Don’t Ever Wonder

by Darren Coleman

I wasn’t really gonna hurt her…just really angry.

  It was a miracle that Brendan even made it to the operating room. He was suffering from massive brain swelling, internal bleeding, a severely fractured collarbone, and they feared a ruptured spleen.

  During his surgery, Brendan could hear his grandmother’s voice. Hey, baby, it’s been so long since I seen you. Grandma misses you so much, but you got a lot to live for your unborn child. Keep fightin’, Brendan.

  Seven hours of surgery later and the waiting room was packed with his family and friends.

  In the OR the doctors were frantic. “We’re losing him,” the doctor yelled.

  I sat on my hands, eyes bloodshot. My best friend, my brother, was fighting for his life. I didn’t know what to say to anyone. His mother and father were trying to be strong. Nate had beaten me to the hospital but left as soon as Trina had shown up with Daphne. He said that he was trying to remain steadfast and reasoned that the words he wanted to say to Trina were un-Christian-like. Dee was in Cancún and we couldn’t reach him. I sat alone waiting and wondering if he was gonna make it. I hadn’t been back in D.C. for twenty-four hours and I was feeling like I had come back too late. Maybe if I had come earlier or had time to listen to his rants, I could have calmed him down. The officers took a report that he was involved in a chase with an unidentified car, but of course I knew who he was chasing.

  The doctors came out the doors and asked for his next of kin. As soon as they did that his mother nearly fainted. The doctors rushed to her and tried to make sure that she was okay. Mr. Shue was sweating bullets and didn’t know what to do. His aunt began trembling and crying, “Oh Lord noooo.”

  I ran over and tried to help but I had the worst feeling in my stomach, and when I looked at the doctors and saw the blank expressions on their faces, I felt nauseous. It was a struggle to keep it together. As soon as we got his mother seated and stabilized, a small semblance of calm came over the room and I noticed Nate walk back into the waiting area. A beautiful woman was with him. She was holding a Bible and had Nate by the arm.

  “Doc, we’re all family here. Whatever you have to say…please just say it so that we don’t have to repeat it over and over,” Mr. Shue said with authority.

  “Remarkably, your son pulled through the surgery. He has very severe injuries, he’s lost a lot of blood, but he is young and very healthy. He is really fighting but he hasn’t regained consciousness and even if he survives, there is no telling when or if he will,” I heard him say.

  “Oh gaaaawwwwd no,” Trina yelled out.

  “Please calm down, child,” his aunt yelled out. “We don’t need that right now.”

  “Noo, nooooo,” she cried out again, stomping her feet this time. Then, she just blurted it out, “I’m carrying his baaaaaabbbbby.”

  “What?” his mother yelled out. “You’re lying. Tell me you’re lying.”

  The attention turned toward her, and Nate finally walked up to Daphne, whom he had feuded with for so long over his treatment of Kim. “It would be a good idea if you took her home.” He was calm. Daphne never thought about cutting smart. She just stared into Nate’s eyes as he continued, “She doesn’t need to be so upset or upset his mother right now. I’ll call you and give you an update in a couple of hours. Try to calm her down before she winds up in a hospital bed.” Trina had snot running out of her nose and slob running out of the corners of her mouth. She was sucking air as if there would be no more of it to breathe tomorrow.

  “You’re probably right,” Daphne said and Nate simply nodded as she took one of her business cards out of her purse. She handed Nate the card with her cell number on it and carried a reluctant Trina away crying and panting.

  A thousand teardrops, prayers, and visitors later, Nate and I were finally able to convince Mr. Shue to take his wife home to get some rest. We were going to stay with him for the rest of the night. It was already four in the morning and we both were operating off the fear that we could lose our best friend.

  Nate had brought his pastor’s wife to come and pray with the family. He had been at the church feeding the homeless when he got the call. When he left the hospital the first time he told me that he had gone back to the church to pray and broken down in tears. Anita, the pastor’s wife, had come upstairs and found him crying and helped him pull himself together. Afterward she insisted that she come to the hospital to pray with the family. She was nice. Not what one would expect physically from a pastor’s wife. She had the body of a video queen.

  “So what do you think?”

  I was actually dozing off. “Huh?” I replied.

  Nate was staring out the window on the opposite side of the waiting room. “Do you think he has a chance?” He asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders like a kid with no good answers. “I hope so.” I didn’t want to share my true thoughts. I wasn’t very encouraged.

  “Yeah.” He walked back over and took a seat. “With Him, all things are possible.”

  “Amen to that.”

  The doctors were monitoring Brendan all night every fifteen minutes. He was shot up with the maximum amount of pain medication. He had more tubes running in and out of him than the Six Million Dollar Man did before they rebuilt him, bigger, faster, and stronger than he was before. All the attention was a good sign that the doctors were trying to bring him back.

  As morning neared, the prognosis hadn’t changed. Brendan was in critical condition but appeared to be headed into a coma. His body fought the sleep. He had so much to say to everyone, to Trina. I just want to apologize, I could have been a man about things. I haven’t been myself lately, all this running around lying and playing with people’s feelings. The voices that were with him spoke to him. Don’t worry about that right now. Save your strength.

  I’m really getting tired.

  Don’t quit.

  It doesn’t hurt anymore.

  “How’s his pressure?”

  “Seems to be stabilized. He almost seems to be comfortable.”

  “Good,” the doctor said. Though they could have been talking about anyone in the trauma unit, I knew they were talking about Brendan. I left the desk and went back out to the waiting area. His mother had told them that I was his brother. Being recognized as immediate family had given me the authority to make any emergency decisions in case they couldn’t be reached. I was honored but sad as hell at the circumstances.

  Nate and I both must have dozed off because at six thirty someone tapped me on the chest and I woke to see a familiar face standing in front of me. “Hey.”

  It was Renée.

  15

  Not your Average Girl

  I had no idea if Brendan could hear a word we were saying or sense what was happening around him. They say that it’s possible for someone in a coma to hear and yet not process sounds and voices. Often, people who come out of them say that they could hear voices or feel the presence of loved ones. If that was the case, I had a theory on Brendan’s state. He was up and down as far as his healing was going. But what I noticed over the course of the week was that every time Renée came to visit he seemed to smile. It was hard to make out since he had a tube running into his stomach feeding him and a mask over his mouth and nose helping him breath, but I saw it.

  At the end of the week Renée was telling me that she was going to have to go back to Houston. She was preparing for a wedding. She was getting married to a New Orleans businessman named Tamarick Ledaye. We had a chance to talk about a lot of things, especially her and Brendan’s friendship slash relationship gone bad.

  We’d decided to ride over to Levi’s, a soul food spot up in Mitchellville. As we ate a late lunch she confided how devastated she’d been when she found Brendan in bed with Laney after what they’d been through. “You know, Cory, even though we had kind of called it quits or tried to go back to being just friends, it was still a shock for me to see him screwing her in my house.”

  “Yeah, but you weren’t supposed to see that. You were supposed to
be out of town, and you did tell him to make himself at home.” I smiled, hoping that she could take me making light of it.

  She laughed back. “I guess I did, didn’t I?” Renée was a different type of woman. She was kind and had a bubbly spirit. She was the type who lived just to show love to those around her. She’d give the shirt off her back to you if you needed it, but at the same time she’d try to motivate you to go out and get your own. The Texas sun had roasted her skin and she was darker than I had ever remembered seeing her. With the cinnamon streaks in her hair she looked beautiful. I could also tell that she’d spent a lot of time in the gym, her stomach was flat as a board and she’d even bragged that she had gotten her belly button pierced.

  “So you’re really gonna get married?”

  “Yeah, why wouldn’t I? I have the man of my dreams,” she shot back.

  My eyebrows arched at her comment. “Okay,” I muttered.

  “What the hell is all that for?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking ’bout.”

  “Oh, yeah, you do,” she pointed out “All that squirming and sarcasm.”

  “All I said was okay.”

  “It’s the way you said it…like okay whatever.” She seemed a little heated. “If you have something to say, brother, go ahead and say it.”

  I thought for a second about the picture that she had shown me of her and Tamarick. “Well, I guess I just found it a little weird that your fiancé looks so much like Brendan.” She was quiet. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure he’s a wonderful guy, but don’t tell me you never noticed how much they look alike.”

  Renée took a deep breath. I knew her well. Although she was Brendan’s best female friend, she and I had basically grown up together as well and I knew that I’d just struck a nerve. “I find that funny, Cory. Funny that you of all people would have the gumption to speak on picking a fiancé look-alike. Aren’t you the one engaged, married, or fucking the Sanchez twins?”

  “Ouch. Hold on sistah. First, this isn’t about me. Second, they aren’t twins.” I smiled to let her know that I wasn’t trying to take it there. “I know I’m a little confused and can admit that I was dead wrong, but it’s never too late to straighten things out.”

  “Whose life are we talking about right now, yours or mine?”

  “Just speaking in general,” I answered.

  We finished lunch and I told her about what I felt her presence was doing for Brendan. “Why would you think that I am making such a big difference?” she asked.

  “Probably because he still loves, wants, and needs you.”

  “Negro, isn’t that a damn Patti LaBelle song?” She punched me in the arm.

  “I’m serious, though.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  I looked her in the eyes and told her a lie. Not to hurt her or to lead her on, but because I believed in my heart that she was making a difference and because Brendan couldn’t speak for himself right now. “He told me so not too long ago.”

  She bit her bottom lip and stared into my eyes. She didn’t say a word and I could tell that she was moved. A minute later she said, “It’s a little late for that now.”

  “It’s never too late.” I put in my Raheem DeVaughn CD and rolled the windows down and headed back to the hospital to spend the rest of the day with Brendan.

  “Nate has been a Godsend at the church,” Reverend Lawson stated to his wife and the board of deacons.

  Every day he was there after his workout. He did everything from repair work to cooking for the homeless. Even more impressive was that he often used his own money. He had purchased fifteen new cribs for the nursery and asked that the church donate the remaining ones to teenage mothers. He had bought the materials and installed new floors in two of the bathrooms. He even paid some young members to make a hundred sandwiches a day to give out to the homeless.

  What the reverend and his staff didn’t know was that lately he was spending so much time there because he was looking for something. He was trying to find a deeper connection with the Master. He was a troubled soul and feeling weak. Nate was wondering if God was so good, why was his friend clinging to life in a coma. He was wondering why after all that he had done to change his life God had allowed him to still be tormented by occasional nightmares of Kim and why he had money but still felt empty. He’d given up the things he loved most in life, sex and women, but the loneliness he’d felt lately had begun to consume him. In fact the only moments of joy came for him during church and his visits to the Lawson house.

  He had gone by to visit Miss Bethany several times since the first. She loved Nate and had even stopped calling him Dr. Baines. She’d heard Anita and Lloyd call him Nathan so much that she began to do the same. After leaving the hospital, he found himself headed unannounced to the Lawsons’ home. He arrived to see Anita place a suitcase into her car.

  She smiled when she saw him pull up. He climbed out and headed toward her. “Going somewhere?”

  She brushed her hair from her face. “Yeah, actually I am. I’m headed to New Jersey to see my oldest sister and get away for a minute.” Her body language and rushed speech gave the impression that she was running away from something. “Did you visit your friend today?” she asked nervously.

  “Yeah, I just left.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Not much of a change, but thanks for asking.”

  She nodded. The front door opened and Lloyd appeared. He glanced out and turned and went back inside, slamming the door behind him.

  “Whatever,” Anita mumbled under her breath.

  Nate was confused. “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer but instead hit a button in her X5 and closed the garage door. Anita reached into her purse and grabbed a pen. She scribbled something on the paper. “Listen, Nate, I don’t want to drag you into the middle of anything, but this is where I will be staying. My sister doesn’t even know I’m coming. I may call her and I may not, but at least you will know where I am in case something happens.”

  Nate was concerned. “Nita, if there’s something you need to talk about, why don’t—” He was interrupted by tears welling up in her eyes. “Hey, c’mon now, what’s wrong?”

  Anita shook her head, “I just can’t talk about it right now. How about I call you…I’ll call you later maybe.” The tears began to run down her cheeks and she turned and climbed into her car.

  Nate was still trying to get his bearings together as she backed out of the driveway. Her tires kicked back gravel as she tore out of the court and up the street. After careful thought he decided to head into the house. He rang the bell and Lloyd answered it. He held what Nate considered to be his signature glass of Rémy in his hand. “Well, well, Nathan, come on in. You’re here to see Nana, huh? I got to tell you, man, we all really appreciate this. You don’t find many men of your caliber taking time out of their schedules to visit old folks and to volunteer their time and money to the church the way you do.” Lloyd was rambling. Nate attributed it to the liquor or that he had walked in on a family argument.

  “Reverend, if I came at a bad time I can leave and come back another time.”

  “Awww, don’t be foolish. There’s no bad time for you. You are doing the Lord’s work. I don’t know what she told you but she’s just a little upset right now. She’ll be fine.”

  “Okay, but it’s none of my business, either way.”

  Lloyd nodded. He invited Nate into the family room and offered him a beverage. Nate declined the offer and when he asked for Miss Bethany, he was shocked when Lloyd yelled out, “Okay, cut the shit. What did she tell you?”

  Nate was shocked and replied, “Huh?”

  “Ya heard me, nigga. What did she tell you?”

  When Nate looked at Lloyd his stare asked the question that he didn’t come out with. “Negro, are you crazy?”

  Lloyd went on, “Are you the police?”

  Nate got up and headed toward th
e front door. He realized that this time Lloyd was actually drunk, not merely having a nightcap. “Man, I think you’ve had enough of that.” He pointed to Lloyd’s glass. “I’ll see you around.”

  “What? How dare you say that bull to me? You know who I am. You would still be holed up in North Carolina hiding out if it weren’t for me. I know the whole story about you man. I’ve had three or four members of the congregation tell me about you. They told me to watch you, nigga.”

  Nate was stunned at how Lloyd sounded like a street thug.

  “Yeah, that’s right. I know what you did…how you made that girl kill herself over you. I’ve heard that you’ll fuck anything moving and don’t think I don’t see the way you’ve been looking at my wife, brother.”

  With that, Nate balled up his fist and headed toward Lloyd. “Reverend, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll control your mouth and put the liquor down.”

  “Oorrrrrr what,” he said. “You gonna fight me? Shiiiit. C’mon, nigga, I was Golden Gloves back in the day. You don’t want a piece of me.”

  Nate thought for a second about hitting him with a two piece, but decided that it wouldn’t be worth it. He moved toward the door and reached for the knob when Lloyd grabbed him by the shoulder. “Man, I warned you,” Nate yelled.

  Lloyd jumped back for a second and then pointed his finger into Nate’s face, “You stay out of my church and away from my wife. We’re going to work this out,” he said.

  Without thinking, Nate grabbed Lloyd by the finger and bent it backward. Lloyd’s finger broke with a loud pop. Nate’s mouth twisted with disgust. He was angry with himself for having gotten physical with Lloyd. “I told you,” Nate said, then repeated, “I warned you.”

  As soon as Lloyd realized his finger was broken he dropped to the floor as the pain rushed through his body. “Awwwwwww you crazy, nigga. You broke my finger. God is gonna punish you. Awwwwww.” Lloyd was holding his finger and rocking back and forth. “I’m gonna call the police.”