The Reason Why

by Vickie M. Stringer

  Chino cried out again. “If it’s money you want, you can have it. Just let me go.”

  “Let you go?” Red asked. “Nigga, they’re going to find yo body on the evening news.” He struck Chino again.

  “Please, don’t kill me,” Chino pleaded. “You can have my car.”

  “We got your car,” Slick told him. “We know exactly where to go and get it from.”

  “From the bullshit grocery store where we got your ass!” Red said, striking Chino again.

  Chino cried out again. He knew that he was going to die. He wanted desperately to make it. He wanted to get back to his Pooh. He would do anything to get back to his love. To lie in her arms again, to have her caress his head. He needed his Pooh now more than ever.

  Dirty kicked Chino in his face, and then in his stomach with his enormous hiking boot. Chino spit up blood.

  “Don’t kill me,” he pleaded weakly.

  “Look at this ho ass nigga!” Slick shouted. “He ain’t such a big man now!”

  Red struck Chino again with his pistol. “Bitch ass nigga!”

  “Get on your knees!” Dirty shouted.

  Filled with aching pain, Chino rose to his knees. Blood was pouring down his body. Red pulled out his penis and urinated on Chino.

  “That’s how we feel,” Red told him. “We feel pissed on by niggas like you. Up in the club popping bottles and pulling all the bitches.”

  “Man, I ain’t pulling no bitches,” Chino told him. “I got one woman.”

  “Take us to your crib so we can hit your safe,” Slick said.

  “And then we can fuck your bitch!” Dirty added.

  “And if she gives good head, we might let her live,” Red said.

  “Please, don’t kill me!” Chino pleaded. He lowered his head to the ground crying.

  “Man, this nigga’s a real bitch made nigga!” Red said, laughing.

  “If I weren’t a straight up G, I would make him suck my dick!” Dirty added.

  “This crying-ass nigga would probably do it!” Slick said. He kicked Chino in his side, causing him to roll over on his stomach. The three abductors broke into laughter. Slick moved in too close to Chino, while laughing hysterically. Chino made his move.

  Chino grabbed the gun from Slick’s hand, while kicking him in the side of his knee. Slick’s knee snapped like a dry pretzel and he buckled instantly. Chino aimed the gun and shot Slick in his gut, then turned and popped Red in his chest, dropping him. He quickly shifted his weapon and fired several shots toward Dirty, who caught a round in the head. Chino quickly rose and backed up against a corner wall. He fired his gun at Red once again, striking him in the head.

  “Piss on that, bitch!” Chino told him.

  Suddenly he heard what sounded like someone running up some steps. He didn’t know how many of them there were. He searched the room for an exit. Bullets ripped through the room. Chino ran for a window across the room and dove through it. To his unfortunate surprise, it was a third-floor window. Chino landed on the roof of the front porch, then rolled off into the yard. His back was hurting, and his leg felt like it was sprung, but he got up and ran anyway. He ran as hard and as heavy as he could. He was so busy trying to escape that he had forgotten that he didn’t have any clothes on. He was running butt-ass naked with a bloody gun.

  Chino huffed and puffed and raced down the street, making it to a main road. He raced into the road and stopped an oncoming car. It was an older white man inside.

  “Help me!” Chino told him.

  “Oh, my God!” the man exclaimed. “Get in!”

  Chino made his way to the passenger side and climbed into the car. The old man raced off.

  “Is anyone chasing you?” the old man asked.

  “Probably,” Chino said, breathing heavily.

  “We need to get you to the hospital.”

  Chino shook his head. “I need to go home. I need a hot bath, and I need some clothes.”

  The old man looked at Chino’s bloody and naked body. “You’re bleeding bad, young fella. You need a doctor.”

  Chino shook his head. “Please, they’ll ask questions, and then call the police. I’ll be okay. I just need to get cleaned up.”

  “What happened to you?” the old man asked.

  “I was kidnapped. But other than that, you shouldn’t ask too many questions.”

  The old man nodded. He knew when to shut up.

  The nurse ran into Chino’s room and pressed the emergency alarm. Soon she was joined by several other doctors and nurses.

  “What happened?” one of the doctors asked.

  “I just came in here because his heart monitor was going off, and I found him like this.”

  Chino was covered in sweat and convulsing violently. His nightmare had caused his heart to palpitate excessively.

  “We need a sedative!” the doctor shouted. “We need to make sure that he doesn’t go into cardiac arrest.”

  Chino’s dream found him in his bedroom kneeling, and Pam rushing to him. She found him naked, bloody, and weeping. But in his dream, his Pooh was with him now, and so his heart calmed down to near normal beats. He had his Pooh with him in his dreams. He was better now.

  Chapter 49

  The Future

  The nurse walked into Chino’s room and checked his monitors. She wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm and placed the end of a stethoscope against his arm, just beneath the cuff. She pumped up the cuff and listened and timed his heartbeats as it deflated. His blood pressure was still a little on the low side.

  Nurse Jen then checked his IV fluids and placed a thermometer in his armpit to measure his temperature. It was also a little low. Chino was not doing well.

  Nurse Jen shook her head. Chino was on his way to being another statistic. She had seen way too many of those in her ten years as a triage nurse. Gunshot wound victim after gunshot wound victim poured into the Columbus hospital night after night with alarming regularity. Almost always it was an African-American male who had been shot by another African-American male. Black-on-black crime was the reason she had gone into the medical profession in the first place. It was black-on-black crime that had taken her younger brother from her.

  Nurse Jen’s younger brother Jarod had gone to a party one night, and for no apparent reason, while he and his friends were leaving the party, a crew from the Southside rode by and unleashed on them. Northside against Southside, Eastside against Westside, it was always the same shit. Blacks killing other blacks for bullshit reasons. And now she had another one. This one was, more likely than not, a victim of crack violence, she surmised. One way or the other, crack was going to destroy all in its path. Whether you used it or sold it, it was going to catch up to you in the end. It caught up to the users by making them addicts. It caught up to the dealers by sending them to prison or, even worse, to the morgue. This one was headed to the latter, if he stayed in the condition that he was in. That thing about the first thirty-six hours being critical was true. But what they don’t tell you is that if you haven’t gotten better in the first thirty-six, then you were in more and more trouble with each passing day. Open wounds, infections, low blood pressure, low body temperature, and so many other things all conspired against you. Time was not on your side.

  Nurse Jen rubbed Chino’s arm.

  “Fight, baby boy,” she said in her thick West Indian accent. “Fight. I need you to fight for your life.”

  Chino moaned and turned his head to the side.

  “Pooh, those muthafuckas tried to play me,” Chino said.

  “It’s okay, you’re home now,” Pam reassured him. “What happened?”

  Chino shook his head. “Pooh, this is murder one, baby. Ain’t no turning back if I tell you. From this point on, you my accomplice. Either you down, or you can turn and leave now.”

  “Chino, you know I got you, boo. Now, what’s up? Whatever happened, I’m sure that they got what their hand called for.”

  Chino held up a gun. It was a gun that P
am didn’t recognize as one of his.

  “Pooh, baby, this is murder,” Chino repeated. “Without this weapon, they got nothing, though.”

  “Chino, let’s do what we gotta do,” Pam told him. The two of them stared into each other’s eyes and embraced. She could smell the blood on him.

  Chino kissed Pam gently on her forehead. “You all I got, Pooh.”

  “Christonos!” Nurse Jen called out to him.

  Chino was turning his head rapidly from side to side and moaning. She was scared that he was going to become unsettled or even violent and pull out his tubes. They should have strapped him down after his first episode.

  “Help!” Nurse Jen shouted into the hall. “Help me!”

  The park was near their new home up I-270, off Route 161, near Dublin. Chino and Pam walked through the darkness toward the boat docks.

  “Keep an eye out, Pooh,” Chino told her. “We don’t want nobody to see us. If somebody sees us and wonders what we’re doing, they may call the police or come and see for themselves.”

  The two of them made their way to the docks, and then down an embankment to a shed beneath the docks where ropes for the boats were stored. Chino pulled on the shed door, but it was locked.

  He pulled out the tire iron that he had hidden beneath his jacket and tried to pry open the door. The bolt was too strong.

  “Damn!” Chino cried out.

  “What’s the matter, boo?” Pam asked nervously.

  “It’s locked, and I can’t get it open!” Chino told her. He peered around the area. There was a green steel bench about twenty feet away. He walked to the bench, dropped to his knees, and peered underneath it. The structure of the bench was such that nothing could be hidden underneath it.

  “Someone would find it there,” Pam told him.

  “I know,” Chino nodded. Again, he searched the area. A water fountain sat next to the park bench, and next to the fountain was a drain for the overflow from the fountain. Chino rose, walked to the drain, and examined it. He pulled out the tire iron, stuck it in one of the openings, and pried open the grate. He then lifted the grate and sat it down next to the hole. It was heavy.

  Chino dropped to his knees, stuck his hand inside, and found the perfect spot. There was a shelf just below the surface of the drain that couldn’t be seen. A person would have to stick his hand deep inside to find it. And as slimy as it was, no one would go there and purposely stick their hand inside. It was perfect!

  “Hand me the piece, baby,” Chino whispered.

  Pam handed Chino the wrapped-up gun, and he placed it inside the hole on the shelf. He rose and replaced the heavy grate, then examined the hole. Nothing could be seen from the surface. Pam grabbed Chino’s hands and dropped to her knees.

  “Dear God, please protect us, and forgive us for everything that has happened. Please keep us together, and let nothing but death separate us. We humbly ask that this secret goes with both of us to our graves. Amen.”

  Chino stared at Pam. “Pooh, this is the spot, and you hold the secret to my freedom. You’re not my wife, legally, but in my heart I trust you with my life.”

  Nurses flooded into the room and grabbed Chino’s arms. Nurse Jen bent over and whispered into Chino’s ear as she caressed his head.

  “It’s all right, baby,” she said softly. “Everything is going to be all right. I’m here with you. Nurse J has your back. You hear me, Christonos?”

  There were two people in this world who called him Christonos. His mother, who was dead, and his Pooh. He could hear his name being called. It was soothing. Calming. He stopped twisting and turning, and found himself relaxing. Slowly, and just barely, Chino cracked open his eyes.

  Chapter 50

  Giving My All

  The wedding was taking place outdoors in the park. A trellis with flowers around it had been set up near the altar, while another was set up near the front so that the bride would walk through it before her journey down the aisle. All their friends and family were in attendance, as the bride’s family had made sure of it. They had spared no expense, including flying in relatives from all over.

  A pianist banged out the bridal march, and the wedding began.

  Chino stood at the altar waiting for his soul mate. Rock stood next to him as his best man, while Chris J, Infa, Ant, and Corey stood to one side as his groomsmen. They were all decked out in white Armani tuxedos, while Chino had on a black one.

  Chairs had been arranged on either side of the aisle; floral arrangements made a pathway for the bride to walk down. White doves sat in cages throughout the area, and a white panther with a diamond necklace snarled from a cage toward the rear of the area.

  The bride cut the corner in her dress, and Chino gasped. She was more beautiful than anything in the world to him. Her white silk wedding dress was designed by Carolina Herrera, and it had over ten thousand Swarovski crystals sewn into it. Her silk shoes had the same crystals sewn into the same pattern in them, and they matched the dress exactly. She was a vision of loveliness floating down the aisle on her father’s arm.

  “Congratulations,” Rock leaned over and whispered.

  “She’s beautiful, man,” Infa told him.

  Chino smiled and nodded. He knew that he had found the perfect woman for him. She was smart, funny, and she had proven that she had his back. She was the woman that he was going to spend the rest of his life with.

  The beautiful bride stopped at the altar, and her father placed her hand into Chino’s and then took his place of honor.

  “Who here gives this woman away in holy matrimony?” the minister asked.

  “I do.”

  The minister turned to Chino. “Do you, Christonos, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife in holy matrimony? Do you promise to love her, honor her, and cherish her, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?”

  Chino turned toward his bride and smiled. “I do.”

  The minister turned toward the bride. “Do you, Tracey, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband in holy matrimony? Do you promise to love, honor, and obey him, till death do you part?”

  Tracey faced Chino and smiled. “I do.”

  “Do you have the rings?” the minister asked.

  Rock pulled out the rings and handed them to Chino, who handed his to Tracey.

  “Repeat after me,” the minister told them. “With this ring, I thee wed.”

  “With this ring, I thee wed,” Tracey said, placing the ring on Chino’s finger.

  “With this ring, I thee wed,” Chino repeated, placing his ring on Tracey’s finger.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife,” the minister declared. “You may kiss the bride.”

  Pam cried out in pain and arched her back. The techs rushed her into the delivery room and helped her onto the delivery table.

  “Aaaaaah!” Pam screamed, and then started breathing out heavily.

  “Breathe, baby, breathe!” Mrs. Xavier told her.

  The doctor on call breezed into the room. “What have we here?”

  “First-timer,” the tech told him. “Her water broke in the ambulance on the way here, and she’s already dilated to six.”

  “She’s at six?” the doctor asked, not believing what he was hearing.

  “Yes, sir,” the paramedic told him. “She’s already at six.”

  The doctor walked to the glove dispenser, pulled out a pair of gloves, and put them on. “Let me take a look at you.”

  Pam screamed as another contraction hit her.

  A nurse in the room reclined the bed Pam was lying in and held her hand. Another nurse placed Pam’s legs in a pair of stirrups. The doctor pulled up a stool and stuck his fingers inside Pam to see how many centimeters she had dilated.

  “She’s at seven now,” the doctor proclaimed. “She’ll be at nine in no time. I’m going to go and get scrubbed up. Get everything ready for me. Looks like we’re about to have a baby.”

  Two delivery nurses brought in some carts with several pre
packaged tools for delivery and pieces of equipment. They began opening packages and arranging all the necessary delivery equipment on the stainless steel delivery carts. They were already scrubbed up and had their sterile gowns and masks on.

  Another contraction hit Pam. “Chino!” she screamed.

  “Chino’s not here, baby,” her mother told her. “But I’m here. Don’t worry, we’re going to get through this together, baby. Mama’s here.”

  “Chino!” Pam cried out again. This time, she broke down and began crying. “Where are you?”

  “Mama’s here, sweetheart.”

  “You said that you would be here!” Pam cried.

  “Forget about him, Pam!” her mother snapped. “We have a baby to bring into this world, and a baby to raise. Forget about him.”

  “Why am I alone?” Pam cried out. “Why?”

  “I’m here, Pammy,” her mother told her. “You’re not alone.”

  “You promised,” Pam cried.

  Chino lifted Tracey’s veil and leaned forward and kissed her. Damn, Pooh. I can’t believe this, he thought. I can’t believe this isn’t you. How could you have shot me, Pooh? How could you have tried to kill me?

  A tear fell from Chino’s eyes. Everyone thought that he was overcome with emotion because of the wedding. In reality, he was saying good-bye to his past and stepping into his future. He was saying good-bye forever to his Pooh.

  The cries of a newborn radiated throughout the room.

  “It’s a boy!” the doctor declared.

  The delivery nurses suctioned the baby’s nose and mouth with a tiny aspirator and wiped him down.

  The doctor pressed against Pam’s stomach. “I need for you to push for me again. We’re going to get the afterbirth out of you. The tough part is over with; we just have to finish the job, though.”

  Pam pushed, and the doctor pulled out clumps of afterbirth and placed it in a metal tray.

  “What are you going to name him?” a nurse asked. She wrapped the baby in a warm cloth and handed him to Pam.