He stopped in front of me and leaned down just enough for our faces to be close, so close he could kiss me and he actually did. He kissed me real slow and calm causing me to shudder with chills running down my spine as good as his soft lips felt. “And I hate when you act like you don’t know who you married.”
We stayed like that for a second, both stubborn as hell, both refusing to back down first. A nurse passing by the open door glanced in, saw the chair, saw my face, saw his, and kept it moving like she wanted no parts of whatever this was.
I sighed and slid off the bed. “You are so aggravating.”
“You still gettin’ in the chair though.” He shrugged.
I mumbled underneath my breath talking shit and sat down just to get it over with. He looked entirely too pleased with himself after I sat down and it pissed me off. “There,” he said, placing his hands on the handles. “See how easy that was?”
“You lucky I love you.” I said rolling my eyes.
“Yeah, I know.”
He wheeled me out into the hallway and the whole floor was actually quiet although the police still stood at both ends of it. The hospital staff moved around us carefully, going about their business going from room to room with their patients. Meanwhile, our shadows were everywhere. They weren’t being all loud and obvious, but they were there whether sittingin chairs, standing by vending machines, near the elevators pretending to scroll on phones, or near the nurse’s station acting bored. I knew what it really was though and the fact that nobody was getting close to me again.
The ride down the hall to Kilo’s room gave me too much time to think, and by the time we stopped outside his door, guilt had already started filling my space again. Dom opened it first and pushed me inside. Kilo’s mama was sitting beside his bed with a blanket over her lap and a Styrofoam cup clenched in both hands as if she was just in her own little world. She looked up when we entered and stood immediately, her face was tired in a way that made her look older than she did the first time I met her years ago.
“Hey baby,” she said softly.
“Hey Miss Brenda.” I replied sounding strong.
Then I looked at Kilo and just felt like ‘damn’. Even knowing he was bad off didn’t prepare me for seeing him like that because tubes everywhere as the machines beeped in a steady rhythm around him. His bandages were thick and wrapped over his chest and down lower past his belly button. The doctors had already explained what they had to do once they got him into surgery, but seeing the shape of it under the blanket made it real in a different way. His skin looked so pale, and his lips were dry, while his eyes were also closed. He didn’t look like the same man who sat beside me in court with all that confidence yesterday morning. Kilo was a fine ass man and always glowing but not right now.
“He still asleep?” I asked, even though that felt like the stupidest question in the world.
“They keeping him sedated,” Miss Brenda said, glancing down at him. “Doctors said that’s best for the next few days while his body calm down and start doing what it need to do.”
I slowly nodded, still staring at him. “He really did some dumb brave shit. I knew Kilo was different, he’s always been one of my most thorough clients.”
That that made her smile like a proud mother. “That’s my son, he don’t know how to do nothing halfway. That boy gave me hell growing up with all of his brave tactic. I knew from the time he was ten years old he was different. The boy weighed ninety-eight pounds and wasn’t scared of a damn thing.”
Dom rested placed one hand on the back of my wheelchair and the other on my shoulder while I kept looking at Kilo. “He did what he was supposed to do.” He said.
I looked up at him. “He almost died.”
“And because of that, you didn’t.”
That shut me up because it was true whether I liked it or not. The truth had a way of making itself uncomfortable sometimes. I looked back at Kilo and felt the tears burning at the back of my eyes, but I wasn’t gone let them fall in front of him like this. “Soon as he wake up, I’m cussing him out just like I have to do every time he brings me one of his crazy cases.”
Miss Brenda chuckled. “Good, Lord knows he needs it. Boy gone give me a damn heart attack.”
“I mean it too,” I said.
Miss Brenda looked over at Dom who was staring at Kilo, and I could see that flicker of death in his eyes that he was trying to control. His eyes damn near had gone black.
“Thank you for everything,” she said to him. “The doctors, the security, the funds drafted to my account, all of it.”
Dom nodded, but his expression was still serious. “He made sure my wife and child came out of that alive. Anything he need, it’s done. He ain’t no client no more, that’s family.”
Her eyes searched his face for a second before she asked the question I already knew she wanted to ask. “I know the game,and I know yesterday you didn’t want to say but I’m hoping maybe today you will. You know who did this?”
The room got quiet all of a sudden. I didn’t turn to look at Dom because I already knew the answer he was going to give. He wasn’t about to discuss none of that in this room especially with her. “We got it, don’t you worry about nothing,” he said replied.
Miss Brenda looked like she wanted more, but she also looked like a woman who knew when she wasn’t gone get it. She nodded slowly and looked back down at Kilo. “I just want my son to wake up.”
“And he will,” Dom said.
The way he said it made it sound less like a hope and more like an order, but she respected it. I was more shocked to hear Dom stamp Kilo under the Cartel. He would forever have an order of protection. When we left that room, the weight of it came with me as well as Dom pushed me toward the elevator and neither one of us said much at first because there wasn’t really nothing to say. Kilo was in a bed cut open because of me. No matter how many times Dom told me it wasn’t my fault, that part wasn’t gone leave easy.
