“Where are they taking him?”
King shook his head. “We’re finding that out now. I’ll tell you more as soon as I know it, baby, but right now … I’ve got to go.”
Rafael, who’d been standing next to Princess, reached out and grabbed King’s arm as he passed. “But, Pastor … what about our wedding?” He knew it sounded insensitive, but as bad as Derrick’s situation was, Rafael had other priorities right now. He felt Princess’s incredulous eyes on him, but he kept his eyes trained on King, waiting for an answer. At this exact moment, Joseph came up to King and whispered in his ear.
“I’m sorry, son, but I’ve got to go.” King turned and started walking with Joseph to the outside door. He looked over his shoulder and said to Princess, “They’re taking him to Shawnee Mission.” Then he, Tai, and a couple of associate ministers headed out the door.
Princess started for the room where she’d gotten ready.
Rafael stopped her. “Baby, where are you going?”
Princess jerked out of his grasp. “Where do you think, Rafael. To the hospital!”
She started away again, and again, Rafael grabbed her arm. “Princess, this is our wedding day! Does that suddenly not mean anything to you?”
Princess’s brow creased. “My uncle just got rushed to the hospital and my dad, the man who was marrying us, is on his way there. Does that mean anything to you?”
Greg stepped up to calm his friend. “Man, I’m sorry this happened, but there’s nothing we can do right now. Maybe after they make sure the pastor is all right, y’all can go ahead and get married tonight.”
This reasonable statement snapped Rafael out of his unreasonable state. He took a deep breath and visibly calmed. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said, taking Princess in his arms. “I didn’t mean to sound insensitive.”
Well, you did.
“But I’ve waited so long to make you my wife that I just … I’m just…” At a loss for words, Rafael rested his forehead against that of the woman he loved. “I love you, Princess.”
Princess felt bad that her focus was elsewhere, that her priorities were different than the man earlier described as her beloved. But she couldn’t do anything about that right now. Now, she had to get to her uncle.
“I have to change,” she said, pulling away from Rafael and heading down the hall. “And get to the hospital as soon as I can.”
Joni and Sarah ran into the room with Princess. Erin entered just seconds behind them and she and Sarah began working on the thirty pearl-styled buttons on the back of the wedding gown. Joni found her purse. Her hands trembled as she reached for her phone and sent a quick text. She didn’t know Pastor Montgomery all that well, but Joni’s husband was best friends with his son. She couldn’t even imagine how Brandon would feel if he found out that Derrick had died.
In less than ten minutes, Princess was out of her wedding dress and putting on the summer dress she’d worn to the church. Sarah and Joni had also changed into their street clothes. “Where’s my purse?” Princess asked.
“I’ve got it,” Sarah answered. “Let’s go.”
They headed for the door.
“Wait,” Joni said, stopping midstride. “We all came together in the limo. How are we going to get to the hospital?”
A knock interrupted the conversation. Princess opened the door.
“You ready?” Rafael had changed from his tux to a pair of jeans. Greg stood next to him.
“Yes, but we don’t know how we’ll get there. Should we take the limo?”
“Of course.” Rafael reached for her hand and led her down the hallway. “I’ve got you, baby. Come on.”
10
Pray
Mama Max thanked the church member who’d given her a ride home, and then hurried up the sidewalk to her front door. She was still reeling from what had happened before her very eyes: a strong, fine, healthy looking man keeling over, appearing for all the world as if he was dead. “Lord have mercy,” she said, fumbling in her oversized bag for the keys to her home. She found them, but in the rush to get the key in the lock, dropped the keys and then her purse. Contents spilled out everywhere. “Jesus!”
Next door, Henry was exiting his house and walking toward his Toyota Camry parked in the driveway. When he saw his neighbor in an apparent panic, he bypassed his automobile and crossed the yard. “Maxie, you okay?” He reached the porch, took the steps two at a time, and began helping Mama Max gather her things.
Maxie looked up as he kneeled down. “Oh … hi, Henry.”
“Is everything all right?”
Having retrieved all of her items, Mama Max attempted to stand. Henry helped her up. “I’ve been better, to tell you the truth.”
“You just came from the wedding, right?”
Mama Max nodded, placing her key inside the lock and giving it a quick turn. She walked into her home and threw her purse on the table.
Henry followed her inside. “Well, for what is generally thought of as a celebratory occasion, you sure don’t seem too happy.”
“Princess didn’t get married, Henry.” Mama Max continued into the living room and, after retrieving the cordless phone, took a seat on the couch. “Something happened to one of the pastors who was attending, a close family friend. He passed out right in the middle of the ceremony. They rushed him to the hospital in an ambulance.”
“Oh, Lord, Maxie. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Me too.” Mama Max began dialing a number, and then looked up at Henry. “I don’t mean to be rude, neighbor, but I need to make some phone calls right now.”
“Oh, sure, of course,” Henry said, backing away before turning and heading to the door. “I sure am sorry to hear about your friend. Let me know of any way I can help.”
“You can pray,” Mama Max answered without hesitation.
Henry’s pause was almost imperceptible before he responded, “All right.”
The door had barely closed before Mama Max completed dialing the number. “Nettie,” she said once her call had been answered. Located in Palestine, Texas, Nettie Thicke Johnson was a mighty prayer warrior and one of Mama Max’s closest friends. “We need to circle the prayer wagons, sister. The devil is trying to steal one of our own.”
The waiting room at Shawnee Mission Medical Center was filled with folk from the almost-wedding. King stood in one corner, along with his father, Obadiah; his assistant, Joseph; his son, Michael; Cy Taylor and Nate Thicke. Concerned friends surrounded Princess and Rafael in another corner, with Joni providing a play-by-play to her husband, Brandon, by cell. Mount Zion’s prayer circle lined the chairs along one wall. They included the two oldest mothers of the church, Elsie Wanthers and Margie Stokes (or Sistah Alrighty and Sistah Almighty as they were referred to in the inner circle), along with a few deacons, trustees, and—truth be told—a couple lookie-loos who couldn’t wait to telephone, telegraph, telegram, or tell-a-fellow-church-member the latest scoop. Down the hall, just a short distance from the waiting room, was a seldom used office. The doctor had graciously allowed Vivian to wait in there, with an anxious-yet-trying-to-becalm Tai sitting right by her side.
“It’s going to be all right, sis,” Tai said, rubbing her hand across Vivian’s tight neck and shoulders. “We know that with God, all things are possible. He never fails.”
Vivian said nothing, just continued to rock back and forth, whispering a barely audible prayer in tongues.
“Was there any indication that something was wrong?” Tai queried, after a time. “Has he been sick, tired, complaining of headaches … anything?”
Vivian rocked a few more times before rising from her chair and pacing the office. “I’ve been asking myself that since he collapsed. I went over the last few weeks, months even, in my head. He’s been so busy, Tai,” she continued, reclaiming her seat next to Tai. “Back and forth to South Africa, revivals everywhere. And there’s been so much stress with the expansion…. I guess it was just too much. I should have seen it,” she declared, agai
n rising and pacing. “I’m his wife! I should have sensed that something was wrong!”
Tai walked over to where Vivian leaned heavily against the wall. “Don’t do this to yourself, Viv. Sometimes these things just happen. There’s nothing you could have known, and nothing you could have done. The only thing we can do now is pray and have faith in God’s healing powers. Do you believe?”
“I want to,” Vivian whispered. “But he looked so pale, Tai. My cocoa brown baby had a gray sheen on his skin.” Fresh tears cascaded down Vivian’s face and although the room was quite warm, she shuddered against the power of her thoughts. “I kept talking to him, telling him, begging him to wake up. My God! If something happens to him, Tai, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Back inside the waiting room, Rafael sat next to Princess. Her head was on his shoulder as he mindlessly ran a soothing hand through her now tousled, errant curls. His mind was racing a mile a minute, a plethora of thoughts vying for space. He was still trying to process what had just happened. Why instead of eating grapes and sipping champagne in the junior suite of Kansas City’s downtown Hotel Phillips, he was comforting his would-be wife in an anesthetic-feeling and smelling hospital waiting room. Why after waiting for what felt like half his life, the woman by his side still wasn’t Mrs. Rafael Stevens. He felt bad for Pastor Montgomery, he really did. Hopefully the prolific and charismatic man of God would be just fine. But dammit! This was my day! This was my moment with the woman I love! Suddenly, Rafael eased Princess’s head off his shoulders and stood.
“Where are you going?” Princess asked, noting the determined glint in Rafael’s eyes.
“Not far, baby. I just need to take care of something.” He paused, as if wanting to say something, and then changed his mind. “I’ll be right back.”
A little over twelve hundred miles away, just outside Phoenix, Arizona, Kelvin Petersen sat brooding in his ten-thousand-square-foot mansion. Like the question of where one was when JFK got shot, or the Twin Towers had fallen, or Michael Jackson had died, Kelvin was bookmarking where he was when the love of his life got married and his world collapsed—sitting in a darkened theater room, with a muted ESPN channel serving as the only light … trying to get as fucked up as necessary to take away the pain. He was normally a Bud man, but in the spirit of trying to break one habit today, he’d simply traded it for another and even now precariously poured himself another shot, spilling some of the two-hundred-dollar a bottle liquid on his calfskin sofa in this process. “Damn, man, you make a sloppy drunk,” he said to the empty room. He picked up the remote and flipped to ESPN2. When his phone rang, he didn’t answer it. Within seconds, his text message indicator beeped and then immediately his phone rang again.
“Damn, can’t you see when a brothah don’t want to be bothered?” No doubt it was one of his WIR—women in rotation. Truth be told, he was ready to dump the whole present lot of ten or so and start a new cycle. Sleep with a woman more than a couple times and she started looking for bills to be paid, floor tickets for the next game, or some Benjamins in her wallet. The real fools would even hint at babies, bling, rings, and things. But when it came to Suns star Kelvin Petersen, those babes obviously got things twisted. After finally getting his baby-who-was-not-his-baby’s-mama out of his life, Kelvin swore he’d never get caught up again. Unless it was Princess. If given the chance, I could have gotten caught up with her.
Kelvin’s phone rang again. This time he sighed, flung back what remained of the Johnnie Walker shot, and reached for his cell. Seeing that the call came from one of his best friends did nothing to lighten his mood.
“Whatever you’re selling I ain’t buying, a’ight?” he said without hostility but with a cadence that sounded like it was spoken in slow motion.
“Kelvin, man, are you all right?”
“In a few hours, I’ll let you know. Other than that, Brandon, I’m just chillin’ … wanting to be alone with my thoughts, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to end this situation. I mean, conversation.” Kelvin started laughing at his mistake-turned-joke.
“Kelvin, pull yourself together, man. I’m calling about your father. It’s serious.”
Brandon’s words were like a pitcher of ice cubes dumped on Kelvin’s face. His head momentarily cleared. He sat up. The room began to spin. He plopped back against the couch. “You’re talking about Derrick, right?”
Brandon understood the question. He was one of the few in Kelvin’s circle who’d met both his stepfather, Hans Petersen, and his biological. “Yeah, man, Derrick Montgomery. Joni called me and said that in the middle of the wedding ceremony your dad passed out and was rushed to the hospital … by ambulance.”
This revelation brought Kelvin to his feet. “Damn!” Why’d I have to pour that last shot? “What’s wrong with him, Brandon?”
“They don’t know. Joni and everybody are at the hospital now, waiting to speak with the doctor… hoping that he’ll bring them good news.”
“But he’s going to be all right—right?”
“Joni said he hasn’t come to yet, so they don’t know.”
“Which hospital is he in?” When Brandon told him, he said, “Okay, man, thanks for the info. Let me get off this phone and make some things happen.”
“You’re going there, right?”
“It’s my father, dog. Of course I am.”
“You want me to come with?”
Kelvin pondered the question as he walked from the theater room to his master suite. “Naw, just chill for right now. I’m going to call my boy and have him hook me up on a charter. Once I get there and see what’s up, I’ll give you a call.”
“Okay, dog,” Brandon said. “Keep your head up. Keep thinking the positive and everything will work out the way it should.”
Kelvin barely responded before ending the call and dialing his agent. “Hey, man,” he said as soon as the call was answered. “I need you to get me on a charter flight to Kansas City.”
“When?”
“Five minutes ago. I’m going to have my driver drop me off at the airport.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s in Kansas City?”
“My father. He’s in the hospital and no one knows what’s going on or whether or not he’ll make it. I’ve got to get there, man. As soon as possible.”
11
What’s Going On?
It had been more than two hours since Derrick had been wheeled beyond the DO NOT ENTER sign and Vivian’s life had begun to hang in limbo. After her initial panic and near breakdown with Tai, she’d managed to pull herself together and now sat sipping a cup of chamomile tea, trying to remain calm. King had joined her and Tai in the office and Princess split her time between there and the waiting room. Many of the people who’d joined them initially had left, but King’s assistant, Joseph, co-pastor Solomon Cole, the associate ministers, Reverend Doctor O, Cy and Hope Taylor, and a few from Mount Zion’s prayer circle still remained.
One of the deacons walked over to where Obadiah sat, reading his Bible. “What do you say, Doc?” he asked, as he sat down beside him.
“God is able,” Obadiah replied.
“Sure is taking them a long time to find anything.”
“No news is good news, I reckon.”
The deacon nodded. “I reckon so.”
At this moment, “news” walked into the office where Vivian, King, and Tai were seated. “Hello,” the short, deeply tanned man with kind eyes said as he entered. “I’m Dr. Bhatti.”
Vivian was up on her feet in an instant, meeting the doctor at the door. “How is he, Doctor?”
Dr. Bhatti closed the door behind him and stepped farther into the room. “His vital signs have stabilized. This is encouraging.”
“Where is he? I need to see my husband!”
King walked up and put a comforting arm around Vivian. “We’re very anxious, Dr. Bhatti, as you can imagine.”
The Indian doctor’s brown eyes were full of compassion as he nodded. “I totally unde
rstand.”
Vivian took a deep breath and tried to calm down … again. “Do you know what happened?”
The doctor took off his wire-rimmed glasses and slowly cleaned them with the hem of his white jacket. “That is what we’re hoping the tests will prove. But we’re only able to perform a limited amount at this time.”
“Why’s that?” Tai asked.
“Because Mr. Montgomery has not yet regained consciousness.”
Vivian’s heart sank and her eyes fluttered closed as she leaned against King for support.
“This is not in and of itself a bad sign,” the doctor continued, his voice professional and devoid of emotion. “Often the body shuts itself down as a defense mechanism, thus preventing further damage from occurring. Once your husband has regained consciousness, we can perform another series of tests. At that time we’ll determine whether he should remain here or whether you’d prefer he be transferred to a location that specializes in whatever diagnosis he’s given.”
“But I don’t understand, Doctor. My husband seemed fine up until this happened.”
The doctor reached into his breast pocket for a pen, and began writing on a chart that no one even noticed he carried. “So then, there were no complaints from him in say, the past three weeks or so? No mention of headaches, vomiting, difficulty breathing, or limited blood flow in his extremities?”
“Limited blood flow?”
“Has he complained of his arms or legs falling asleep, or of any tingling sensations?”
Vivian slowly shook her head. “No, nothing like that.” Her brow creased in thought, however, because Derrick was from the old school and “took pain like a man.” He probably wouldn’t have told her if any of what the doctor asked had occurred. She hadn’t noticed anything unusual but with their busy schedules and the limited time they’d spent together, that didn’t necessarily rule anything out.
Dr. Bhatti jotted several things down on his pad. “What about his sleep patterns lately? Any fluctuations there, like sleeping more or less, or complaining of insomnia?”
“He’s been getting little sleep but that’s due in large part to a major expansion happening at our church. Plus, he’s been in and out of the country frequently, spending a lot of time in South Africa.” Vivian’s eyes widened as a thought occurred. “Do you think this could have anything to do with his overseas travel, Doctor? He received the required inoculations, but could he have possibly contracted some type of disease while traveling?”
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