by C. L. Donley
“Sounds like he’ll never get there.”
“Just how much money do you guys have?”
Yeah, this guy was definitely related to Kim.
Grayson and Dale looked at each other wordlessly, trying to decide what dumbass answer to give him. Grayson started to slowly shake his head and give a slight shrug. Dale took his cue.
“Honestly bro…we don’t know. We just…stopped counting when we got to 50 billion.”
“Gaaaahdaayum!” was Jamaal’s response.
Bel suddenly turned and spoke to his brother in Farsi, something that was clearly a question. Fahid answered curtly, somewhat seriously from the looks of it but Bel simply laughed, a goofy grin on his face as he attempted a pain-free smile.
“What’s so funny?”
“I asked him what the punch looked like and he said ‘exquisite.’”
“I taught her that,” Jamaal bragged. “You’re not going to put her in prison for that. Are you?”
Grayson looked at Bel with a furrowed brow, which Bel found hilarious. He was starting to make Amara’s faces.
“Nah bro, he wants to marry her,” Dale confirmed.
It was almost as if Kim’s punch had been cupid’s arrow.
It snuffed the life out of whatever had been holding him back and wrangled free whatever he was holding onto, including the fragmented remains of his dead wife. Almost as if it was the simultaneous punch of the two of them.
His wife never would’ve punched him, but if she were going to, this would’ve been the time. Let me go, you idiot! is what she would be saying. He was an idiot. Kim was so plainly the love of his life. He’d known immediately, just as he’d known with Leilani when he was 6. It was no different then and yet somehow not at all the same. His instincts had only grown sharper as he aged. Their first time pretty much solidified it.
When Kim first admitted to him that she had a condition that made it impossible for her to have sex, he simply thought, never played that game before. There was nothing virginal about Kim. But sure enough, she’d been telling the truth.
When he looked into her eyes again after a year, they were so familiar and true, like looking into the eyes of home. She still reminded him of his dead wife when he looked at her, but not simply because they both were fiery women with brown eyes. It was an energy all its own, calling him back to love, to trust. Now that he was to be king, he understood. He needed that energy. That energy was not for him alone, and certainly had nothing to do with whether he deserved to have it back or not.
Kim was the only person that had ever punched him in the face. And she was the only woman fit to rule beside him.
“Kim’s been taking care of me since I was six years old,” Jamaal began, “she loves everybody, but she doesn’t let just anybody get close to her. Honestly, when she told me who the baby daddy was, I thought she was full of shit. Can I give you some advice Mr. Hafiz?”
“Bel’s fine, Jamaal,” he smiled.
“I don’t know why you did what you did, but if you really love her, if you want her to say ‘yes,’ then she’s gotta trust you and respect you. And she only respects people who are ‘bout it, like she is. Don’t spend your time apologizing, just be different, and let her notice. Don’t say what you’re gonna do anymore. Just do it.”
* * *
The next morning Kim was back in her uncomfortable hospital chair, suddenly awakened by the sound of singing. Male singing. In a foreign language.
She began to stir, the familiar aches and pains of the past four days coming back to her, now accompanied by the new one in her hand which was bad enough to set her teeth on edge. She willed her blurry eyes fully functional so she could locate the pain pills she’d been given the night before.
She was still wearing her black velvety jumpsuit from last night, now wrinkled, her hair frizzy and limp. She wiped the drool from her mouth and smacked away the horrible taste of last nights drinks. Bel was sitting on Jabari’s bed holding the baby in the crook of one large arm and gazing upon Kim the entire time, his unconscious grin growing wider and wider with every sleepy, bewildered gesture.
“How’s your hand?” he bellowed.
“Muhfucka how’s yo jaw?!” Kim shot back testily, her voice husky from sleep so that she sounded like some foul-mouthed kid’s puppet. Bel was tickled.
“It hurts,” he confessed, “you caught me clean.”
“Mmhmm,” she confirmed, she turned away from him so he wouldn’t see her smiling, found her purse on the counter and reached for her painkillers. She said a prayer like she always did before she took anything, be it pain meds or aspirin, asking God to keep the addiction from her. When she turned and saw his face, still beautiful but a bit damaged from where she hit him, she had to fight the urge to gather all the necessary supplies and nurse him back to health.
“What time is it?”
“Almost eleven.”
Eleven?!
“Holy shit,” she gasped. She didn’t have a single thing to do but be in this hospital room, but she’d been away from Jabari all day and night, and the minute she returned to his side she could barely keep her eyes open. She must’ve really needed the rest. She had to admit, it was nice to have the help. The sight of Jabari so contented in his father’s arms was almost too overwhelming. Thank goodness she had the pulsating pain of her hand to focus on. Otherwise, she might’ve been tempted to forgive the last 11 months like it never happened.
“When does this shit kick in?” Kim asked no one in particular.
“What did they give you?”
“Vicodin.”
“Shouldn’t be long now,” he said. “Did you think any more about my proposition?”
“You mean the one that got you decked last night?”
“The very same.”
“You don’t make any fuckin’ sense, Bel.”
“How’s that?”
“You got a lotta nerve showing your face here at all. Why would I go anywhere with you?”
“Because you’re in love with me.”
“Not any fuckin’ more.”
“And I’m in love with you.”
“Well if this is your version of love, then no thanks. I’ll fuckin’ pass.”
“…I can explain.”
“You don’t have to, I get it. You’re a rich, spoiled, ruthless muh-fucker. Wish somebody woulda told me, but. Maybe I shoulda just used my eyes. Probably wouldn’t have listened anyway.”
“You’re right. I am all of those things. But that’s not what happened.”
Kim sighed. She couldn’t believe she was about to let this lowlife explain himself to her.
“Eleven months, Bel. And not even a phone call, not even when you knew I was pregnant.”
“Your best friend works with me pretty closely. Let’s not act like you were trying that hard to find me.”
She looked at him sideways. She didn’t know if she could withstand this conversation without getting kicked out of the hospital.
She looked down at Jabari’s peaceful face. He was sleeping now, and he didn’t even have his pacifier. His lips went through the motions anyway as he slept.
She lowered her tone as she spoke square in his face, anger seeping through her at the memory of her stupidity.
“Look, I’m sure you’re used to dime pieces runnin’ around town, searchin’ for you after you tell them all kinds of bullshit, but I’m not like that. And I know that you’re my best friend’s boss, and I coulda hurt Amara by being the one to tell her that a friend she loves and respects is really a grade A narcissist— when that shit shoulda been on you to do— but I’m not like that. I coulda gone asking around for your damn whereabouts, like my mother tried to do with my real daddy… but I’m not like that. If a motherfucker don’t want to be found, then I am happy… to bury his needle ass in the haystack myself.”
Then she started referring to herself in the third person.
“Kimberly Pritchard raised her entire family her damn self, before the six f
igure salary. She can do all things through Christ who strengthens her, and she don’t need a damn thing from you.”
He wished he could say that he did it to protect her, to save her from him but it was a cowardly attempt to protect himself from the gallows of love. The grief no longer made sense.
Kim clearly still loved him. And he knew that in no time he could have her wrapped around his finger or whatever else he wished. He was only seeing a fraction of the inferno that was inside her, the one he ignited, and he wanted nothing more than to let it consume him.
But he truly meant her no harm. Her brother Jamaal had been right. Seeing her now after so long, he deeply craved her love and trust. He hated that he’d given himself so much work to do.
“First of all, I’m actually not used to dime pieces who are unable to have sex. And I don’t go around telling women the things I told you. I’m sad that you actually think that weekend didn’t mean anything to me.”
“Yeah, you look torn up about it,” she muttered sarcastically.
“Well, what can I do about it now? I did it to myself. Saying sorry’s only going to make me look worse. It’s gonna take my whole life to make it up to you.”
“Oh, you really think I’m a dumb bitch!”
Bel was smiling, and it pissed her off even more. He had to stop, had to control himself. The hospital was no place to ravish a pissed off Kim, but he couldn’t help riling her a little.
“You practically begged me to… help you. And then… I did. Nothing will ever top that. We didn’t eat. We didn’t sleep. We barely left the room,” he reminded her softly, his eyes meeting hers.
There he is, she thought, that smooth-talking lothario setting his trap. She realized too late she was far too close to him. Arousal enveloped her. She wanted to stab him, and yet he held Jabari so tenderly. Her emotions were brimming.
She began trembling. Her face and neck turned blotchy. Tears began streaming down her face.
“You humiliated me,” she said to him. He likely couldn’t feel remorse, but she needed him to know that, so that she could forgive him regardless of whether he was capable of doing the right thing. She needed to move on from this if she was going to raise her son properly.
As he wiped her tears away with his thumb, he gave her a pained sympathetic look. Dammit, he was good, she thought.
“How’s your hand?”
She suddenly noticed she was pain-free.
“Fine.”
“See?”
“It doesn’t surprise me that you know how long it takes for drugs to go into effect.”
Suddenly they were interrupted by a knock on the door. After the moment that etiquette demanded, it opened, and it was Dr. Journegan.
“Mr. Hafiz.”
“Doctor.”
Kim sniffed and rubbed her eyes trying to seem tired, not as if she’d been crying and sharing a tender moment a second before she walked in.
“The patient looks content,” the doctor smiled in Jabari’s direction. Kim also relinquished a bright, genuine smile as she too looked at her son. Bel observed her with stars in his eyes, seeing her mom face for the first time.
“My, aren’t we fancy!” the doctor said in Kim’s direction, “good for you.” Kim gave her a sheepish laugh.
After the pleasantries were exchanged the doctor congratulated them on finding a willing match in the family, and being that Bel was such a close relative it was more likely that Jabari would not reject the liver.
After the good news was out of the way, she got down to brass tax.
Bel had been through a battery of tests during the time that Kim had been away from the hospital that morning and yesterday evening. She rattled off the litany of risks that the procedure entailed— including the death of either or both parties— not to mention the plethora of lifestyle changes that were in store for a completely successful procedure, including a lifelong regimen of anti-rejection medications for Jabari that had its own laundry list of side effects.
Kim could no longer listen to another word. She was suddenly beside herself with anger. She simply walked out in the middle of the doctor’s conversation.
Inwardly she searched for a target of vengeance, something other than herself. Then she remembered the daycare. That fucking daycare. They’d managed to duck her this long, staying mum because they knew the shit that they were in. And now that Jabari was getting a liver, she was starting to set her sights on raining hellfire and brimstone on the Shady Acres Daycare and Learning Center. She called her assistant Chandra at work.
“Find me whatever parent company that owns Shady Acres Daycare Centers. I need to know who to serve, and I want it done this afternoon.”
“It’s about time, boss,” Chandra replied.
Bel found Kim pacing in the lobby of the PICU, looking intently at her phone and chewing a stick of gum she’d mysteriously produced.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m suing the living shit out of this daycare, that’s what the fuck I’m doing,” she said distractedly, giving the gum a pop.
“There’s no time for that now.”
“Bel, I can’t sit there and do nothing and listen to Dr. Journegan rattle off this new life I gotta live, because some hillbilly daycare let their fuckin’ 16-year-old niece play hospital with my child. I gotta do something.”
“Legally the doctor needs us both to hear this.”
Kim let the arm that was holding the phone to her face hang limp. The other arm gingerly brought her damaged hand in the splint to her temple. Her brow crinkled as she threatened to fall apart. He wanted to hold her and tell her it was going to be okay because it had to be. It was what she needed, but he could do nothing without her permission, which he knew she would never give in her current state.
Kim just stood there with her eyes closed, tears threatening to overtake her again.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
Kim opened her watery brown eyes and looked up at the ceiling as she shifted her weight.
“I just feel stupid for trying to have hope like… okay, he’s not dead today, but basically what they’re telling me is he’s dead. And these motherfuckers killed him,” she held up her phone.
“That’s not true.”
“My baby’s liver is damaged. He’s never just gonna hop up and be the same. He’s never gonna know what it feels like to be normal.”
“Yes, he will. This will be his normal.”
Kim continued to shake her head, looking beyond him, her tears willing themselves not to fall.
“It doesn’t feel right.”
“What doesn’t.”
“This!” she gestured around her in frustration that he couldn’t see or feel it.
Suddenly she laid her weary head on his shoulder, keeping her arms folded in front of her.
There was no safe place to touch her, but he settled on her smooth arms. He understood that Kim was calling a temporary truce for the time being, so that she could get through this one part of it.
“Feels like…I’m going to lose… one of you.”
He was quiet while he let the admission pour over him. Like a heavyweight in the ring after many rounds, she was losing the stamina to fight.
“I’ll make you a deal. Ready?”
She shook her head ‘no.’
He outlined terms anyway. “If all this goes according to plan— Jabari gets a new liver, I don’t die, he doesn’t die, no complications, everything works out fine— you have to agree to live with me in Ghassan.”
She huffed. “And be your queen?” she said with disdain.
“Yeah, girl,” he said. She laughed.
Her whole life was here in Nashville. Her career, her family, everything she’d ever worked for. She couldn’t imagine up and leaving it, but there was one thing that meant more to her than all those things combined and that was Jabari. When she thought of losing him, she imagined all those other things tinged with such dark, decrepit contempt. She would become a shriveled, broken
down, bitter lawyer obsessed with prosecuting daycare centers. It made her realize that on some level none of it mattered at all except him. The fact that she wasn’t willing to imagine losing Bel at all made her suspect that the same went for him, despite her hatred. What would she do if she wasn’t an overachieving, caretaking lawyer? Be a queen, I guess. It did sound appealing when she actually considered it. If she could have her baby back, and Bel. Did he really mean it? But he’d meant it all before.
She let out a big sigh. He could tell he was winning the negotiations.
“Fine. What do I have to lose at this point?”
“Nothing. Now let’s go finish letting this doctor scare the shit out of us. Heard anything from Amara and them?”
Kim scoffed. “Bel, you are not black, you do not have to talk like that.”
“Whatchu talkin’ about, girl,” Bel said. Kim rolled her eyes.
“Even if you weren’t from fuckin’ Ghassan or wherever the fuck, Dale is your best friend, so I don’t even know where you gettin’ all that shit anyways.”
“I got more friends than just the one, Kim. I been honorary,” Bel defended himself.
Kim smacked. “We don’t do that shit anymore, Bel.”
“But you used to.”
“Bel, that shit don’t roll over,” Kim raised her voice. Bel was tickled over her conviction of the arbitrary rule. Every other place he’d ever been, people always loved his ability to pick up their language and customs quickly. In America was the reaction was… mixed.
“You talk like that at work?”
“Sometimes!” Kim balked at the implication that she was somehow posing.
He huffed a laugh and shook his head. “It’s called assimilation. It happens, has happened all the time, everywhere, since forever.”
“Well, not in America. In America we got one hell of a filter that only seems to work one way.”
“Of all the cultures I’ve come to learn about, the Western blacks—
“The Western whats?”
“African Americans,” he laughed, “are scary about sharing what they got.”
“Cuz a nigga be tryin’ to steal it right from under us!!”
Bel continued to shake with laughter. It was the first time he’d ever heard Kim use the ‘n’ word, and it too was exquisite, like her punch. And a bit too loud in a children’s hospital to boot. She let herself smile at his reaction.