by Rhonda Bowen
“I’m here to see my sister-in-law. She just came in with contractions and her husband isn’t with her,” Toni said in one quick breath to the nurse on duty.
It had taken her and Adam almost twenty minutes to get to the hospital after they realized the calls they had been ignoring were from Jasmine and Trey. Once they had finally gotten to the hospital, Toni hadn’t even waited for Adam to park before jumping out of the car and rushing inside.
“No problem,” the slim older woman said with a bright smile. “If she’s not already in the delivery room you should be able to see her. What’s her name?”
“Shields. Jasmine Shields,” Toni said, trying to peep over the desk at the nurse’s computer screen. She didn’t understand how the woman could be so calm when her sister-in-law was about to have her first child, probably all alone.
“Oh, her,” the nurse said, her smile drying up. “Yes, she’s still here all right. But she’s not alone.”
“Oh,” Toni said, noticing the change in the nurse’s tone. “I guess my brother got here quicker than he thought.”
“Oh no,” the nurse said, shaking her head with a smirk. “I don’t think that’s her husband. But you can see for yourself. She’s in room one forty-five.”
Toni headed down the hallway, not giving the nurse’s words much thought. However, once she rounded the corner into Jasmine’s room, everything made sense.
“Can you move it a little over to the left, please? That way we can capture anyone who comes through the door.”
“Jasmine, what’s going on?” Toni asked incredulously. “I thought you were in labor. Why is there a cameraman in your hospital room?”
“You got here finally!” Jasmine exclaimed, pulling herself upright in the hospital bed. “Thank God! I am so glad to have some family here with me.”
“I don’t know. It kinda looks like you have everything under control,” Toni said, nodding toward the kid marching to Jasmine’s tune with the tripod in his hand.
“What? This?” Jasmine asked. “Jon’s just setting up the camera for me and then he’ll be gone. You know I have to capture the birth of my first child on film.”
“Yeah, I should have known your drama wouldn’t stop just because you were in labor.” Toni dropped into the chair by Jasmine’s bedside. “But the way you were hollering on the phone, I thought we would miss the whole thing.”
Jasmine grimaced. “Well, I am actually in labor, but the contractions are still pretty far apart, and I am only dilated four centimeters. It’s probably going to be a wh—ahhh!”
Toni shrieked as Jasmine grabbed her hand and squeezed it hard. She felt as if every bone in her hand had been crushed. Once Jasmine loosened her grip, Toni pulled her hand away.
“Have mercy, Jasmine,” Toni said, rubbing her fingers.
Adam appeared in the door. “Hey, I just got off the phone with Trey; he’s on his way.” He looked over at the wiry young man to the side. “Who’s that?”
“The cameraman,” Toni said, shaking her head, a “don’t ask” expression on her face.
“Where is Trey?” Jasmine demanded, her forehead glistening with sweat. “Call him back and tell him he needs to get his narrow behind here right now!”
Adam’s eyes widened with a touch of fear as he looked at Jasmine. “Uh, how about I just get out of your way,” he said. He backed out of the room and nodded to Jon to follow him. The frightened-looking teenager didn’t hesitate.
“Dios mío, Toni, I can’t do this,” Jasmine said, gripping Toni’s hand tightly. “What was I thinking? I can’t have a baby. I can’t be someone’s mother.”
“Yes, you can, Jasmine,” Toni said calmly, squeezing her sister-in-law’s hand. She could see the worry etched all over Jasmine’s face. “You can do this. You might be a pain in the butt, but I know you are an amazing and caring person. This baby is gonna be blessed to have you as a mother.”
Jasmine began to cry. “Do you really mean that?”
“Yes, I do,” Toni said sincerely, as she blinked back tears of her own. “You are one of the best things that ever happened to my brother. And you’re an amazing sister.”
“I’m sorry I’m a little crazy sometimes,” Jasmine sniffled, wrapping her other hand around Toni’s.
Toni laughed. “It’s okay. You fit right in with the rest of us.”
“I’m scared, Toni,” Jasmine said, her eyes widening.
Toni smiled and patted Jasmine’s damp forehead gently with a cloth. “Don’t be. You are going to have this baby and everything’s going to be fine. Okay?”
Jasmine nodded, even though her eyes still looked wide and uncertain. “Okay.”
“Okay, how’s everyone doing in here?” a chirpy nurse asked, floating through the hospital room’s door.
“Ahhhhh!”
Another shriek from Jasmine shot searing pain through the joints of Toni’s hand.
“Okay, looks like someone’s ready to have a baby,” the nurse said with a small laugh.
Toni glared at her. There was nothing funny about the pain in her fingers. Trey had better show up soon.
As if on cue, her brother rushed through the door.
“Baby, sweetheart, I’m here,” he said breathlessly, slipping in beside Jasmine and grabbing the hand that Toni quickly abandoned.
“Oh, thank God,” Jasmine said as she started to cry again.
“Okay, we’re gonna have to examine you again to check how dilated you are,” the nurse said, uncovering a nearby metal tray with medical tools. “Let’s just get your feet up in these stirrups and we’ll be ready to go.”
Toni stood up at the word stirrups. That was a lot more of her sister-in-law than she wanted to see.
“Uh, I think you guys have everything under control,” she said. “I’ll just be outside.”
Jasmine and Trey barely noticed her as she left.
She found Adam sitting outside the door. “Coward.”
“Hey, I know my limits,” Adam said unapologetically. “And unless I’m the father, I don’t need to be in there. I’ll just hang out here and they can let me know when it’s over.”
“Well, from the look of things that might be a while,” Toni said, sitting down beside him.
“Then I guess we’ll be here a while,” he said, turning to look at her. His gaze heated her from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. She could barely make herself sit still.
Toni let out a deep breath. “Then we should probably talk about what you said earlier.”
Adam sighed and leaned his head back against the wall behind them. “What do you want to know?” he asked.
“Well, for starters, you could tell me why you’re leaving Jacob’s House, and Atlanta,” Toni said. “I never thought you would leave the guys like that, especially now when things seem to be going well with a lot of them.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” Adam said, crossing one leg over his knee casually.
“Convince me.”
He glanced at Toni, then folded his arms. “Okay. While we were in Baltimore,” Adam began, “I went to see House of Judah. It’s a former retirement home that a union of churches in Baltimore have bought. They plan to renovate the building and run a similar Jacob’s House project out of it.”
Toni listened, intrigued as he explained how the seeds for the project had started a year earlier, and how he had been providing advice and consultation ever since.
“When I think of all the kids I grew up with in B-more, I know that we could have been so much better if we had gotten a second chance. Maybe if we’d had an opportunity to grow in a community where people believed in us, things would have been different.” He looked down at his hands.
“You’re thinking about Noah, aren’t you,” Toni said.
Adam laughed sadly. “I don’t think I ever stop thinking about him. Every time I look at a young man going in the wrong direction, I see Noah.”
“So why would you leave Jacob’s House now and abandon all the yo
ung men here?” Toni asked. She watched Adam open and close his mouth several times before answering her.
“I can’t be with them forever,” he said quietly after a moment.
“No one expects you to,” Toni said. “But you’ve only been here three years. You know how long it takes to form trusting relationships with these young men. Everyone else in their lives has given up on them, and they assume that everyone in their future will be the same. How can you just up and leave as soon as you’ve started to make a connection?”
She saw his jaw tighten.
“There’ll be other counselors.”
“True,” Toni said. “But that doesn’t mean your time is up here. Jerome has one year left. This year he should be applying to college. So should Rasheed and a couple others. You think some new guy who doesn’t know them will be able to motivate them to do that?”
Toni let out a long sigh. “I’m pretty new to this whole talking to God thing, but are you sure this is what He wants you to do? Because this feels like it’s coming out of left field.”
Adam sat forward, frustration all over his face. ”So now you think you know everything about me?” His tone had an edge that told Toni the conversation was not going well. “I’ve been working with these people a long time. I helped them put together the initial proposal for the Baltimore project. We’ve been in contact for months. Just because I didn’t tell you, doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it.”
“Adam, I didn’t mean to imply that—”
“And in case you’ve forgotten, Baltimore is my home,” Adam continued, cutting her off. “My mother, my brothers, my sister, nieces, nephews, they’re all in Baltimore. Is it wrong for me to want to be where they are?”
Toni looked down at her hands and closed her eyes. God, please give me the right words to say to him. I’m not trying to upset him. But I feel this isn’t right. If I am being selfish please let me know.
“I know Baltimore is your home,” Toni said quietly, without looking across at him. “I know you miss your family. If you feel that this is what God is calling you to do, then do it. But remember that for a lot of these boys you and the staff at Jacob’s House are the only family they have left to count on.”
“I thought you of all people would have understood.” He shook his head as he stood up. “I can’t talk to you about this right now.”
Toni felt the temperature drop between them as Adam walked away. She kept watching him, but he didn’t look back even once, didn’t even slow his pace. It was the first time he had shut her out so completely. She prayed that conversation hadn’t just damaged what had become one of the most important friendships of her life.
Chapter 36
Isabel Alexandra Shields came screaming into the world at 2:45 a.m. on Friday morning after eight hours of labor. Toni thought she was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, but she was too exhausted to be sure. After kissing her brother and sister-in-law good-bye, she headed into the lobby with dreams of her bed on her mind. That was when she remembered she had come in Adam’s car.
After their disagreement over him leaving, she had spent most of the late night and early morning avoiding him. It wasn’t that hard. Northside was a huge hospital. And once news of Jasmine’s delivery had spread around, a lot of other people, like the pastor’s wife, Camille, Afrika, and a few relatives of Jasmine had shown up. Many others had come and gone through the night. But now that the show was officially over, the crowd had begun to thin out, and Toni’s options were few.
“Hey, you ready to go?”
It was Adam.
“Uh, actually I was just going to get a cab,” she said, already moving toward the huge glass doors. “I figured you might still be mad at me.”
Something she couldn’t read flashed across his face, but was quickly replaced. Toni didn’t like the new blank look. At least when he was upset she could see some kind of fire in his eyes. But now the eyes she loved to lose herself in were cold and still, giving her nothing.
“There’s no need for that,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”
She noticed he didn’t say he wasn’t mad.
“Really, Adam, it’s not a big deal,” Toni said, already glancing at the door.
“Toni, it’s almost three a.m.” Frustration. At least she had managed to evoke something. “There is no way I am letting you climb into a cab at this time of morning.”
“She can ride with me,” Afrika said, appearing out of nowhere. “I’m headed that way anyway.”
Toni breathed a sigh of relief. She was never so happy to see her friend in her whole life. Adam looked back and forth between Afrika and Toni. He frowned a little, but shoved his hands in his pockets tiredly and headed toward the doors without further protest.
“Good night, ladies,” he threw behind him.
Toni watched him, until the darkness swallowed him up and she could no longer make out his form. She wanted to run after him. Put her arms around him. But instead she stayed rooted in the lobby.
“Okay. Let’s move,” Afrika said, digging her keys out of her purse. “You can explain in the car.”
They managed to get out of the parking lot and onto the main road before Afrika began her interrogation. “Spill it.”
“Adam and I had a fight,” Toni said. She decided to leave out the part about him kissing her. She wasn’t ready to talk about that yet.
“No joke.” Afrika smirked. “What happened?”
Toni sighed and turned toward the window. “He’s leaving Jacob’s House.”
“Word?”
“Yeah,” Toni said. “He got an offer to head up a similar project in Baltimore and he’s thinking about going.”
Afrika let out a whistle.
“I can’t believe he’s doing this, Afrika,” Toni said. She could feel herself getting annoyed. “It’s so irrational.”
“And I’m guessing you pretty much let him know that, right?”
Toni pouted. “Just barely. I hardly got a word out before he started going off on me. He actually accused me of not wanting him to be with his family. Me. The one who lost her family and knows what it’s like to be without them.”
When Afrika didn’t say anything, Toni turned to look at her. “What? You think I was wrong?” Toni asked.
Afrika shrugged. “Hey, the two of you have been tight for a good minute. You know him better than I do, but what would be so bad about him helping the kids in Baltimore like he’s doing here?”
“Nothing,” Toni said with a sigh. “I just feel like ... like maybe he’s going because of everything that happened here with his story in the news. It’s almost as if he’s running.”
“Did you tell him that part?”
“Like I said, I barely got a word in.”
“Then you gotta holler at him again,” Afrika said. “Give him some time to cool off and then go talk to him. When there’s feelings involved it’s easy for things to get outta control.”
Toni’s eyes widened. “Who said I have feelings for him?”
Afrika rolled her eyes. “Seriously, T?” Afrika asked with a laugh. “The two of you are so hot for each other you’re about to burn the rest of us up with your heat.”
Toni shook her head vehemently. “That’s crazy.”
“Nah, girl, what’s crazy is him setting up camp at your bedside when you were in the hospital,” Afrika said. “Crazy is you flying across the country to try and stop him from going to jail... .”
“Baltimore is hardly across the country,” Toni said dryly.
“... And don’t forget that ten-hour trip to pick him up when he got out of jail. I ain’t never done that for no brother—not even when it was good like that.”
“Trey asked me to go with him... .”
Afrika laughed. “All right, girl. Stay in denial. But I’ve seen you two together, and from the way you been eyein’ a brother, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were already in lo—”
“Don’t even think it,” Toni said quick
ly, knowing exactly where her friend was going. It was impossible. There was no way that she could be in love with Adam.
Absolutely no way.
Now if she could only get her rapidly beating heart to believe that.
When Adam stepped into Pastor Reynolds’s office on Wednesday morning for their weekly meeting, he already knew exactly what he was going to say.
“This is probably going to be one of our last meetings,” he began before Pastor Reynolds could even get a word in. “I’ve decided to take the position in Baltimore.”
Pastor Reynolds straightened a few files on his desk before acknowledging Adam. “I’m glad you could make it this early,” he said after a moment, glancing at the clock on the wall to his left. “I know seven a.m. is a bit unreasonable, but I also know you have long days, and I figured you could get this out of the way. I was just going through my morning devotions. You mind joining me?”
Adam knew the man of God well enough to know that he had heard his statement about leaving. But Pastor Reynolds had the patience of the saints, and he wouldn’t get to it until he was good and ready. Or until God told him it was time. And so Adam nodded and followed Pastor Reynolds’s tall former-NBA-PLAYER frame over to the side of the huge office where there was a small sofa and two armchairs surrounding a coffee table.
“Where are you reading from today?” Adam asked.
Pastor Reynolds didn’t do devotional books. According to him, God’s Word was so rich that you could read the same chapter every day and get something new from it every time.
“Today I’ve been reading First Chronicles,” Pastor Reynolds said, choosing the armchair that already had the Bible open in front of it.
“I thought you were just done going through the book of Second Samuel?” Adam asked, making himself comfortable in the other chair. “Isn’t it pretty much the same thing?”
Pastor Reynolds chuckled. “It covers the same period, but it’s not the same. The perspective is different. Besides, you know David is one of my favorite Old Testament brothers.”
Adam nodded. He knew that was true.
“I’m in chapter seventeen, where David tells God he’s going to build the temple for him,” Pastor Reynolds said. “After all, God had done so much for David. He had brought him a mighty long way. He had forgiven David for all the evils in his past. And David wanted to do this great thing to honor Him. Even Nathan the prophet thought it was a good idea.”