“Serves your ass right!” Troy snapped. Then it sounded like he was talking to one of the arresting officers by the way he had started responding. Then he ended the call. “‘Dem boys got her ass!” he said, referring to the police. “Boy, she lucky as fuck ‘cause I was gon’ kill her ass. The detective I just talked to said he’s going to bring TJ here to me.”
An hour passed, and we hadn’t gotten an update on Dawn yet. As far as we knew, she was still in surgery. Troy stepped out of the room to call the police officer that was supposed to bring TJ up to the hospital back. I heard him ask if they could take TJ over to his mom’s house. The officer was understanding, considering the circumstances of not knowing what Dawn’s outcome would be. We all felt it was best that TJ was not at the hospital just in case we were given bad news.
Almost two hours later, there was a knock on the door. We all jumped up as two male doctors walked into the room.
“This is the family of Dawn Smith, right?” one of the doctors asked.
“Yes,” I responded, standing up from the chair I was sitting in, almost knocking the chair over. “I’m her sister, this is my boyfriend, Kevin, and this is her boyfriend, Troy.” I pointed from Kevin to Troy. “Is she okay?”
“And the baby… is the baby okay?” Troy asked.
“You might want to take a seat,” one of the doctors began. “I have good news and not so good news.”
“Give it to us straight, doc,” Kevin said.
“Ms. Smith will be okay. She is one very blessed young lady. She suffered two stab wounds; both could have been fatal by just millimeters to her and the baby. The wound to her chest barely nicked her rib cage and wasn’t deep enough to do any major damage. However, she did lose a lot of blood. The woundthrough her stomach punctured the placenta and cut through the umbilical cord. By the time they made it to the hospital, the baby was in full fetal distress from the amount of amniotic fluid that was gone and lack of oxygen. We did everything that we could to save them both, but we could only save Ms. Smith.”
“What? What are you saying exactly?” Troy asked.
“Unfortunately, the baby didn’t make it,” the doctor concluded.
“Will we be able to see them?” Troy asked. “Was it a boy or girl? I didn’t even know the sex of my child,” Troy said, as the words he spoke broke my heart.
“It was a baby girl,” the doctor responded.
Troy had stood up out his chair when the doctor first came into the room. The whole time he stood as we listened to Dawn’s prognosis. When the doctor told us that the baby, who we just found out was a little girl, didn’t make it, Troy fell back into his chair. He put his head in both of his hands and broke down crying. Kevin and I tried consoling him as best as we could, but we were both just as emotionally distressed by the news. The two doctors stood in the room while we cried it out for a few minutes, then one of them spoke.
“When you all are ready, I can have one of the nurses take you all to the room so that you can see them both.”
I needed to keep my emotions in check, so that I could be there for Dawn in her time of need. I couldn’t imagine how this loss felt to her. To have carried a baby for almost eight months then to be right at the end of her pregnancy just to have the baby taken from her was all too much to bear. Just hours earlier, we were so over the moon excited to meet the baby. All for that Monica bitch to take it upon herself to do what she did. This was absolutely heartbreaking.
We followed the doctors to the nurse’s triage station. He had one of the nurses’ page someone, then a few minutes lateranother nurse came out to escort us to Dawn’s room. I was so thankful that Dawn was going to be okay, but my heart broke for her and Troy over the loss of their baby.
Making it to Dawn’s room, as soon as the nurse opened her door, we heard Dawn crying. We all followed the nurse into the room to find Dawn sitting in bed holding the baby that was wrapped up tightly in hospital blankets.
“She’s gone… I can’t believe she’s gone!” Dawn cried as Troy ran to her side.
He slid partially into the bed with her then wrapped his arms around her. He laid his other hand on the baby as both he and Dawn broke down crying together. It was one of the saddest things I had ever witnessed in my life. With Kevin by my side, I slowly walked over to my sister, after giving her and Troy a few moments to weep together. Then I went and stood by her bedside. Giving her a hug as best as I could since she was still in Troy’s embrace, I peeked over to look at the baby. I couldn’t stop the tears no matter how hard I tried. She was such a beautiful baby girl. My heart shattered at the thought that she would never grow up.
The hospital staff was gracious enough to let us have as much time as we needed with the baby before they had to take her out of the room. Our lives were forever changed at that moment yet the bond that the four of us shared had strengthened. I didn’t know how we were going to be able to move on after the loss of the baby, but I was grateful that I still had my sister. I didn’t know what I would do without Dawn in my life. As long as we had each other, we could get through anything, so I knew we were going to be alright.
EPILOGUE
Two years later
Justin
After my dadcaught me and Tate in bed together, I must admit that it became easier for us to be open about our relationship and to live in our truths. The cat was finally let out of the bag and the pressure on us to live a life on the down low was finally removed. It had taken over a year for me to get over the fact that Ava and I were done. She had moved on with her life, never stopping to look back in my direction once. Tate was very instrumental in helping me to get over Ava, and I was thankful for that. There for a slick minute I thought he didn’t want anything else to do with me, but once he finally forgave me, we became closer than ever.
Just as I suspected, my dad had called and told Tate’s dad everything after leaving my house that day, and to say that Tate’s dad was upset would be putting it mildly. Tate’s dad cussed him out and called him every name in the book but a child of God. That was fucked up, but at least he hadn’t whooped Tate’s ass like my dad did mine. As much as I wanted to be angry withmy dad, I couldn’t because he reacted off of pure emotion. I felt like whooping my own ass when he told me how detrimental my situation had been to my mom’s health because she was trying to keep my business secret from him.
Tate and I were taking things one day at a time with our families as we both understood that it was going to be a long process for them to accept our lifestyle choices. A couple of months after the whole situation jumped off, my mom and I talked. I apologized to her for giving her my burden to carry, and she explained to me how it had been difficult for her to accept my decisions. I couldn’t do anything but respect that. The turning point with me and my mom was when I told her about the HIV. That truly broke her heart because she looked at the virus as a death sentence. The whole HIV diagnosis was hard for my dad to accept as well.
I had to sit them down to explain to them that HIV was not a homosexual disease. Just because I was bisexual didn’t mean I was destined to catch the virus. The fact that I was not protecting myself and being reckless was how I caught it. The same with Shane. His homosexuality was not why he caught the virus. His careless and recklessness with multiple sex partners without any use of protection was the issue. I believed that my karma for cheating on my wife was me testing positive for the virus. I had no business having unprotected sex with a man that I knew was out sleeping with multiple people.
Over the past three years, I learned more about HIV than I’d ever known my entire life. That knowledge was something I was able to share with my parents so that they could understand and know about it as well. Eventually, my HIV status no longer was the spotlight of my life, and just like my doctor said, I was able to be prescribed the correct medications along with a few lifestyle changes that allowed for me to live a happy life once again.
Now that Tate and I were in a full-fledged relationship, we discussed the possibility of moving from Chicago to Georgia. We both felt that we needed a new, fresh start. I wound up losing my job at the fire station, which was okay because I was back in school taking my certification to become an EMT. Tate was in the process of applying for different EMT positions throughout the state of Georgia, and currently we had been waiting for one of the jobs to go through so that we could pack up and move on with our lives.
