by Robert Rand
Sullivan looked at April and broke the tension in the room when he told her, “Well, now I know who to thank for teaching you how to use that damn ‘shush’ so effectively.”
After dinner, Sullivan rode with Spanky to the store on the pretense of getting some more beer – Budweiser, not that ‘Colorado fairy piss’ as Spanky unkindly referred to the Coors light that Sullivan preferred.
Spanky gave sixty thousand dollars to Sullivan as they pulled back in front of his home. They walked back in and the money was turned over to April, who was left speechless. “We did some business. I loaned him some money and now he’s paying it back” was the truthful explanation.
“You better tell her what you told me in the car, Sullivan, the gal needs to know” Spanky said, in reference to the prison term Sullivan had just agreed to take.
“Tell me what?” She held the sides of her swollen belly with both hands, a frown on her pretty face.
“Okay, good new is, the charges against you are being dropped tomorrow” he said with a fake smile plastered across his face.
“The bad news?” April asked.
“I’ve got to go to prison for thirty-six months,” he said as he took her in his arms.
“OH!” She bent over as a strong contraction ripped into her.
Sullivan dropped to one knee in front of his wife. “April, what is it?!”
She breathed in and out in rapid, successive breaths until the pain began to ease.
“Is it the baby?” Sullivan asked. April nodded her head yes.
“Well, don’t just sit there with that silly grin on yer face, young man, call the damn doctor and tell ‘im yer bringin’ her to the hospital” Granny Zigan contended.
That was enough to get him moving. As Spanky and Granny helped April to the couch, he grabbed his ‘Baby-Day’ to-do list. At the top was the doctors’ number. He called and got the doctor’s service.
“My baby’s in labor, I mean my wife’s in baby…” Sullivan was losing control.
The calm female voice on the other end of the line told him, “Your wife is having a baby. First I need her name.” There was a trace of amusement in her voice.
“April Rourk” he replied after a deep breath.
“Okay, now, how far apart are her contractions?”
“I don’t know, hold on.” Panic had returned to his voice. He yelled into the living room, “Spanky, Lee, how far apart are the contractions?”
“Less than a minute’ came the hearty voice of the biker.
Sullivan relayed the information to the answering service operator, who replied, “Take your wife to Eisenhower Medical Center and Dr. Fasheh will meet you in maternity. I’ll notify the hospital as well to expect your arrival.”
Sullivan grabbed the pre-packed suitcase from the hall closet and headed for the front door. He actually made it half a step out before he realized that his wife was still sitting on the sofa. When he turned around, Spanky was helping April to her feet.
“Frank, you better drive them to the hospital.” Granny’s words sounded like a suggestion, but were acted upon as if they were orders from the President. Spanky rushed ahead and opened suicide doors on the big car. Sullivan helped April ease into the roomy back seat, then climbed over her, rather than go around the car, to sit beside her. Granny handed the suitcase to ‘Helene’, then sat in the front seat. Spanky had the presence of mind to rush back and grab the money off of the dining room table and close up the house before returning to the car and climbing in behind the wheel.
“Here’s yer money,” said Frank, with a grin, as he turned and handed the cash to Sullivan.
April’s contractions were coming quickly, increasing in their frequency and their intensity. Sullivan felt helpless. The woman he loved most in the entire world was in horrible pain and he could do nothing but hold her hand. ‘God sure has an incredibly cruel sense of humor or he just hates women’ Sullivan thought, as the nurse helped him into the green surgical smock. April cried out in pain nearby.
Dr. Fasheh, a small man of Middle Eastern birth, entered the labor room. “April, April! So it truly is time for the miracle to come,” he said as he approached the bed April was lying in.
“It hurrrtttsss!” she cried out in reply.
The doctor signaled the nurse, who had been in constant attendance since the Rourk’s arrival, to help situate the patients’ legs into the medieval looking stirrups that folded up from the foot of the bed.
“Let us see how close we are,” said Dr. Fasheh, as he pulled on a pair of sterile latex rubber gloves and sat down on a small-wheeled stool at the foot of the bed.
The doctor’s deep brown eyes widened in surprise as he looked between April’s parted legs.
Another contraction assaulted her body. She screamed, “Give me some drugs! IT HURTS! Oh, fuck you Sullivan Rourk, why did you do this to me!” Her scream turned into a dog-like panting.
“No time. No time for pain medications,” the doctor was saying, as he pulled out a wide drawer that was built into the bed. He placed a stainless steel bucket into a hole cut in the drawer. The placenta would be delivered into it. The nurse took a sterilized smock out of a drawer for the doctor to slip into, but when he shook his head, she wadded it up, tossed it into an empty corner of the room, and stepped to his side to await any orders.
“When next contraction comes, you must push, push, push” Dr. Fasheh told April.
Almost as soon as the doctor finished speaking, the next contraction came. “Push, push, good girl, push” he urged.
April was straining against the pain and the intense pressure of the baby’s head forcing its way into the world through a hole Sullivan used to tell her was the size of a grape with the seed plucked out. Sweat dotted her pain-ravaged face. Her lips were pressed together so tightly that they had become barely visible.
To Sullivan, who stood at the side, one hand supporting her shoulder as she hunched forward, the other being squeezed in a death grip as she pushed with every ounce of concentration, April had never looked more beautiful.
She was more than beautiful. She appeared radiant, ethereal. In her pain was joy. In her suffering was life. She gave of herself completely to the tiny person who she had yet to see, other than in her dreams. A precious little person she had yet to meet, yet with whom she had been enjoying the most intimate relationship she had ever known. Through the sweat, the creases wrought by physical pain, through the screams and tears, Sullivan saw the true beauty of this woman who held his heart. He saw her as God had made her; perfect, without flaw or defect, an angelic being, the embodiment of love.
Sullivan was ripped from his awe-filled thoughts by the cry of a baby. He looked over at the doctor, who was saying, “…girl. A beautiful ten-finger ten-toe baby girl.” He held the screaming infant up for inspection. The proud parents didn’t see the slimy remnant of the placenta that coated most of the child. They saw what Sullivan had moments ago been seeing in April; a perfect, flawless, angelic embodiment of beauty and love.
“She’s beautiful,” April said, awestruck by the baby that, after growing within her womb for nine months, was now before her.
Sullivan leaned over and kissed his wife affectionately on her damp forehead, then whispered, “You did good, Mommy. She looks just like you.”
The doctor handed the baby to the nurse, who then quickly bathed the child, weighed and measured her, wrapped her in a soft, pink receiving blanket and presented her to the father. “Here you daughter, Papa” offered the diminutive Korean nurse in her heavily accented, but clearly understandable, imperfect English.
Sullivan took his daughter in his arms, carefully, as if she were made of glass threads. The baby’s eyes were open wide and though it is believed that a newborn is unable to focus clearly in the first weeks of life, Sullivan Rourk knew that the liquid brown eyes in the tiny red face were seeing him. And as if to confirm that thought, less than ten minutes after her birth, maybe it was air escaping, something like a burp, or possibly it
was just a test of vocal cords, but what Sullivan and April Rourk heard was ‘Dad’ come from the infant’s mouth. Tears ran in rivers down Daddy’s cheeks. He kissed the soft forehead of the little girl, and then handed her to her mother.
“Meet your mommy, sweetheart,” he whispered to the baby.
April cradled the child in her arms, “Mommy loves you,” she whispered. Then to Sullivan, “We did good, Mr. Rourk. Go get Granny and call your mom.”
“Sure thing, Mrs. Rourk.” He gave April a kiss.
As he turned to leave, he noticed the clock on the wall now read 1:45 AM. “So, was she born on the seventh?” he asked the doctor.
“Yes. At 1:06 AM. Congratulations, both of you” Sullivan shook the doctor’s hand, thanked him and left the room.
Spanky was sound asleep in the waiting room, his considerable mass taking up all of a three cushion couch, and then some. Granny, on the other hand, was wide-awake. She set an old issue of People Magazine down beside several empty paper coffee cups and looked up expectantly at Sullivan as he walked in.
“I’m too damn old to be kept in suspense, young man,” she snipped, “so speak!”
“It’s a girl!” he nearly shouted, as his excitement couldn’t be contained.
Spanky, startled awake by the proclamation, rolled off the couch, landing hard on his hands and knees. “A girl?” he asked from the floor.
Granny and Sullivan laughed at the silly expression on Spanky’s bearded face.
“How’s Helene?” asked the old woman as she stood.
“She’s fine, Lee. Mother and daughter are beautiful and healthy” Sullivan said, “and they want to see you. Go on into room three-twelve.”
Spanky got up and went with his Granny, while Sullivan picked up the pay phone and dropped in a quarter before dialing his mother’s house.
After the second ring, his mother’s voice came over the line, “It’s nearly two a.m. You better be calling to tell me I’m a grandma! Who is it?”
“It’s me, Mom,” Sullivan was saying, “Come see your birthday present! Your granddaughter was born at one oh six a.m. on November seventh.”
His mom screamed “Ahhh! I’m a Gramma! On my birthday! I’ll be right down! How’s April? How’s the baby? What’s her name?”
“Mom, shush, April is fine, the baby is beautiful and we haven’t named her yet, but I am going to suggest Lisa Ann Rourk” Sullivan said.
“Congratulations, Sully,” she said, before hanging up the phone.
Chapter 22
L.A. Michaels walked up to the podium in the Betty Ford Center meeting room. He unfolded a
piece of paper and smoothed it flat against the dais. After pulling a round, thin piece of plastic from his pocket and touching it to his trembling lips, he looked out at the people gathered.
Every person in the room had been a stranger to L.A. just one month ago. Some of these people now knew him better than anyone had ever known him before, and vise-versa. He looked to one of these people now.
As Taiee Jones gave him a toothy smile of encouragement, he took a moment to reflect on the bond that he had formed with this, the most unlikely of persons for an agent of the FBI to make his most trusted confidant.
Taiee was still rail thin, even after gaining more than twenty pounds at the center. However, she was beautiful, nonetheless. Her father had been a young second lieutenant stationed in Da Nang when he befriended and, subsequently fell in love with, a young Vietnamese peasant woman-child. The dark Negro American soldier married Sung Lee two days before a hand grenade, which was tossed into his Jeep by an eight-year-old boy, killed him. Sung Lee Jones immigrated to the United States shortly after Lt. Jones’ death. Pregnant with his child, she took residence with her husband’s parents in Atlanta. However, her stay in the U.S. would not be long. Sung Lee died during the birth of the child she would never have the chance to see. Subsequently, her grandparents raised the child, whose name was a derivative of her father’s first name, Tyrell, and her mother’s, Sung Lee.
Taiee’s life was misery upon misery. She was 10 when her grandfather died. At 11, she lost her grandmomma. Before she was 12, her uncle began raping her. By age 13, Taiee Jones had dropped out of school in order to turn the tricks her uncle brought home in a steady stream. Sometimes as many as a dozen men would use her underdeveloped young body in a single night. She soon found that the things these men would do to her wouldn’t hurt too bad if she would drink some of the gin her uncle kept in abundance. Not too long after that, Taiee found that the things those men would do to her didn’t hurt at all.
On Taiee’s 16th birthday, her uncle, drunker than usual, walked naked into Taiee’s bedroom. He knelt down beside her as she slept, took his half-hard penis in one hand and slapped her in the mouth with the purple-black head. The force of the blow broke her lips open. Blood instantly poured out of her mouth. She lashed out with an open hand, even before her eyes were fully open, knocking her uncle into the wall.
“You fuckin’ slant eye ho!” he wailed, as he leapt at her. His closed fist caught her on the side of the head. She lay back and asked her uncle to forgive her as she exposed one small firm breast, squeezing the dark nipple enticingly between her thumb and index finger. That usually worked when he has slapped her around in the past. Not this time. He drew back his hand, and then with all his weight behind the punch, drove it into her side, just below that exposed breast. She could hear the ribs crack under the force. Her breath was ripped from her lungs. Her uncle shoved a pillow over her face and straddled her thrashing body. She reached blindly with her right hand until she found the scissors that she kept hidden between the mattress and box springs of the narrow single bed. She swung with the last of her strength, plunging the shears into the kidney of her attacker.
He rolled off her, screaming in agony, “You stuck me! Fuckin’ ho! All I done fo yous ans yous try an kills me!” He struggled to get back up.
Taiee drew in gasping lungs full of air. When she saw her uncle coming back at her, she lost all sense of reality. Her conscience mind could no longer deal with her life of horrors, so it shut down; and in so doing; a subconscious survival instinct took over.
Taiee’s next memory of that day was of looking into the barrel of a pistol as the cop holding it told her to put down the knife.
There was so much blood that the cop couldn’t tell that she was actually holding scissors. Another cop was vomiting in the hallway.
In court, Taiee was told that there were over 200 identifiable stab wounds in her uncle’s body, but that there were, in all likelihood, close to 1000.
She spent the next five years in a juvenile psychiatric center. She was released with $300 and the clothes she was wearing. Taiee took a bus to Los Angeles and returned to prostitution, alcohol, and heroin and, soon, added crack cocaine to her plethora of substances being abused.
Now, after several years as a call girl in Palm Springs, she was a recovering alcoholic/addict at the Betty Ford Center, and Special Agent L.A. Michaels’ new best friend.
She winked one almond eye and mouthed, “You can do it” to L.A.
“My name is L.A. Michaels, and I’m an alcoholic.”
A chorus of “Hi, L.A”, met his introduction.
L.A. cleared his throat, and then spoke. “I was told to come here or lose my job. I drank a little. Okay, I was drinking a lot, but I didn’t think I was an alcoholic. My mind was changed once the DT’s wore off, five days after my arrival here.” There were nods and murmurs of shared understanding throughout the audience. Continuing, he said, “When the last bug had crawled from under my skin and the final demon had fled my dreams, I sat alone in my room, my ass hanging out of the gown I was given to wear in detox, and I wrote this poem:
“The fall from grace has been lengthy
The brutality of my pain intense
Some are never offered the chance at redemption
Others turn it down every time it is presented
For me this journey to sobriety h
as relit emotions I thought gone
Life now has a meaning that it never before held
Thanks to strangers who are now my friends
Thanks to friends, I hope to never see here again
You showed me new strengths within myself
You brought me to this first thirty-day chip
Thank you all”
The audience sat, enraptured by the intensity of the poem. The delivery by L.A. brought comparisons to Sidney Poitier to not just a few minds present.
L.A. continued, “That was then. And it can be that way again. All I have to do is throw away this chip.” He held his 30-day chip in the air. “Throw away this chip and take one little sip of booze. But, today, today I choose to keep my chip. I choose to keep my sobriety. I choose to keep my life.”
The people in attendance applauded and, one by one, stood to show their appreciation for all he had said.
Taiee hurried over to L.A. as he walked off the stage and threw her skinny arms around his neck. He pulled her close and asked. “Come stay with me when you’re ready to shake this spot, girl?”
“Are you sure, L.A.?” she asked, as she looked away from him, afraid of seeing doubt in his eyes.
He lifted her chin with the index finger of his right hand until she was forced to look back at him. “I’m sure of two things these days. One, I want to stay sober. Two, I want to stay sober with you.”
Chapter 23
Standing outside the courtroom, dressed in his most conservative Seville Row double-breasted suit, attorney Ralph Vasquez was growing very impatient.
At their last court appearance, the judge and district attorney had been sympathetic to the fact of April’s having given birth that morning. As such, Vasquez’s request that Sullivan Rourk be allowed to remain free for thirty days before having to turn himself in to begin the agreed upon six year prison term had been granted.