by K. S. Adkins
It was four minutes after seven when she came out.
It was nine minutes after seven that I ruined the foundation I waited ten years to build.
When I broke my ankle I was determined to handle it on my own. But then, there he was driving me from my apartment to class, carrying my pack, and taking me back home. He refused to let me do anything. Honestly, he acted as if taking care of me made him happy. The guy I thought was gone came through and the crush I’d carried for him turned into full on longing. For three weeks I had him to myself and we talked about everything. Books, music, football, medicine, and family.
When he found an opportunity to touch me, he took it and I let him. But like all things, my ankle wouldn’t stay broken forever and two weeks later I was moved into an air cast and he behaved as disappointed as I felt. The weeks of time with him all but evaporated. When I was mobile again, he went back to being fake Roman and it cut me deep. I didn’t get it and was too hurt to ask for fear of his response. Falling back into my role, I knew I’d miss tutoring him at my place and hated going back to the library because there the fantasy ended. The second we went back, the Roman I fell for was gone. Poof, vanished.
I couldn’t do this.
I couldn’t go out there.
Sitting on the floor with my head between my legs it was pure devastation that kept me from moving. Five and a half hours of surgery. Her life had been in my hands, her blood was covering my scrubs as proof. I tried. I had tried so hard but I lost her. “Doctor,” says one of the nurses. “It’s time.”
Nodding to her, I put my lab coat and my game face on. Clearing the doors and making a left toward the family waiting room, the second I opened the door, the only one that registered was Rome. In a blink he was on his feet and grabbing me. He was talking a mile a minute but I can’t speak yet, it was too hard. Maybe my face gave it away to the others because everyone surrounded him in support of what was to come.
“Rome,” I say taking his hands. “She had a heart attack---“
“No…” he whimpers.
“She was on the freeway and lost control of her car,” I try to explain.
“Heart attack?”
“Yes,” I manage. “I tried, Rome, but after I repaired the damage I wasn’t able to bring her---“
“She’s dead?”
“Rome,” I start.
“She’s fucking dead?”
At a loss of what to say or do, I nod and tell him in a firm voice, “Yes, Rome she is. I am so sorry.”
Grabbing onto me he pulls me down into a chair and screams into my neck. Holding him, trying to comfort him, I gave him time to get it out. It helped that the others each laid a hand on him too. Whispering to him, telling him how sorry I was, how hard I tried and how much I loved him didn’t do what I had hoped. It did the opposite, it enraged him.
With the force only Rome could offer, he pushed me off of him so hard I landed on the floor with a crack. Bishop was there to help me up but the shock of the act rendered me motionless. When he came at me again, it took all the men minus Bishop who was my shield, to hold him back.
Screaming obscenities at me, he looked like he wanted to strangle me, that I was the enemy and I was terrified. Not of him, but of what this outburst meant. Holding my ground, I continued to tell him I was sorry, that I was here to help and even the others tried too, but he wasn’t listening.
When they got him back in a chair and kept him there he calmed down enough to deliver the final blow. The one I would never forget as long as I lived.
“Twice,” he says shaking everyone off and locking eyes with me. “You failed me twice. You didn’t save her. Fuck you, Teach.”
Staggering back, I shake my head to clear it of what I just heard.
Yes, he just received awful news, the worst kind of news possible but I did everything in my power to save her. Everything. I even brought her back four times when I knew she was gone after two. Stunned, I push the door open and exited. Out in the hall, I was held up by the wall and when Jules came out, she just held me.
“He doesn’t mean it, Kandy Kane,” she whispers rubbing my back.
Shrugging her off and putting my heart break aside, I told her the truth.
“Yes, he does. He meant it ten years ago and he meant it tonight. I should have taken my own advice and listened.” Turning and walking away, I left the orders with the attending and clocked out. Whether he went back to say goodbye or not was his choice. I personally prepped her in the event that he did she would look peaceful to him. That his last memory would be of her sleeping.
I did my part, my job. I had wanted to be there for him, needed to be. I had thought he would have been comforted by the fact that it was the woman he loved that tried to save her. I’ll be God damned if I ever fucking tell him what her last words were.
I’ll be God damned if I ever let him near me or my heart again after this.
The days of Roman using me like a football to punt were over.
“What is this?” I ask snatching an envelope from her hand. “It’s a letter,” she says rolling her eyes. “See, that’s my name and that’s the address where it’s going. Inside is a piece of paper with words on it---“
“Smart ass,” I say handing it back. “Who even writes letters anymore?”
“I do, obviously,” she says opening her book.
“Who’s it to?”
“A solider overseas,” she says. “He was wounded several months ago and we write each other. I’m trying to keep his spirits up.”
I’m sure more than his spirts were up if he knew what his pen pal looked like. “You send him pictures of yourself?”
“What? No!” she says appalled. “The site said uploading one was optional and I did but it was from the neck up. Knowing how your brain works, I assume you think---“
“Did his dick get blown off?” I ask.
“Well no,” she stumbles.
“Then he’s thinking with it.” After she picks her jaw up off the floor she laughed.
Then she laughed so hard that it won a smirk from me. Leaning forward and resting her chin on the top of her hand she whispers, “Touché.”
But that was Kandace always thinking about others first. Writing to a guy laid up in the hospital never once thinking he’d be jacking off to her picture, pure her.
Burying my grandma without Kandace by my side was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Prison was easier than watching her casket being lowered into the ground without her there. Coming home to an empty house was no easier. Every time a car door slammed I expected her to walk through the door and tell me about what she’d been up to but she never does. Which always brought me back to Kandace. The one who always needed her routine. I got it now. I needed the routine back too and it was fucking gone.
It’s been three weeks since she died.
Three weeks since I’ve seen or held Kandace, too. After the funeral, Bishop followed me back to the house and stayed a while but he didn’t come just to be a friend. He came to let me know I was the biggest prick he’d ever met. It doesn’t make it right but I know I said awful things to her, I just don’t remember doing it.
Bishop had no problem letting me know in detail exactly what I said. Laying that on her wasn’t fair but I can’t lie and say that when I first saw her come through those doors wearing the look of loss that I didn’t blame her. The anguish was just so fucking intense. I needed someone else to take it for a minute but it should have never been her. Habit had me falling back on hurting her and the guilt over that was a heavy weight. My grandma wouldn’t have wanted that and to top it off, I put my hands on her too.
I’ve called, texted, and went by her place so many times I’d lost count. I didn’t have the balls to try the hospital but I was worried about her. No one at Lush knows shit so today before work, I decided to go by her dads’ place in case she was staying there. Sitting in their driveway, I lost the nerve to get out. But I didn’t have to wait or worry because Peter came to me.
“Come inside, son,” he says opening my door. Following him in, he advises me to sit while he called for Dick. Having them both staring at me had me tapping my foot. But it was Dick who spoke first and I did not like what he had to say.
“She’s gone, Rome,” he says crossing his arms over his massive chest. “She left two weeks ago.”
“Son,” Peter says sitting next to me. “We are so sorry about your grandmother. She was a lovely woman.”
“Now that the condolences are out of the way, show him out, Peter.” Dick says leaving the room.
Standing up to leave I wanted to grill Peter but didn’t. She left, because of me and I knew it. Honestly, I just couldn’t believe she did it.
“Rome,” he says quietly. “In the quiet times when you find yourself blaming her I’d like you to remember she loved Clara too. My daughter is tough, yet extremely fragile. She has a gift, a gift to heal but sometimes it’s out of her tiny hands and placed into the Lord’s. Kandace tried for nearly six hours to keep her with us. She wept for your grandmother and for the man she loved. Now, she didn’t share what happened, but I suspect it was why she left. For my daughter to leave I can only assume it was to lick her wounds. Because it’s not the lives she saves that keeps her going, pushing her to go that extra mile, it’s the lives she doesn’t. Losing Clara and then you was too much.”
“I told her she failed me,” I choke out. “That I hated her.”
“Oh, son,” he whispers.
“You said that to my daughter?” says Dick throwing me into the wall. With a forearm in my throat, I didn’t fight him. I simply said,
“Yes sir, I did.”
“Then you are the piece of shit no father would want near their daughter,” he yells in my face. “You bullied her in school, humiliated her and still she stood by your sorry ass! She even got us rooting for your worthless hide! Don’t you look at me like that boy, you don’t think her brother didn’t have eyes and ears back then? She sat in that courtroom and mourned for you. She brought you here, to meet her parents and was proud of you. She never gave up on you and when she fell to her knees in my God damn kitchen crying over your ass, I swore if I ever saw you again---“
“Enough!” says Peter pulling him off of me. Coughing, I move toward the door to leave for good but it’s Peter who stops me. “She made us promise,” he says giving Dick a look that said shut the hell up. “That if ever we ran into you or had we gone to the funeral we were never to tell you that Clara’s last words to her were, take care of my Rome, he needs you.”
“Fuck,” I cry into my hands.
“Now you know,” says Dick opening the door to show me out.
Walking out to my car I could barely find the ignition. Yeah, now I knew but there wasn’t shit I could do about it. Working that night took everything I had. When work was over I had nothing, no one to go home to. In the break room Bishop ended his vow of silence and sat down next to me.
“How you holding up?” he asks cracking a can of Dr. Pepper.
“How does it look like I’m holding up?”
“You talk to the Doc ?”
“No,” I tell him. “She’s gone.”
“Explain that.”
“Doctors without Borders, Sierra Leone,” I yell in his face. ”Fucking gone!”
“Well whose fucking fault is that?” he yells back in mine.
“I get it, asshole. It’s mine, happy now?”
“So that’s it? End of story? You ain’t gonna call her or write her? No apology? Just boom, you failed me now fuck off? The only failure here brother, is you.”
“You’re right,” Then like a switch went off, I shot up from my seat and drove home with a plan. It had to work. In the event it didn’t, I’d be calling Jules to help get me a passport. Either way, I was getting Kandace back.
“You date much, Teach?” he asks.
“Do you mean, do I go out and get to know someone or do I just fuck?” I counter. When his eyes go round I smiled to myself. Over the last few months I’ve figured out what he’s really trying to say when he asks a simple question it’s never that question, it’s the opposite. “Do I fuck much is what I believe you meant to ask and the answer is, no. But if you did mean do I date much the answer is, yes.”
“I don’t date at all,” he says, shocked he said it. So when Roman says that it means all he does is fuck which makes me very sad.
“You should try it,” I offer not wanting him to try it or continue fucking his way through the campus.
“I’ll stick to what I’m good at,” he mumbles.
Roman Peterson had so much to offer and had no idea how. He also would never let me show him or let me in. Never would he date me or fuck me and that messed with me on every level.
I loved him unconditionally and he’ll never know.
Speaking with my dads today was bittersweet. Of course they were full of news and wanted to hear all about my time here but, when I explained the dire situation, they demanded I come home. However, coming home wouldn’t be that easy. The village I was in was dealing with an outbreak of Ebola and we were losing people daily. It was a matter of time before the US media caught wind of it. Especially when a group of doctors and nurses left for home earlier in the week and according to our rep, will have to be quarantined. Yep, the United States is going to blow this one up.
You would think death would get easier after seeing it so much, when in fact, each passing made it harder to handle the next. These people were suffering, knew death was waiting and knew we couldn’t stop it. Now it was spreading quickly and word that nearby villages and towns were affected heightened the panic here.
For me and others like me who have been here since the first case hit, leaving was no longer an option because chances were high that we were also infected. Although as of today, I show no signs. I worry that should I contract the virus I’ll never see home again.
Then there’s the downtime. Night time, I found, was the hardest for me.
Between hearing patients screaming and the desert-like conditions, I would focus on him to get me through. So many years had come and gone, where I had nights like this one wondering how he was. I can count on one hand how many times I regretted going into medicine. When trying to be noble blew up in my face. The night Clara passed, I went to see my dads for comfort. Not having anyone else to turn to, I fell to my knees screaming at the unfairness of death. An emotional shit show, I asked them why. Why after pining for him all these years would it come down to this? Having my heart trampled again did not feel good. In fact, there were times when I could feel it fracture and the gap widen.
The very next morning after Clara passed, I called my rep for the program and was cleared by my physician for travel the three days after that. With so much shit on my shoulders, I knew that I had to go. I needed to replace the bad with some good. I could make a difference and follow a dream even if the circumstances were less than pleasant. Regardless of what he said, that he threw me away, I still missed him so much, at times breathing was impossible. Then when I couldn’t catch my breath, I panicked that it was a symptom and ran to the clinic for testing. Being here may be helping others but I wasn’t doing myself any favors.
I was a fucking wreck.
Vowing to check in with my dads daily by email, I crawled on top of my cot and prayed for sleep and for Rome. I wasn’t a religious person but I was a spiritual one. Hard not to be when you see the Lord’s work first hand. Everything may happen for a reason but in my case, I couldn’t figure out what it was. Loving someone came with challenges, I knew that but I wanted to make Rome’s life easier not harder. Turns out I failed at that too. Leaving was best for both of us. Rome had the crew at Lush who loved him, they would be his support system now.
Grabbing my chest I begged myself to stop reliving that night, to move on, accept that it wasn’t meant to be. But dammit, I had just told him that I loved him, had loved him the whole time. He admitted to loving me for ten years. How do two people love each oth
er for that long then lose it? The injustice of it sucked. The urge to write to him and beg him to forgive me was making my fingers twitch but I didn’t do it.
He said I had failed him, twice.
He said that he fucking hated me.
He had called me, Teach.
Stuffing my face in my pillow to scream, the flap to my tent was opened by Becca one of the nurses here. “Dr. Kane, it’s Adjoa. You asked to be called in when it was time.”
Squaring my shoulders and wiping my nose, I rush putting my gear on to reach Adjoa in time. She was a beautiful girl, fourteen if I had to guess. She was smart and passionate. Before losing her ability to speak she shared with me that she wanted to become a doctor, to help people, like I did.
Now at eleven eighteen she was leaving this life after weeks of suffering. Holding her gently, I sang to her. She wouldn’t know who Sam Cooke was, but his gospel song, I had hoped would ease her. When she took her last breath, I closed her eyes and grabbed my journal to record time of death.
The next morning I researched her beautiful name, Adjoa.
I did this for each patient, no exceptions.
Adjoa meant Monday born.
She died in my arms on a Monday as well.
“My boy’s in love with a doctor,” she says.
“Yes ma’am.”
“She waited ten years for you, I can’t say I know many that would. She’s special, that one. She saved her love for you, Rome, take care of it.”
“I will, grandma.”
“I know you will, I raised you right. See you two on Sunday.”
There was a relief in her voice when she spoke to me. After years of misery, my grandma knew I was finally happy and on my way to being whole. That was the last conversation I’d ever have with her.