“Don’t say that.”
A nurse pushed medication through the port in her IV and Navy fought it at first. Her fingers clutched the front of my shirt, holding on as if I could keep her awake through it. The panic slowly drained from her body, though the tears continued rolling into her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You ain’t got nothing to be sorry for.”
Her grip loosened and I covered her hand with mine and kept it against my chest until her eyes began closing.
“Don’t leave me,” she said.
“I’m not going nowhere.”
The words came out before the medicine pulled her under, but I didn’t know if she heard them. Her breathing eventually settled in. The alarms stopped, and the room returned to that same dreading ass quietness it had before she woke up. Lulu stood on the other side of the bed crying into both hands. I lowered myself into the chair and kept Navy’s hand wrapped inside mine. Navy had awakened long enough to learn that the life she knew was gone. I looked at her face and let the anger move through me again, only this time I didn’t allow it to pull me away from her. There would be time for Rome. Right now, she needed me sitting exactly where I was. People would be surprised at much life could change in eleven days. But now, I made a promise I wouldn’t ever leave side because I was here for a reason.
CHAPTER 26
Navy ‘Nay’ Prescott
Weeks Later
Iheard Tasha crying before I heard what she was saying. At first, her voice blended into the other sounds. I had gotten used to since being moved to the rehabilitation floor by now but the volume of my television inside my room had been turned down so far that I could only hear the soft rise and fall of people talking without making out the words.
I kept my eyes closed and Tasha thought I was asleep. To be fair, I had spent most of the last few days either sleeping or pretending to. The medicine made it easy to disappear whenever I didn’t feel like dealing with anybody. Every few hours, a nurse came in asking me to rate my pain, as if there was a number large enough to cover everything that hurt not only my body, but my pride and the empty space beneath the blanket where part of me used to be.
Most days, I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to reassure my family that I was going to be okay when I wasn’t sure I believed it. I didn’t want to hear how blessed I was to be alive, though I understood what they meant. I knew people had died from less than what happened to me. I knew the surgeons had saved my life. However, that knowledge didn’t stop me from waking up some mornings and reaching for a leg that wasn’t there.
Tasha shifted in the chair beside my bed. The vinyl gave a soft groan beneath her weight, followed by the sound of her sniffing and pulling a tissue from the box on the table. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” she whispered.
I didn’t move. Her voice had been trembling since she arrived, but I assumed it was because of me. Everybody got that look when they first walked into my room. Their eyes traveled down my body before they caught themselves and hurried back toward my face, smiling too wide because they didn’t know what else to do.
Tasha had been different though. She came every day, sat beside me, talked about whatever foolishness was happening in the world, and never stared at the blanket. Still, something had been off with her all morning. She had barely touched the coffee she brought, and she kept twisting the tissue around her fingers until it tore and I heard it all.
“I know you can’t hear me,” she continued with her voice breaking around the words. “Maybe that’s why I can finally say it.”
Well, that was promising.I thought to myself.I kept my breathing slow and even.
“I love you, Navy. You know that, right?”
Inside my head, I answered her.Apparently, I didn’t know anything anymore, so you might wanna be more specific.
Tasha sniffed again. “You’re my sister, not my friend, but my sister. I would never intentionally do anything to hurt you.”
There were certain sentences that never led anywhere good. Nobody started with I would never intentionally hurt you unless they were about to explain exactly how they had hurt you. My eyes stayed closed, but every part of me was awake now.
“My mom’s treatment got expensive,” Tasha said. “More expensive than I told anybody. The insurance wasn’t covering everything, and she needed help with medication, transportation, all kinds of stuff. I was borrowing money from everybody. Taking out loans. Putting shit on credit cards I knew I couldn’t pay back.”
Her chair creaked again. I pictured her leaning forward, elbows resting against her knees, her face buried in one hand. “I went to Rome.”
My fingers almost moved beneath the blanket.Of course she went to Rome. Rome had always enjoyed being needed. It made him feel important. Powerful. He could turn a favor into a chain around somebody’s neck before they realized they had agreed to wear one.
“I didn’t go to him trying to do anything with him,” she said quickly, as if my fake-sleeping self had accused her. “I went to ask for help. I thought because he was your husband, and because he knew my family, he might lend me the money. I was going to pay him back.”
A bitter laugh stayed trapped behind my closed lips.Rome didn’t lend anything without collecting more than he gave, girl you know that.
“He said he would help,” she continued. “But he wanted something in return.” Tasha stopped talking long enough for the silence to become heavy. I could hear her breathing through her mouth, trying not to cry loudly enough to wake me. “He said if I wanted the money, I had to sleep with him.”
The words hit me differently than I expected. There wasn’t one sharp pain, no explosion of anger either. It was morelike another piece of something rotten settling into place. My husband had slept with my best friend. My best friend had slept with my husband. Neither fact should’ve surprised me, considering the two people involved, but betrayal didn’t care whether it arrived late to the party. It still found somewhere to sit.
