by Kennedy Ryan
“Iris,” I say in a rush of breath and terror. “Something’s wrong. I have to go to him right now.”
Eyes widening, she says a hasty goodbye and disconnects the call. “But the doctor said—”
“I don’t care what the damn doctor said,” I scream and start down the hall I saw Dr. Madison take, dragging Iris with me.
“Wait!” Iris resists, digs her heels in and stops us. ”You heard Dr. Madison. We can’t see him yet. Void of any complications—”
“I need you to come with me, Iris. Please shut the fuck up and help me find him.”
Yari rushes in, chest heaving. “Lo, what’s wrong?”
“If you can calm down,” Iris says soothingly, “and tell me what—”
“I won’t calm down,” I screech, ignoring their wide eyes and gaping mouths. “There’s something wrong. I know it!”
Billie rounds the corner, frantically searching our faces. “What’d I miss? What’s wrong?”
“Lotus wants to see Kenan now,” Iris says. “But, honey, we can’t see him yet. We—”
“Come with me,” I beg, my voice breaking on a sob. “I need you, Bo.”
Her eyes lock with mine, and something, I don’t care what—my desperation, our lifelong bond, the desire to placate me—persuades her and she nods.
“I don’t understand.” Iris’s sigh is resigned. “But I’ll come with you.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, pulling her down the hall behind me. “Thank you so much.”
I speed-walk past the reception desk, ignoring the woman yelling at me to stop. I check each room, peering through the windows and jerking open doors.
“Lotus, you can’t do that,” Iris hisses a warning from behind me. “I got the receptionist to wait on calling security, but you’re gonna get both our asses dragged out of here.”
I ignore her and keep walking until goosebumps scatter across my arms. My steps stutter, and my breath shallows as cold assaults my flesh.
“It’s this one,” I whisper.
I push open the door, startling the medical team with paddles poised over Kenan’s chest. My magnificent man, a massive frame barely contained by the hospital bed. The specter of that night, of that premonition in MiMi’s house, can’t compare to the reality of seeing my beloved still and lifeless. For a moment, I have no words and can only make the wounded sound of a snared animal. I’m that trapped and helpless.
But only for a moment.
“Do it,” I bark, pointing to the paddles.
“Miss, you can’t be in here,” Dr. Madison says gently, not bothering to question why I’ve burst in on the chaos of the room. “We’ve done it several times.”
She said you were the strongest of us all. She said all the power we didn’t want passed on to you.
Aunt Pris’s words drift back to me, spurring me on, building my confidence.
“You haven’t done it with me here,” I say sharply. “Do it again. Just do it again, please. Do it again. Do it again.”
The words become a chant, an incantation tumbling from the lips of a madwoman.
“We’ll break his ribs if we continue the compressions,” a nurse tells Dr. Madison.
“If he’s dead,” I spit out, “will it matter if his ribs are broken? Do something. Please. Please. Please. Please.”
“Okay.” The doctor shifts his eyes from the equipment to the technician. “Prepare to do it again.”
I grab Iris’s hand and look in her eyes. “I need you to believe.”
“Believe what?”
“That he’ll make it,” I say, barely able to see her for the tears blurring my vision. “When you were in the hospital, and Michael wouldn’t come, we held hands. You hadn’t dilated for hours, but there was a moment when we held hands, and he came. The doctor said your body had a power surge.”
“Yes,” Iris says. “But it was—”
“It was us.” I squeeze her hand. “I need a power surge, Iris. The power of an unbroken line.”
“The power of a what?” Iris mumbles, consternation on her pretty face.
“Clear!” the technician yells, using the paddles and making Kenan’s torso leap.
Nothing happens.
I clutch Iris’s fingers in one hand and Saint Expedite in the other.
“Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death.”
“Clear!”
And you’ll always come for me, won’t you?
Yes. Always.
I’ll always come for you, too, Kenan.
“Clear!”
“Lotus, it isn’t working,” Iris says, wriggling her fingers in my tight grip.
“No, don’t let go.” I turn to her, desperation making my voice sharp and high. “Please don’t let go. Look at me.”
She does, and the fear, the despondence gathering in her eyes, I combat with faith, with the assurance I may not be entitled to, but seize as mine. For him. I have to.
“Feel my words in your mouth,” I tell her, hoping, praying, begging the conduit of our blood to save him. “Feel my power in your veins. It’s the power of the unbroken line. Two women from our lineage together. There’s power in that.”
“I’m trying, Lo,” she says. “To believe.”
“Try harder!” I command, my voice rising above the beep of machines and the tightly-contained panic of the medical team.
“No change,” Dr. Madison mutters gravely.
My blood, my body, my thoughts – frenzied. “This is the biggest hopscotch of my life, Iris. I need you to believe.”
That word hopscotch is holy to us, our covenant. The fear fades from Iris’s eyes. And if it’s not faith that takes its place, it’s at least resolve. I can work with that.
“You know who I am,” I whisper with tears streaming from my eyes, rivulets of desperation. My face crumples and my shoulders tremble. My head hangs, but my faith holds strong. “This man’s soul hangs in the balance. I’m here to make my judgment known. I’m here to lay a stone on the side of . . .”
“Clear!”
“Life!”
“Clear!”
“Love is as strong as death,” I whisper. “Love is as strong as death. Love is as strong as death.”
“Clear!”
“Love is as strong as death.”
46
Kenan
“Button.”
That croaked word is all I can squeeze out from a throat as dry and burning as the Sahara.
“Mr. Ross, you’re awake.” A nurse with salt-and-pepper hair smiles and puts a cup to my lips. “Drink a little. Slowly.”
I’m connected to at least two machines, as far as I can tell. Everything is so hazy, like a layer of Jell-O’s been poured over the room. My words, my movements—everything is slowed down, and every breath costs me. I feel myself slipping back under, but fight to maintain consciousness.
“Button.” I say it again, but I don’t know why. I can’t figure anything out. Can’t piece any of this together.
“How long?” I ask the nurse. “Asleep?”
“Three days.” She checks a tube running clear liquid into to my arm. “We had to sedate you.”
“Three days?” I ask incredulously. “That’s not possible.”
“You rest better and heal faster asleep sometimes.”
I try to sit, but sharp pain arrows across my chest.
“Shit,” I mutter weakly, touching my torso.
“You have a few broken ribs,” the nurse says.
“Was it a dirty play?” I ask, my voice hoarse. “Somebody kicked me on court?”
“No, Mr. Ross.” Her brows bunch in concentration while she checks the machines and tubes connected to me. “You weren’t playing basketball. You were in a car accident. Your body’s been through a lot. It’ll take some time for all your memories to come together, but it’ll happen.”
“Okay,” I mutter, sinking deeper into the bed.
“The doctor will want to examine you. I�
�ll be back,” she says, and leaves the room.
“You broke the rule.”
That husky voice from the shadowed corner penetrates my fog, startling me. “You’re only supposed to call me Button when we’re alone.”
“Lotus?” I try to sit, but that shaft of pain in my chest lays me out, pins me to the pillows.
“Hey, easy.” She comes to my side and presses my shoulders back into the bed. “You’ve been through . . .” Her voice breaks, and I look up to find her eyes shiny with tears. “You’ve been through a lot,” she finishes, her lips trembling in a smile.
“What have I been through? I don’t even know how I got here. I was driving, right? I remember that now.”
“You don’t . . .” She closes her eyes and breathes deeply through her nose before looking back at me. “You were driving from Laguna Beach.”
“Laguna Beach? Why the hell would I . . .” Memories sift through the fuzziness. A deadly cascade of cement pipes from the truck ahead of me. A crash. Glass shattering. The grind of metal.
“Simone.”
I force myself to a sitting position, and one of the tubes in my arms jerks against the motion.
Shit! That hurts.
“Stop.” Lotus presses me back into the bed again. “Simone is fine.”
“But I was taking her to . . . something. I can’t remember.”
“A dance camp,” she answers, biting her bottom lip.
My head hurts. I frown, trying hard to recall any of the events leading up to the accident, but it’s all a mishmash of pictures and flashes that I can’t piece together into a timeline.
“It’s a miracle your injuries weren’t worse,” she says. “You suffered significant internal bleeding.”
“That he did,” a doctor says from the door, followed closely by the nurse. “You are very lucky to be alive, Mr. Ross.”
The doctor examines me and tells me I’ll be here for at least another week, maybe longer.
“Doc, when can I get back on the court?”
Three pairs of eyes stare at me.
“Um . . .” The doctor clears his throat. “Your team has contacted us asking the same question. I’ve been in consultation with the Waves’ doctor, and actually have to give a press conference today reporting on your case.”
That’s standard when someone like me is hospitalized—someone who has a stack of insurance policies ensuring my team doesn’t lose money on its investment. My body.
“We aren’t sure when you’ll be ready to play,” the doctor hedges. “As I said—”
“Yeah, internal bleeding. I heard you, but I’m not bleeding now, right?” I ask. “So when? This is our year to make the playoffs, and that can’t happen if I’m sidelined for a long time.”
“Is that all, doctor?” Lotus asks, her tone as sharp as a scalpel. “I mean, do you have anything else you need from him?”
“Not at this time, no.”
“Could you give us a minute then?” She plasters a stiff smile on her pretty mouth.
“Of course.” He nods to the nurse, and they leave the room.
“You listen here, Kenan Ross,” Lotus says, her eyes narrowed and her lips pulled into a flat line. “You almost died. Do you hear me? Died.”
“I get it,” I say wincing at the soreness in the rest of my body from the impact it absorbed. “But I didn’t, so I need to get back to my life. To my job, babe. I can’t let my team down.”
“What you need to do is rest and heal, and you will not be returning to anybody’s court even a minute before the doctor feels absolutely confident you are ready. Who you will not let down is your daughter, who almost lost you.”
Her voice breaks and she covers her eyes with a trembling hand.
“And your girlfriend who almost lost you and cannot,” she says, tears saturating her words, “under any circumstances go through that again.”
Weak as I am, I manage to pull her close. Despite the wires and tubes, she buries her head in my neck and soaks my hospital gown with her tears.
“You’re right,” I say into her hair, pushing it back from her face. “I’ll take my time, okay? I’ll be careful.”
“I can’t lose you.” Her head shakes. Her words shake. “I tried to tell you.”
I glance past her to the floor where something catches and holds my attention.
“Is that why there’s a circle of salt around my hospital bed?” I ask, half-smiling, half-freaked out.
“They wouldn’t let me use my candles.” She sniffs with a weak laugh. “Fire code.”
“God, they’re gonna commit you, baby.”
“No, they actually think I can bring people back to life.”
“Why would they think that?”
She shrugs, her look sheepish. “Baby, I have no idea.”
Epilogue
Lotus
“Look at her now.
She arises from her desert of difficulty clinging to her beloved.”
--Song of Solomon 8:5
Dinner. Tonight.
I press the card with Kenan’s nearly-illegible words to my lips. It’s just paper and ink, but I taste the sweetness of the man behind it. His sincerity and love wrap around me. Even when we’re thousands of miles apart, I feel the protection of his arms.
It’s so good to not be four thousand miles apart today, though. In addition to negotiating a long-distance relationship, we’ve been getting Simone used to us being a couple, and maintaining two demanding careers. The last seven months have been eventful and blissful, and at times, really hard. And there’s still so much transition ahead. It’s good to be here in San Diego, though, even if I don’t get to stay very long.
Which reminds me . . .
Me: Chicas! Are we ready for LA next week?
Yari: Yasss, girl! I sent you guys the list of locations we’re scoping.
Billie: Got it! And I’ve scheduled lunch with three investors while we’re there.
Yari: Lo, you NEED to ask that investor in your bed if he wants to get into your pants . . . the ones you design, I mean. Okurrrrr!
Me: What’d I tell you about Cardi B? LOL! And NO. I’m not asking Kenan to invest in gLo. Forget about it. Can we make sure our shit is tight so we don’t have to ask my boyfriend to float us? TYVM.
Billie: Right. Let’s impress these investors. Lo, did the samples make it to San Diego?
Me: Yup. They’re here at Kenan’s place. I’ll bring them with me to LA next week. Are you guys apartment hunting while you’re there?
Billie: Affirmative!
Yari: Yes, mami!
Simone’s face interrupts onscreen with a FaceTime request.
Me: Gotta go. TTYL.
Yari: Deuces!
Billie: Byyyyyyyye.
I accept the FaceTime request and smile at Simone onscreen.
“Hey, lady!” I hop onto one of the counter stools in the kitchen and hold the phone in front of my face. “How’s camp?”
“Grueling.” Simone rolls her eyes, but grins. “I thought I knew how to dance. I had no idea. It’s a whole other level. There’s no time for much else.”
“At least Laguna Beach is gorgeous. I hope you get in some sun and surfing.”
A shadow crosses Simone’s face. “I keep thinking about the last time Daddy brought me up here. The accident.”
Even with the terror behind us, my heart still stutters and my hands clench where they rest on the counter.
“I know.” I shake off that memory and laugh to dispel the heaviness. “He was back on court as soon as the doctor cleared him, though. Remember? We had to practically tie him to the bed.”
“Daddy was not about to miss the Waves’ first playoff season.”
“Hey, we might get to go to more playoff games. Maybe next time, they’ll win it all.”
Simone’s eyes brighten and a smile breaks on her face. “Or what if Daddy retires?”
Kenan missed a lot with her during his career, and she obviously loves the prospect of having him around
more. So do I. He’s seriously considering making this next season his last.
“Maybe,” I reply noncommittally. I’m sure that’s a tougher decision for him than we can really understand. Probably even more than he can grasp until he experiences that huge void where ball used to be.
“My mom’s in LA,” Simone says, recapturing my focus.
“Oh really?” I keep my tone deliberately light. “Cool.”
Bridget has accepted me in Kenan’s and, by default, Simone’s life, but she and I still aren’t the best of friends. We don’t actively dislike each other. It’s more of a wary indifference.
“Yeah,” Simone says. “She’s taking some acting classes. She says NeNe left The Housewives and made it to Broadway. She wants to be ready.”
“Good for her,” I reply neutrally.
“You’re going to LA next week, too, right?”
“Yeah. Meeting with investors. Looking at spaces for the shop.”
“I can’t wait to see your first line.”
“Gah.” I laugh and shake my head. “I can’t believe I’m really doing this. Leaving New York. Moving out here. Starting the gLo line. Having my first show next March for LA Fashion Week. It feels like it’s happening so fast and also taking forever.”
“My dad’ll be a lot happier when you’re living out here. That’s for sure.”
I don’t know how to respond. My design studio will be in LA because it makes more sense than San Diego. There’s a richer fashion scene there—better opportunities, more celebrities—but I’ll be living in San Diego to be close to Kenan, and making the two-hour drive up to LA a few times a week. We’ve been careful every step of the way orienting Simone to our relationship. I’ve even sat in on a few family-therapy sessions. We want to do this right. For her, we have to.
“I’ll be happier, too,” I answer, “but my boss won’t! JP is kicking and screaming.”
The hiss of frying food snares my attention. I hop down, still holding the phone so Simone sees my face, and prop the phone against the backsplash while I stir the onions, garlic, and flour for the base of my étouffée.