly disappear, Kenya had a feeling she wouldn’t be seeing a bill anytime soon.
* * *
Two weeks after his wife left for good, Kevin was still getting used to his new routine, which consisted of working late, ordering pizza, eating on the couch, then laying in front of the television until it was 2 am and he was jolted awake. Then he would reluctantly get in his empty bed to sleep.
He would text Lindsey about picking up more of her things, the last ditch effort to maintain a connection with her. He even texted her about money, to make sure she was taken care of. It was a desperate move, he knew, but at the moment he didn’t care.
When she didn’t answer then, he figured she must’ve contacted her parents. He doubted very seriously if this guy was married to another working woman that he had the type of money Lindsey “required.”
He found himself thinking about the young, poised nurse that he’d met at the hospital. The thirty seconds of a laughter they shared during the worse possible period of his life. Sure, she’d vandalized his car, but there wasn’t a thing about her that seemed immature or unstable, so her husband must’ve truly driven her to the brink.
He couldn’t help trying to relive the five-minute oasis that was their meeting. She was the only person on the planet right now that he could be sure felt the exact thing he was feeling. He couldn’t bear the looks he got at work, from his co-workers, when he pulled up in his Camry, freshly carved. Though his brother couldn’t be deterred.
“I hope you’re pressing charges,” Scott warned.
“No,” Kevin said. Scott shook his head in disbelief.
“Dude, your car’s fucked. And on not one, but three separate panels? It’s gonna cost a fortune.”
“It’s okay, I tracked her down already.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, she’s a nurse at the hospital.”
“No shit. A nurse did that?”
“Well… she’s… African American,” he explained, trying not to sound racist to himself but it was no use. “And married to a Marine.”
“Waaaaaaaaaait a minute… hold on,” Scott stopped stirring his coffee to grasp this new information.
“Okay… Lindsey’s fucking another Marine?”
Kevin
ran his long hands down his face and hung his head.
“Yes.”
“He’s black?”
“Yes,” he answered with his hands hiding his face.
“A black Marine?”
“Yes.”
“Is he a masculine physical Adonis?”
“Yes,” was his last muffled response.
“Holy shit,” Scott adopted a look of outrage. “Well that picture just got a whole lot clearer,” he said under his breath, stirring his coffee. “So the wife, what was that conversation like?”
“Pleasant, actually. She even agreed to pay.”
“Dude, that’s awesome.”
“But honestly I don’t feel comfortable sticking the sanest person in this entire situation with the bill.”
“You’re not going to file the claim?”
“She’d have to go to court, and I don’t have the heart to put her through that. She was really sweet. Had a sense of humor about it, actually. Her husband’s a major dick. Definitely one of those delusions of grandeur assholes. Used to getting his ass kissed because he was an officer.”
Scott found his choice of words interesting.
“Was she cute?”
“Who?”
“The wife.”
“Yeah,” Kevin confirmed, nodding with a far off look of recollection.
“Hot bod?”
“Scott, for fuck’s sake.”
“I’m just saying. You’re both getting cheated on. She’s a sweet hot nurse…”
“I never said she was hot.”
“You didn’t say she wasn’t.”
“Aside from that being ridiculous, it’s only been two weeks. It’s too fucking soon. To think about anything. Like that.”
“Bro, you were supposed to get laid. We were celebrating. And then this happened.”
“And now sex is the last thing on my mind.”
Scott rolled his eyes.
“The last thing?? Bullshit. We all know what’s gonna fix this.”
“Pretty sure a random lay is just gonna make me feel worse.”
“Dude, you’re already running on reserves, here. You’re not thinking clearly to begin with.”
“I’m better off celibate, I think. Honestly, we all are. Lindsey didn’t give me a second look until I got back from living with a buncha dudes for months at a time.”
“Yeah, and then you were head over heels and none of us could stand to be around you anymore. Just give up trying to make sense of it, bro it’s just the circle of life. We’re men, we chase pussy. It’s what we do, or we die.”