by Sable Hunter
Rolling to her back, she flung an arm over her eyes to shield them from the sun.
“Come up here, let me look at you.” Her mother tugged on her arm. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing, just winded.” She allowed her mom to pull her to her feet, only to drape herself across the older woman’s lap, happily exhausted.
“Why are you blue? Did you roll in something?”
“Blue?” she whispered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was out of breath, but happy.
“You look like a Smurf.” Her mom tilted her chin up so she could look into Glory’s face. “Even your lips are blue.” Standing up, she grabbed her daughter’s hand. “Come on, we’re going to the doctor.”
“No!” she protested, tugging out of her mother’s grip. She wasn’t strong, but neither was her mom.
Vivienne Hudson was worn out, exhausted from years of living out of a suitcase, traveling from the hospital to her home and back – day after day.
“I don’t ever want to go to a doctor again, I’m cured!”
“There’s something wrong with you, I don’t know what it is, but you don’t look right.”
To Glory’s dismay, she was taken to the ER. How sad it was that she felt as much at home at the hospital as she did the house where they lived.
Her regular physician came in to check on her, putting Glory through a battery of tests. A sick feeling, unrelated to whatever they’d find wrong with her, pinched her belly and made her nauseous. She was sick and tired of being sick. All her life had been spent staring at a popcorn ceiling, fluorescent lighting, and bland paint slicked over scarred, sheetrock walls. If she had to stay another day in a hospital, Glory thought she might run away from home – permanently.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked softly, seeing her mother approach the bed followed closely by the doctor. Their faces told her volumes. “Has the cancer come back?” If it had, Glory had already made her up mind to refuse treatment. She might not be fully grown, but she was older than her years in terms of experience with pain and sickness. As she waited for an answer, Glory was acutely aware of their solemn attitude. Clutching the sheet so tightly her knuckles were white, she awaited the verdict.
“No, the cancer hasn’t come back,” Vivienne stated, unenthusiastically.
“No, you are cancer free.” The doctor agreed. “However…”
However. Glory held her breath.
“Complications have arisen related to the drug used to beat the leukemia. There’s been an unexpected, unfortunate side effect.”
He paused. Probably not for affect. He was giving Glory time to process what she was being told.
“And?” she questioned. “What’s wrong with me?”
“You have pulmonary arterial hypertension.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“PAH is a rare form of high blood pressure. This type occurs in the pulmonary arteries that flow from your heart and through your lungs. When the arteries constrict and narrow, this prevents the heart from pumping adequate blood and it must work harder to compensate. The blood pressure in the pulmonary arteries and the heart increases dramatically. As your condition worsens, the pressure becomes greater and you’ll begin to experience several symptoms.”
As the doctor droned on, Glory zoned out. She didn’t understand everything he was saying, but she got the gist of it.
She was still sick.
Beat one damn disease and another pops up. Turning over, she buried her face in the pillow as the doctor informed her mother of all the details. Details she had no desire to know.
T-Rex lives with the aftermath
“On your feet, prisoner!”
T-Rex Beaumont rolled over and looked through the bars of his six by nine. His feet hung out over the edge of the prison-issue cot. No night since he’d been here had been a night of rest. If it wasn’t the discomfort of the bed keeping him awake, it was the constant wailing of his fellow inmates, or one of the asshole guards waking them up on purpose just to get his jollies. T had been in the Iberia Parish jail for nearly three weeks now, and still there’d been no date set for his trial.
A guard kicked the cell bars with his heavy, steel-toed boot when T rolled back over and ignored him. “I said on your feet, Hulk!”
T turned and stared at the ceiling. He’d memorized every inch of that ceiling and the dirty graffiti tagged cell. He might as well get used to it, he was going to be locked up for many years to come once he was brought in front of a jury.
And he had no one to blame but himself.
He’d done the crime and now he’d have to do the time.
No, not for killing his father. He’d got off on that one – thanks to his friends, Revel Lee Jones and Patrick O’Rourke. They’d testified on his behalf, told the judge everything he’d lived through, everything his family had endured for decades. His father’s death had been ruled a justifiable homicide.
T wouldn’t be calling his friends for help this time, he was too ashamed. This crime wasn’t ‘justifiable’ by any means.
He’d tied one on at The Happy Gator, then climbed behind the wheel of his old beat-up Chevy truck. Sure, he could’ve blamed the bartender who kicked him out and left T with no other choice but to get behind the wheel, but even he knew that was a crock. No one forced him to put the key in the ignition, throw the rusty clunker into drive, and veer out of his lane two miles down the road. Hell, the little girl and her mother in the other car had been coming back from a dance recital. They were totally innocent.
The pain of what he’d done shot through T like a lightning bolt. Just like his mother had prophesied, T-Rex was just like his daddy. Not only in size, but also in temperament. Like a legacy from his father, he’d taken to boozin’ and brawlin’, doing everything he could to build a wall around himself to protect others and to keep the guilt he felt over his past at bay.
T hadn’t set out to hurt anyone that night a few weeks back, but hurt someone was exactly what he’d done. His public defender was proving to be as useless as tits on a boar hog. The only thing he’d been good for to this point was giving T updates on the little girl from the accident. According to Renfro, her condition was improving slowly, but that information did little to assuage the guilt T felt hanging heavy over his head.
The guard stared him down. He was a big fella too. T had tangled with bigger and he knew he could handle the guy with relative ease, but he wasn’t looking for trouble today. He knew once he got to Angola, he’d find plenty of it there.
“Did the judge grant me early release?” T joked, doing his best to mask the despair he felt inside.
The guard was stone-faced. “You’ve got a visitor. Move it.”
A visitor? Ol’ tits on a boar wasn’t supposed to be coming by to see him today.
“Who is it?” T demanded to know as he stepped out of his cell.
But that was it for the communication. The surly guard was no longer interested in exchanging words. They walked in silence, right past the visitation rooms.
“Where are we going?” T asked, confused.
The guard pushed him along with a sharp shove. “Keep moving.”
When they rounded the corner, two more guards were waiting. One walked out in front of T, while the other fell in line behind him.
The uneasy feeling in T’s gut got worse when they arrived in a section of the jail he’d never been to before.
“Hands behind your back, prisoner.”
T thought for a second. This was starting to look more and more like a good old-fashioned ass-kicking and his right hand balled into a fist in anticipation.
The guards saw the aggressive posture T was taking and before he knew it, the weight of all three men was on his back, forcing him face-first into the wall and handcuffing his hands behind his back.
The taste of blood on his lips was immediate and the sting in his nose was unavoidable. T’s eyes watered as he was shoved through the door into a room that h
ad only a desk and two chairs. There were no windows in this room and no two-way mirrors for people to observe. This looked to be a private meeting which would involve his face and the boots of his three, less than friendly, escorts.
Before he could voice a useless protest, T-Rex was pushed down into one of the chairs and his handcuffs were secured to the chair beneath him.
“Sit still, fuck-up,” one of the guards whispered into his ear when he tested the strength of the cuffs. “You won’t get out of these, I assure you.”
T sat for a few minutes, waiting for the first blow to land. “We gonna do this or what, fella?”
The door opened and closed a moment later. “Thank you, gentlemen.” The voice was soft and feminine. “You can leave now.”
“With all-due respect, Mrs. Middleton, we shouldn’t be doing this in the first place. If your brother finds out, we’re all as good as fired. I’d hate to think of what would become of us if something were to happen to you. I think it’s best we stay close.”
“My brother may be your boss, gentlemen, but I can assure you, I am the boss of my little brother. If I need to hold him down and shove worms into his mouth like I used to do when we were kids to keep him from firing you, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Now kindly vacate the room so I can have a private conversation with Mr. Beaumont.”
T was flabbergasted. What was this woman doing here? He couldn’t see her, she was standing just beyond his view, but there was no doubt she was strong-willed. The sound of the guard’s heavy boots exiting the room testified to her determination.
“Mrs. Middleton?”
The woman sat down at the table across from T. “Mister Beaumont. How nice to finally meet you.” She wore a bandage under her eye where a piece of glass from the windshield had carved a long gash. There was also an almost healed scar on her neck, probably caused by the same glass. “May I call you Rex Allen?”
T sat stunned. He’d have known Lauren Edwards Middleton anywhere. Even if the guard hadn’t identified her by name, he’d have recognized this woman the moment he laid eyes on her. How could he not? He’d seen her picture a million times on the TV and in the newspapers Renfro had brought him. Her long auburn hair, her pretty face, and her high-powered name had been emblazoned right there alongside his frazzled mugshot from the night of the crash. “T, ma’am, call me T or T-Rex. I don’t like to use my father’s name.”
Lauren Middleton was the driver of the car T had crashed into in his drunken state. Lauren’s five-year old daughter Teagen had been asleep in the backseat and sustained far worse injuries than her mother, per the reports in the newspapers.
“How is she?” T asked with sincere concern. “The paper said she might never walk again.”
Lauren fixed him with a glare from across the table, smoothing a lock of hair back over her ear. “A story about a little girl being paralyzed is apt to sell a lot more papers than the actual truth. While I can assure you that both myself and my daughter are anything but ‘fine’, we are in better shape than the news reports will have everyone believe. Sometimes circumstances get overblown. I’m sure you know all about that kind of thing, don’t you?”
T knew what she was referring to and he just hung his head. He’d been trying to escape that day ever since it happened, trying to drown the memory with booze and this is where his foolish strategy had landed him.
He still had no idea what was going on. “You just come here to gloat?”
Lauren sat back in her chair and laughed. “I believe you have me all wrong, T. I know what this looks like, but I’m not here for vengeance. I’m here on a mission of mercy.”
Suddenly, a rustling sounded from the other side of the door. T heard arguing and a moment later the door came flying open.
“What the hell are you doing, Lauren?” Remy Edwards, Iberia Parish District Attorney, came into T’s view a moment later. Remy backhanded T across the face when he looked up at him. “What are you doing meeting with this piece of shit?”
Lauren was up and out of her seat, moving toward her little brother to intervene before he could smack T again. “Remy, stop!” She grabbed for her brother’s hand.
Remy glared at his sister. “He hurt you and he hurt Teagan. If I have anything to do with it, this idiot’s going to prison for as long as humanly possible.” He turned his focus on T-Rex. “I’m gonna make sure of that, you swamp-rat. I’m gonna throw the book at you. You aren’t gonna see daylight again for years. You hear me, boy?”
T didn’t say a word. Maybe this hadn’t turned out to be the ass-kicking he thought it would be, but he knew he’d hit the wrong car. The Middleton family were powerful in these parts and none more powerful than Remy. He was the law in Iberia and now he was hell-bent on avenging his family.
Lauren broke the heavy silence that filled the room. “No.”
Remy looked away from T. “No? What do you mean ‘no’?”
“He’s not going to prison.” She took her seat again. “You’re going to drop the serious charges against Mister Beaumont and he’ll plead guilty to a lesser charge.”
Remy was beside himself with disbelief. “What are you talking about, Lauren? This piece of shit almost killed you and Teagan.”
“I know very well what he did, Remy,” she snapped and T saw the visible change in Remy’s demeanor when she did. Remy Edwards might be a powerful force in the parish, but T could tell he was afraid of his older sister. She turned to face him, her features softening. “I followed your story in the papers all those years ago, T-Rex.”
Remy jumped in. “Then you know what he did, Lauren.”
“Wait outside, Remy.” She pointed to the door.
The man stood his ground for a moment, placing his hands on his hips, but conceded to his sister’s orders reluctantly.
“My brother has always been protective of his family. I love that about him, but he has gone overboard in this instance.”
T knew better than to speak, he just sat and let his guest talk.
“I knew your father, T-Rex. We went to the same school. He was much older than I, but it was a small school. We all knew one another. What a rotten bastard he was,” she sneered at the memory. “If you ask me and a lot of people around here, he got what he had coming to him.” Shaking her head sadly, she murmured, “and you were just a boy.”
Memories flooded T’s brain and he struggled to keep the tears from rising to the surface.
“I’ve seen your record. Bar fights. Public intoxication. You’ve got a rap-sheet a mile-long. You know what I see when I look at it?”
T-Rex shook his head.
“I see a man trying to escape. A man trying to forget something awful. A man trying to avoid losing his soul. I followed your case, T. The whole town did. I remember the photograph of you on the front page of the Times Picayune. I remember the ill-fitting plaid shirt you wore and the tears you couldn’t hold back the day you were arrested.”
T swallowed, aghast at the memories Lauren Edwards Middleton was dragging up. And for what?
“The traffic accident was bound to happen. I’m amazed you went this long without killing someone on the road. I’m sorry it was me and my daughter in your path the night your luck finally ran out. But I don’t see evil in you. I see a good person, just like I saw in that boy all those years ago. The boy who had enough heart and love to stand up for his sister. So, I’m here today to offer you a way out. A way out of this situation and a way out of the misery your life has become.”
“Why?” T wanted to know, he wanted to understand.
“Because you’ve suffered more than most people ever will and I believe you can turn your life around and become a productive member of society. Not just some thug who gets locked up and watches his life waste away.” She cleared her throat and sat up straighter. “My offer is this, T-Rex. You plead guilty to that lesser charge and I will see to it that the judge orders you to rehab.”
“I appreciate the offer, Mrs. Middleton, but I’m not exactly flush with funds.
I can’t afford rehab.”
“I will pay for it.”
T was stunned.
Lauren realized he had more questions, but she didn’t take time to answer them. “This is a one-time deal, T. When I walk out this door, the deal disappears with me and you go to prison. My brother will go after you with all his vast resources and he will win. I suggest you take me up on my offer.”
“And all I have to do is go to rehab?”
“If only it were that easy. No, rehab is just the first step. You are to turn your life around, T-Rex Beaumont. Should you fail at rehab…should I hear you are back to your old ways, I will make it my mission in life to make sure you go to prison. I’m offering you a second chance, because I feel you deserve one. But don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. I will be watching you. I will be checking in on you. If you accept my offer, you are making a lifelong commitment to sobriety and a new life.”
“So, you’ll own me?”
Lauren laughed. “I suppose one could look at it that way, but can anyone ever really own another human being? I’m offering you a chance to live again. A chance to come out from behind the veil of alcohol abuse you’ve hid behind for so long and lead a normal life. I’m offering you a chance to go to school, make something of yourself. To marry and have a family.”
T didn’t know what the catch was here, but the alternative was losing his freedom. “You’ve got a deal.” T gave her a grateful smile. “I thank you for this opportunity and I will do my best to turn my life around. I can’t make any promises about what I’ll achieve, but the one thing I will promise you, Miss Middleton.” He paused, looking her dead in the eye. “I’ll never marry and I will never have a family. The devil lives in my veins, just like it did my father’s, and I will never subject anyone I love to the violence inside me. That I can assure you.”
Walkabout