Her Good Thing

by Vanessa Miller

  Where was this man taking her? Why were the women cursing at her as she passed them? When he opened the office door, the curses became louder, and one of the women threw something that banged against the plate glass window. The man pulled the door closed and locked it. “The past doesn’t matter,” he told her. “Only what’s happening now matters, remember that.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, not really understanding what she was agreeing to.

  He took her down a long, empty hallway. None of the women who’d been standing outside were inside the building, nor could she hear their taunts anymore. As she continued to wonder why Marshall’s ex-women were angry with her, the man opened the door to the interview room. A man sat at the head of the table with his head down, sketching something on a piece of paper.

  Danetta gave the man a questioning glance.

  “Hand him your application.”

  Danetta shrugged her shoulders, but walked farther into the room. When she reached the man who appeared to be doodling hearts on a piece of paper rather than working, she handed him her application.

  He looked up, and took Danetta’s breath away. It was Marshall. As she looked at the paper full of hearts again, she realized that he had written the words, ‘Marshall and Danetta forever’ in each one of the hearts.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  He stood up, pulled her into his arms and kissed her with all the passion he’d had bottled up inside since the day they met.

  “You’re moaning again,” Marshall whispered into her ear.

  A sweet sensation moved through her and she wanted to cry for the joy of having him so close. She put her arms around him and began moaning in real time.

  Marshall shook her. “Danetta, baby, wake up.”

  Her eyes popped open. She looked around. She wasn’t in an office building having her application accepted by Marshall. She was in the hospital, surrounded by other family members who were waiting for news of their loved ones. And she had her arms around Marshall. She removed her arms and sat up. Too embarrassed to look his way, Danetta threw back the covers, got out of their makeshift bed and moved her love seat back against the wall.

  He sat up and folded the cover. “Do you want to go see if Aunt Sarah is up yet?”

  She looked at the clock on the wall. It was six in the morning. “I think that’s a good idea.”

  They walked over to the nurses’ station and asked to be buzzed into the ICU. The nurse unlocked the ICU doors and Marshall and Danetta walked through. Once they were in Sarah’s room, Danetta quickly discovered that her aunt was still in a deep sleep. She went to the nurses’ station inside the ICU and asked to speak with her aunt’s nurse.

  A woman in a multicolored smock stepped over to Danetta and said, “Hi, I’m Latonya Matthews and I’ve been on duty all night, taking care of your aunt.”

  “Did she wake up anytime during the night?”

  Latonya averted her eyes. “No, she didn’t.”

  “Thank you for the information.” Danetta turned and hurriedly went back into her aunt’s room. She didn’t want to ask any more questions for fear that she might learn more than she wanted to know. Marshall was standing by her aunt’s bed looking down at her with sorrowful eyes. At that moment, Danetta realized that Marshall truly cared about Aunt Sarah.

  He looked up as Danetta entered the room. “She looks so frail. She needs to hurry and wake up and rebuke me about something else I’ve done that she doesn’t approve of.”

  “Yeah, I’d take a good ol’ rebuke from her myself, right now.”

  Latonya walked into the room. She glanced at the still form of her patient and then turned to Danetta and said, “The doctor wanted me to ask if your aunt has a living will.”

  Not this again. Once a person got sick, these so-called healers were always trying to find a way to let them die. They’d harassed her mother every single day of that month they stayed in this hospital, constantly coming in the room, telling just how sick she was and taking all her hope away. After they’d taken her hope, they then started telling her that resuscitating her mother would probably do more harm than good...and why keep a dying person on a ventilator...better to just let her die gracefully. Forget that.

  When Danetta didn’t answer, Latonya said, “We’re only asking because we need to know if we are supposed to resuscitate your aunt if she should stop breathing.”

  Danetta had been seventeen when they started on this stuff with her mom. At that time, she thought that the doctors were there to do what was best for her mom, and she was too young and too afraid to anger them, to ask them to stop what they were doing. But the buck stopped here, and she was about to let them have it. Walking toward the nurse, she said, “Let me explain something to you so that you never have to ask me again.” Danetta’s voice began rising with each word. “If Sarah Davis stops breathing, then you had better get every machine known to man in this room and revive her. If she needs to be on a ventilator for a month, then you and everybody in this hospital better hope that nobody unplugs it by mistake...because if anything happens to this woman,” she said as she pointed at Sarah, “I will sue you, her doctor and this hospital for everything any of you ever thought about owning.”

  “Danetta, what’s wrong?” Marshall came up behind her and pulled her out of Nurse Latonya’s face.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she said to Marshall while still looking at Latonya in a threatening manner.

  “You were screaming at the nurse. Something is wrong.”

  “I’m just letting this nurse and this hospital know where I stand,” she said to Marshall, then to Latonya she asked, “You got me...I just gave you all the living-will information you need, right?”

  The woman nodded and then walked out of the room.

  Marshall turned Danetta to face him. He lifted her chin so that she was looking him in the eye. “Don’t tell me that nothing is wrong. I have never seen you so upset. That nurse didn’t do anything to you, so what am I missing?”

  Tears bubbled in her eyes as she put her hand to her face.

  He pulled her hand down. She lowered her face. “Look at me, Danetta. I can’t fix something that I don’t know about.”

  “You can’t fix me, Marshall. I’m all messed up. My aunt is right. This hospital is my fiery furnace.”

  “Your fiery what?”

  “Never mind.” She stepped away from him, needing a little breathing room so she could think clearly. “Look, I’m sorry about the way I just acted. When she asked me that question, I just flashed back to the way my mother was treated at this hospital. It was like they killed her with their words...took all her hope away. I can’t let them do that to Aunt Sarah.”

  He took his cell phone out of his pocket and started punching in numbers.

  “Who are you calling this early in the morning?”

  “Kevin. I’m supposed to meet him at the gym this morning. I’m just calling to cancel.”

  Danetta took the phone away from him and hit the end button. She handed the phone back to him and said, “Go to the gym, Marshall.” She didn’t want to need him to stay—couldn’t afford to depend on him and then be let down.

  “You need me here. I can work out another time.”

  “No. I won’t let you babysit me all day, just because you think I’m a basket case. I will be fine. Go and enjoy your day.”

  “I can’t just leave you here by yourself.”

  “By myself?” Danetta walked over to the bed and looked at her aunt. Tears fell down her face as she said, “I’m with Aunt Sarah. She’ll keep me company.” She turned back to Marshall. “So get on out of here, Marshall Windham.”

  He hesitated before he spoke. “Okay, but I’ll be back.”

  She didn’t say anything, just smiled at him.

  “I mean it, Danetta. I have a
lunch appointment with a potential client, but I’ll be back right after that meeting.”

  Danetta sat down in a chair next to the bed and then grabbed hold of her aunt’s hand. She held on to it as if she was pumping life into her aunt.

  * * *

  It pained Marshall to leave Danetta in that hospital, holding on to her aunt like a life preserver. But she was a grown woman, and he had to let her handle her business. So, now he was lifting weights with his boy, Kevin, pretending that he didn’t want to run back to Danetta.

  “How’s your girl doing?”

  “She’s hurting, man. I was really worried about leaving her at the hospital.”

  “So, why did you?”

  “I think I was kinda crowding her. So I’m letting her handle her business. You know...no big deal.”

  Kevin put the barbells down and laughed. “Dawg, you should see your face. You can’t wait to run back to that hospital. You’ve got it bad.”

  “Oh shut up and mind your business.”

  Kevin got off the bench. “Okay, you can deny all you want. We both know the truth.”

  Marshall took Kevin’s place and bench-pressed two hundred. “Add some more weight.”

  Kevin ignored the weight request. “Did you talk about what happened between you two the night before last?”

  “I told her that I wanted to be with her, but she didn’t want to talk about it. I got the impression that she didn’t believe me.”

  “Why don’t you just go on and tell her that you’re in love with her?”

  “What?” Marshall sat up, almost bumping his head on the barbells. He sat there for a moment as Kevin’s words drifted into his heart, mind and soul. He loved Danetta. Well yeah, he’d loved her for as long as they’d been friends. But what he was feeling now was different...it was not so much that he loved her, but that he was in love with her. How and when it had happened, Marshall didn’t know, but he knew one thing for sure: Kevin was right, and the very thought of this wondrous thing caused Marshall to laugh out loud.

  “What’s so funny?”

  With a look of astonishment on his face, Marshall confessed, “Out of all the women I’ve dated, I’m in love with the one I never slept with.”

  “Boy, shut your mouth.” Kevin glanced around hoping that none of the women were listening. “If women hear talk like that, they might start putting the goodies on lock.”

  “That’s your problem, man. I apparently am off the market.”

  Kevin couldn’t wait to bust his bubble. “Last I heard, Danetta wasn’t interested in no love connection with you...just a slam, bam, thank you, Mr. Windham.”

  “That’s what you think.” He stood and gave Kevin a direct stare. “I’m not about to let Danetta or any other woman use me like some plaything. Danetta will come around, because from this moment forward, it’s either all or nothing.”

  Chapter 18

  It had been two hours since Marshall had left her at the hospital. Danetta was about to pull her hair out as she sat and watched her aunt remain in a deep sleep. At about ten that morning, Ryla and Surry stopped by to check on her. Danetta sat in the ICU waiting area with her friends. “Thank you for coming out here this morning. I really appreciate it.”

  “You know you don’t have to thank us. We want to be here. How is your aunt?” Surry asked.

  “About the same. We’re waiting for her to wake up, so the doctor can determine her prognosis for recovery.”

  “You look like you climbed the walls all night. You need to try to get some sleep,” Ryla told her.

  Danetta rubbed her eyes. “Truth be told, I’m so tired, I could probably sleep for three days. But the chairs in this waiting area are terrible. When Marshall and I woke up this morning, we were so sore it didn’t make sense.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ryla said, holding up her hand. “Back up and rewind. Did you just say that Marshall spent the night at the hospital with you?”

  “Yeah, we slept on those love seats over there.” Danetta pointed to the left of where they were sitting.

  “I can’t picture Mr. Kool Mo Dee, pretty boy, Marshall Windham getting kinks in his back to lay up in a hospital waiting room, when he knew he wouldn’t be getting nothing for his effort,” Surry said. Then she had a thought and turned to Danetta with horror in her eyes. “Please tell me that you didn’t have sex with that man in a hospital waiting room?”

  “Of course I didn’t. Do you think I’m nuts or something?” Danetta shook her head at her friend’s antics. “Marshall stayed because he knew that I was terrified of being in this particular hospital, because my mom died here years ago.”

  “Oh, well then that was nice of him,” Surry said while looking guilty for having such a dirty mind.

  “I’m proud of Marshall; that brother is finally growing up. Now if I could only get Mr. Noel Carter to join the land of grown-ups.”

  “I wasn’t aware that you’d had any contact with Jaylen’s father,” Danetta said.

  “I haven’t. The problem is that Jaylen keeps asking about her father. Her classmates are always talking about their fathers and now that Jaylen is seven, she’s started asking more questions about Noel.”

  “Okay, what’s so wrong with that? Why don’t you just tell the man that he has a daughter and give Jaylen what she wants and deserves...a father?” Surry asked.

  “It’s not that simple, Surry.”

  “Sure it is. You just call the man up and tell him that he has a seven-year-old child.”

  “Noel is running for Congress now, and I just think that receiving news like this now would just complicate his life at a time when he needs to be focused on his campaign.”

  “Don’t you think he would still want to know?” Danetta asked.

  Ryla lowered her head in shame. “Well, considering that I never even told Noel that I was pregnant when I left, I just don’t know how he’s going to react when he finds out what I did.”

  “I’m sorry, Ryla, you’re my girl and all. But what you did was foul.com ,” Surry said, taking a phrase from her favorite personality on The Braxton’s Family Values.

  “And I thought I had problems with trying to figure out what’s going on inside Marshall’s head... As David Letterman says, I wouldn’t give your troubles to a monkey on a rock.” Danetta and her friends continued to laugh and talk for a few more minutes. Then she went back in to sit with her aunt.

  By noon, when her aunt still hadn’t opened her eyes, Danetta caught the grim expressions on the nurses’ and doctors’ faces as they came in and out of the room. They wouldn’t say anything to her, though. Danetta was at least grateful for that. No one was trying to give her a jolt of reality at a time when she needed to cling to as much faith as possible.

  The doctors couldn’t help, her aunt couldn’t help herself and Danetta was powerless to do anything at all. But then, like a mighty river, her aunt’s words rushed back into Danetta’s heart and mind. There was someone who could help. He was the only one she could turn to. It was someone she had turned her back on long ago in this very place. His name was Jesus...and Danetta was determined to find him and plead her case.

  She stood up, kissed her aunt on the forehead and then told her, “All right, Aunt Sarah, I’m about to jump in this fiery furnace with both feet.” She then walked out of her aunt’s room and down to the hospital chapel. As Danetta walked in she was stunned to see that not much had changed in the room since she’d last seen it, over a decade ago. Even the wooden benches looked the same.

  As she walked to the front of the chapel, to the very front pew, the one that she’d sat on all those years ago, Danetta felt panic trying to overtake her. She stopped walking and took in slow, deep breaths...inhale...exhale. She made her way to the seat, but before sitting and handling her business, she looked down at the spot that she had
claimed when she had been an impressionable child and her mind’s eye took her back to those painful days.

  One night the temperature in her mother’s room had dropped to freezing. Danetta had requested extra blankets from the nurse. She had not only covered up, but had buried her head as well and she’d still ended up with a cold by morning. Her mother, on the other hand, hadn’t even used the extra covers that had been given to her. When she’d asked her mother why she hadn’t used the extra covers, her mother had said, “I wasn’t cold.”

  The nurse had given Danetta one of her I-pity-you looks and at that moment, Danetta knew that her mother’s body had gone numb and she no longer registered the difference between hot and cold. Danetta had rushed down to the chapel and prayed, begging God to turn their situation around...restore her mother’s body to health.

  But then the next night her mother needed a blood transfusion because her body was no longer reproducing the blood it needed to survive on its own. Danetta had known that the blood transfusion was a sign from God. How many times had she read in the Bible about the power being in the blood? She’d run down to the chapel and prayed that night also, confident that God was working a miracle out for them. The last week her mother was in the hospital, she’d come to the chapel several times a day. She’d prayed and prayed, begging God to hear her cries.

  Then her mother slipped into a coma and the last prayer that Danetta prayed there or anywhere else was when she begged God to take her mom on to heaven and put her out of her misery. It seemed like all of her other prayers had fallen on deaf ears, but God chose to hear that particular one. The next day, her sweet mother quietly passed away. Danetta had never been able to forgive God for answering that prayer. She’d never admitted that to anyone, but as she sat back in her familiar seat, she now admitted it to God.

  Tears streamed down her face as she looked at the cross of Jesus hanging on the wall and said, “I thought my aunt had been a fool to believe in You...the God who answers the wrong prayers. I hadn’t been ready for my mom to leave me. I told you as much. But You didn’t listen. You only chose to hear my unselfish prayer...when I couldn’t take my mom’s suffering anymore and then begged You to take her home with You. But I had wanted You to hear all the other prayers I’d prayed to You first.”