Leah closed her eyes and inhaled deeply to try to calm her racing heart. She felt as if she would go insane. It was like the walls were closing in on her. Living on the edge of a lie so huge was a balancing act, and Leah wasn’t agile enough to avoid the fall. She could see her own demise, and she was trying to postpone it as long as possible.
“I told you not to come,” she said. “Why would you bring her here?”
Her anger threw Indie off guard as he responded, “She’s your daughter. She needs you.”
“I don’t want to see her! I don’t want to see you! Just get the fuck out!” she screamed irately. “Get out! Get out!”
“Disaya . . . you’ve got to tell me something. Where is this coming from? We just want to help you through this. Everybody. Me, my moms, Slim. We don’t want you to go through this alone. We’re trying—”
“I don’t want you to help me through anything, Indie. I don’t want you to see me like this. Please just leave. Give me time. After the surgery you can come, but I can barely look at myself. I don’t need you and everybody else gawking at me,” she reasoned, lowering her voice and softening her tone. She had to remember that YaYa wouldn’t blow up at him in that way. Where Leah was hard, YaYa was soft. She had to keep that in mind if she didn’t want to be discovered.
“Turn around, baby girl. Just look at me. Let me see you,” Indie said. This was so unlike him. He was never the type to stay when he was unwanted, but after almost losing the love of his life, he was no longer ashamed to love. He didn’t want his pride to keep him from his soul mate. He just knew that he could make her feel better.
“Hold your daughter.” Skylar began to cry as he tried to hand their daughter off to YaYa. She squirmed and contorted her body as she wailed loudly in protest. Indie thought that Skylar was reacting to the tension in the room, but Skylar knew that she was in the presence of evil. Her natural intuition told her that Leah was not her mother, and the baby wanted no parts of this evil woman.
“I don’t want to hold her! Get out of my room with the fucking crying!” Leah demanded, losing patience.
Indie stood to his feet and sighed in frustration as he took Skylar and rocked her gently to calm her cries. “It’s okay, baby girl. Mommy’s not feeling well. Everything is going to be fine,” he whispered, but even he didn’t believe the words. Seeing his daughter so cruelly rejected angered him, and at that moment he didn’t even want to try to remedy things.
He retreated from the room in confusion. His internal alarm was sounding off, blaring loudly. There was nothing reminiscent of YaYa. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he knew that something was amiss.
“What the fuck is wrong with her?” he asked the doctor that he bumped into on his way out of the room. “She doesn’t want to see her own child. This is the little girl that she was trapped in that house trying to save and all of a sudden she don’t want to see her?” Indie asked. “That make sense to you?”
“What she has been through is very traumatic. I’ve scheduled a consultation with a plastic surgeon tomorrow. Once her face is reconstructed, then we will urge her to see a therapist that can help with the emotional things she’s going through. She rejected therapy when she was first admitted, and we thought it was best to give her some time before we forced the issue again. It is definitely time for her to start expressing her feelings to someone professional. It will help her cope with the changes in her appearance. It is all a healing process. You just have to be patient,” Dr. Fannigan answered.
Indie nodded and walked away in defeat. He had never felt so disconnected from YaYa. In all the time that he had known her, they could always feel one another. Now he just felt cold resentment taking her place in his heart. It seemed as though life was tearing them apart, putting them at odds once again.
He cradled Skylar in his arms, knowing that if it weren’t for her, he would have let go of YaYa a long time ago. He was trying to be a man, a good man, and hold her down. With the resistance from his other half, it was no easy job.
Chase chuckled to himself when he saw the shocked faces of the federal agents when he finally stepped out of the car. Indie had instructed him to pull into the garage, but Chase had to add insult to injury by parking on the curb. As soon as his feet hit the pavement, they rolled down their windows and anger was evident all over their faces. Outsmarted, they had been taken on a wild goose chase. Indie had given them the slip, and Chase arrogantly flaunted it in their faces as he walked up the walkway headed to Indie’s front door. He stuck up his middle finger and scoffed as he turned his back on them to ring the doorbell.
Indie opened the door. “You wild’n, li’l homie,” he said with a laugh as he stepped to the side to allow Chase entry inside his house.
“Fuck ’em. They ain’t got shit on me. I keep my shit clean. All they can do is watch with they lookin’ ass,” Chase said. “Where’s Sky and Mom dukes?”
“I decided to send them back to New York. After visiting YaYa in the hospital I realized I can’t focus on her recovery and their safety at the same time. That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Indie said. “Shit is dead down here, fam. I can’t do shit down here. I’ve drawn too much attention to myself. . . . Agents at my door every day. I can’t move the way I need to. I can get lost in New York. I can’t do that down here. I’m a big fish in Houston; in New York there’s too many people for them to focus on one. My shit will die down a lot quicker there. After YaYa has this surgery, we’re gone.”
“I don’t like what I’m hearing, duke, but what can I say? It’s your call. I hate to see a good thing end though, my nigga. I know we at a standstill right now, but I was hoping we would pick up where we left off. The streets is ours for the taking,” Chase said.
Indie shook his head. “That’s a young man’s game, Chase. I’m not that no more. I’m headed for thirty. It’s time for me to diversify. I’ve got a man back home that can help me go legit. Invest and flip my money legally. Play the stock market, all that. I can’t put my family at risk no more. If it was just me, things would be different, but YaYa . . .” Indie shook his head at the thought of her and took a seat on the large leather sectional that occupied his living room. “This game is eating her alive, yo. It’s not for her.”
“She’s fucked up, huh?” Chase asked. “Trina and the girls tried to go see her, but she just turned ’em away.”
“She’s turning everybody away. She wouldn’t even hold her own kid, yo. Barked on me and ran us out of her room like we were strangers. She’s not the same,” Indie said. “She’s a New Yitty chick, though. Fifth Avenue shopping, Harlem doobie-wearing type of girl. I just need to get her back there . . . get her in good spirits, nah mean?” Indie took a deep breath. “I would never leave you hanging though, Chase. You’ve been nothing but loyal to me. I’ll introduce you to the connect, put you on before I break out. How that sound?”
“Sound like a nigga getting an invitation to eat at the table, big homie. That’s love,” Chase responded as they slapped hands. Indie stood, signaling that the short meeting had met its conclusion.
Indie wished that he could pick up and leave without looking back, but he couldn’t leave YaYa behind, not yet. He would do his all to make it work with her, and he hoped that she would meet him halfway. It was easy to love a person when all they showed you was the best of them. Now he was witnessing the worst. He had no idea that the devil was trying to take YaYa’s place. His guard was down, and he was falling victim to Leah’s twisted manipulation.
“Can you read the top line for me, please?” the doctor asked.
Leah placed her face in the eye examination machine and recited the first line. She had 20/20 vision and could see perfectly fine, but that didn’t stop her from sounding off the letters incorrectly.
“Is that T or I?” she feigned innocently.
Leah switched personalities as easily as she switched shoes. It was all a con to her, one big game, and she played different roles to get her way. She was in a hospital
full of professional people with white coats and MDs after their names, but she was outsmarting them all with ease. Leah was borderline brilliant, but her intelligence flirted with the edge of insanity. She had never taken a con as far as the one she was now trapped in. The things that she was willing to do to become an entirely different person were beyond any sane person’s imagination.
“I’m having a really hard time seeing these letters,” she said.
“Has your vision always been an issue, or is this something that has happened since the fire?” the doctor asked.
“It seems to have gotten worse since the fire,” Leah added for sympathy. She watched as the doctor scribbled in her chart, and then her eyes scanned the room.
A knock at the door interrupted them, and they both turned their attention toward the door as a nurse entered the room.
“I apologize for interrupting. I have a patient on the phone who needs to speak with you. She says it is urgent,” the nurse said.
The doctor sighed and gave Leah a smile. “I’ll be right back. Hold tight for a while,” the doctor said.
She nodded and watched him walk out of the door in haste.
As soon as he left the room, Leah hopped down off the exam table. She placed a chair against the door and then rushed to the cabinets as she urgently pulled them open, rifling through them frantically.
“Hurry up . . . hurry up,” she whispered to herself as she searched through shelves and drawers. Finally she came upon a small cardboard box and she smiled. Samples of contacts spilled out as she nervously tried to filter through the different brands and shades, looking for the color she needed.
She heard the doctor’s voice nearing, and she looked over her shoulder in paranoia. “Fuck!” she whispered harshly. She grabbed a plastic glove and began stuffing the contacts inside. She didn’t have time to go through them now, so she took them all. She filled it to the top and tied it as if it were a balloon, and then grabbed a small sampler bottle of solution. The cabinets and drawers looked as if a hurricane had hit them, but she didn’t have time to restore their order. She closed them frantically, removed the chair from the door, and hopped back onto the examination table with only seconds to spare.
Flustered, she steadied her breathing as the doctor returned. She hid her stolen necessities under the thin fabric of the hospital gown as she gave him a reassuring smile. She held her hands over her stomach to keep the glove in place.
“I’m writing you a prescription lens that will help with the vision,” the doctor assessed.
“Thank you,” Leah responded. She couldn’t care less about a pair of glasses. She had gotten what she had come there for.
When she was finally inside the privacy of her own room, she pulled out the glove and quickly found all of the green contact lenses that were inside. She held four pair in her hand. It was more than enough to last her until she was discharged and could access them without trouble.
Leah went to the bathroom to insert them into her eyes. The slight sting that irritated her pupils was a small price to pay. When she lifted her head and set her sights upon the light green image reflected in the mirror, her lips turned up in a devilish grin. Her transformation was almost complete. A sigh of relief escaped her lips as she gripped the edges of the sink.
I can’t believe they’re falling for it. All I’ve got to do is make it out of this hospital with a new identity and my life can start over, she thought.
A light tap on the door interrupted her, and Leah quickly hid her stolen goods in the shower, ensuring that she closed the curtain so no one could see inside.
“Just a minute,” she called out.
Leah emerged from the bathroom.
A woman introduced herself. “Hello, Disaya, my name is Dr. Maroni, head of reconstructive surgery.”
Dr. Maroni, a beautiful older woman of Italian descent, stood confidently before Leah with an entourage of medical residents behind her. Most people who saw Leah’s burns flinched, but this woman seemed unfazed by the horrendous damage that the fire had caused. In her profession, she had seen worse.
“I wanted to stop by and introduce myself and my team. I know that the fire caused a lot of damage to your face, but I want to assure you that I can help. I have seen many cases like yours before and treated them successfully,” she informed. She held Leah’s face gently and began to touch and inspect the burns. “You seem to be healing well. There are no signs of infection. I think we can proceed with the next step. We can start the cosmetic procedures. We can do the first procedure tomorrow morning. Sound good to you?”
Leah walked back to her bed and crawled under the covers before she answered, “Yes. As soon as possible. I’m just ready to get out of here and start a new life. ”
Dr. Maroni reached out and grabbed Leah’s hand. “Don’t worry. I am very good at what I do. I’ll get you on the board for tomorrow. I’m going to give you a beautiful new face.”
Chapter 5
YaYa felt like a spectacle as Zya and the nurses stood back while the surgeon removed the bandages from her face. Every part of her hurt, and as the air blew gently against her new skin, she winced in pain. It felt as if razor blades were being sliced across her tender face. “Aghh,” she groaned as she gritted her teeth, trying to remain strong as the man in front of her worked.
“You will have some pain. A lot of pain, actually, until you are completely healed. I can prescribe Vicodin for that, and it should subside over time.”
The pain was so intense that YaYa closed her eyes and breathed in a rhythm. Deep breath in, slowly exhale out . . . Deep breath in, slowly exhale out, she thought.
The gawking sets of eyes that glared at her as the doctors and nurses stood around her made the moment even more nerve-racking.
“Is it bad? What does it look like?” she asked anxiously as she looked up at the doctor. It felt like hell, but she silently hoped that the pain was worth it.
His face was serious. Wrinkles creased his brow, and he had broken out into a slight sweat as he cautiously removed each bandage. His hand was steady as he operated with precision, tugging ever so gently until her entire face was free.
A look of shock crossed Zya’s face, causing YaYa to panic. Her hands shot up to her face in fear.
“What? Is it horrible? Please just let me see my face,” she said urgently. YaYa rushed from the bed toward the full-length antique mirror that sat in a corner of the room.
“It’s better. You look like yourself again. It’s not perfect, but it’s getting there,” Zya said optimistically as she came up behind YaYa and placed her hands on her shoulders to show support. “You’re still healing, but I can see you,” Zya said.
YaYa touched her face, causing it to erupt as every nerve on her face was set on fire. Excruciation took her over, and it was agonizing as her hands explored her new face, but she couldn’t stop. She was in disbelief as the doctors and nurses stood back, admiring their work from afar. She was speechless. Her hands and arms were still badly burnt, and she would always bear the marks of the fire in those places. Her face, however, was drastically improved. No, it wasn’t perfect, and it never would be, but at least she didn’t feel as though she had been destroyed by the fire.
She was extremely red and swollen. The doctor had taken skin grafts from her back and applied them to her face. She felt like Frankenstein as she looked at the results. She could still see the dark bruises from where the skin had been stitched into place. It was ugly and it hurt like hell, especially around her eye where the skin was pulled tightly, but it wasn’t burnt, and that was all she could ask for.
Her back ached, and she winced as she bent her arm back awkwardly to touch the gauze-covered spots. Her skin was tender to the touch, and she sucked her teeth in pain.
“It will only take a few weeks to heal completely. Your face and your back will begin to look better as each day passes. The swelling will go away, the pain, the incisions will disappear. The markings that are left behind can be worked on more i
n the future if you insist, but for the most part you are very lucky. After the type of burns you sustained, you were not supposed to survive, but you did, and this surgery is only the first step in healing. Considering the amount of damage your face had, I would say that this is a drastic improvement. It may not feel like it to you, but the surgery was a success,” the doctor explained.
YaYa couldn’t expect to be the beauty queen she once was. Realistically, she never would be. She had her life, and right now that would have to be enough. She was grateful for Zya’s help. In her condition she couldn’t expect much, but despite this fact, she had been given everything. She was recognizable, and although there would be scars, it was nothing compared to the ugliness that she had expected to live the rest of her life with. In a way she even felt beautiful because her scars were symbolic of the fact that she had survived. It would take some getting used to, it would take a strong heart to make up for the flawed appearance, but YaYa was up to the task.
Her eyes pooled with emotion. She was so grateful for everything that Zya had done for her. Never in a million years had she expected to recover from something so drastic. She had underestimated how valuable life was. To look at her reflection and feel whole again was a blessing. The last thing she needed was for the pains of her life to be written all over her face.
One of the nurses walked up behind her and handed her two large pills along with a cup of water. “These will help with the pain. Take two every six to eight hours. It won’t take away the pain, but it will dull it,” she said.
YaYa nodded as she accepted the pills, grateful for the slightest bit of relief. She turned to Zya.
“You have no idea how much you have done for me,” YaYa said. “Thank you, Zya.”
“Thank me with your loyalty, YaYa. Reconsider my offer,” Zya replied.
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