True to the Game III (2 page)

“I’ll help you to the elevator and then to the porch. I’ll bring your breakfast out to the garden.”

“Thank you so much. But I can walk,” Gena told her.

“Are you sure?” said Consuela as if it were a miracle.

“Yes, yes, of course. You are very kind, though. Thank you, but I’m fine, I can walk.”

“
Ven
, I will help you.”

Consuela helped Gena to the elevator, and they rode it to the first floor. The doors to the elevator opened, revealing a massive two-story family room. The dimensions made Gena gasp.

The room was forty by sixty, with a ten-foot-diameter wrought-iron chandelier. Antique furnishings and expensive décor filled the room. The art and tapestries that hung on the wall were all original, while the tables all looked to be hand carved with great care and detail.

“Who lives here?” Gena asked.

“Señorita Hopkins,” Consuela told her. “She is at work right now. Señor Smith is out on the lanai.”

Gena followed as Consuela led her across the living room, out of the large double patio doors, and onto the lanai. A gentleman was seated across the lanai, facing away from them, looking over the swimming pool. She could see that he was dressed all in white and reading a newspaper. A table with a pitcher of orange juice was next to him, and she could see that he had already poured a glass.

“Señor Smith,” Consuela called out to him. “Look who has awakened.”

Gena watched as the stranger rose from the chair and turned to her. Consuela had to catch her.

“Señorita, are you all right?” Consuela asked.

It can’t be. It can’t be.
Gena shook her head.

“I’ll take it from here,” he told Consuela.

“No. No. It’s not possible. I don’t understand. You’re dead!” Gena said, staring at a ghost.

He guided her to a nearby table and poured her a glass of water.

“You’re alive,” Gena said softly. She gently caressed his face, reassuring herself that she was not dreaming. “You’re alive!” Tears streamed from her eyes as she covered her face. Quadir sat next to her and gently placed his arm around her.

“Gena, it’s okay. I’m here now.”

He kissed her face and took her hand in his, and rubbed it gently against his face. He was alive. Her Qua was here with her, and he was alive!
But how
?
was the only thing she could think. She looked over at him; sure as day he was there
. How could this miracle be possible? I saw him dead at the hospital. I was at his funeral.
Gena sat still in silence. Neither of the two said a word. Quadir didn’t want to interrupt her thoughts, and he knew his presence was just as heavy as his death. He had done what he had to do and what was best for him at that time, but he had never meant to hurt her. Confused, Gena didn’t know what to say next.

“I don’t understand.”

She looked him in the eyes for a split second and wondered if he had any idea what he had put her through. Out of nowhere, she slapped his face once and watched his blank expression. She started to slap him again, but he caught her hand and held it in his.

“Why you beatin’ on me?” he asked with a smile.

“Why are you alive? You’re supposed to be dead.”

She shoved him away, and a frown shot across her face. “Where have you been? How could you do that to me? How could you be alive? I don’t understand. I saw you; you were dead.”

Quadir nodded. “I know, Gena, I know. I have a lot of explaining to do.”

“You’re goddamned right you do! How could you let me think that you were dead? How could you just up and leave me like that, without telling me anything? Do you know the hell that I’ve been through since you died? Do you?”

Gena tried to slap him again, and again he caught her wrist and prevented her from hitting him.

“You bastard! You’re an asshole! You sorry, inconsiderate son of a bitch!”

“Gena, wait!” Quadir held her down. “Calm down! You’re going to bust your stitches. You have to take it easy until you have fully recovered. I’ll explain everything. I promise. Just give me a chance.”

“What possible explanation could you have for what you have done to me? To us? Why would you put me through all of that?”

“I had to. I had no choice. I had people trying to kill me and the police about to indict me. I just needed to start over. And I needed for it to look real.”

“So you had someone kill you? I was there that night. I saw you die.”

“No, that part was real,” Quadir explained. “I had nothing to do with them sorry-ass Junior Mafia motherfuckers shooting at us. Are you crazy? They really tried to kill me. In fact, they did. All of that was real, baby. But, once I got to the hospital, I was resuscitated. I can’t explain it; I just wouldn’t let go. There was something inside of me like a light that refused to go out. That light was my love for you, Gena. My love for you wouldn’t let me die,” he said, hoping kind and submissive words would appeal to her ego.

“Nigga, is you crazy? You was dead. I seen you; you was dead.” Gena recrossed her arms and lifted a questioning eyebrow. “If you weren’t dead, why didn’t you call me, Quadir? Why didn’t anyone call me and let me know that you were alive? Do you know how crazy you sound right now?”

“Because, baby, everyone thought that I was dead. That was the only way my plan would work. It was my only chance to get away from the police and from the Junior Mafia. I was going to go down South, Gena. I was going to get everything set up, and then I was going to come for you.”

“And why couldn’t I be a part of the plan? Why couldn’t you have let me know what was going on?”

“Because I needed my death to be real and I knew you were the biggest key to everyone believing I was gone. I needed to let everything die down first, and I needed you to convince everyone that I was dead and buried.”

“Who did I bury?”

Quadir exhaled. He released Gena, took a seat on the wicker sofa across from hers, and settled in for the long story that he was about to tell her. “You may want to eat a little something before I get started.”

“Quadir, I will die of starvation before I let either of us leave this lanai and I still be in the dark,” Gena told him. “I hope that this little explanation of yours is a good one. If it’s not, I’m going to kill you myself. And this time, there won’t be no coming back.”

Quadir smiled and leaned back on the sofa. “It’s like this . . .”

Heaven Can Wait

Hahnemann Hospital, January 1, 1990

T
he orderly strolled into the room to collect his cadaver. He had been at the job for a little more than a year now, and he loved it. Working in the hospital morgue paid well and afforded him the peace and quiet that he needed to study for his premed courses. The job suited him more than most, as his goal was to become a surgeon. He was now in his final year of premed, and one semester away from actual medical school, where he would be cutting open bodies and not just transporting them from one floor to another.

The body that he was picking up now was fresh. The gunshot victim had just been called, and his family had just walked out of the room.
Probably the guy’s wife or fiancée or something, but whoever she was, she certainly had a nice little ass on her. This poor, unlucky bastard would now be staring down or up, watching somebody else plow that fat-ass onion she had back there.

The orderly lifted the cadaver’s hanging hand to lay it on the bed. The hand felt weird. Stranger than any other dead guy’s hand he had ever touched. The damn thing was warm, really warm. And more than that, it had a fucking pulse.

“Oh, shit!” The orderly rushed into the hall to find a nurse, a doctor, anyone who looked like they could do something. “Excuse me, ma’am. I have an emergency.”

Dr. Hopkins stopped and read the orderly’s name tag. “Stan, what can I do for you?”

“Doc, I got a dead guy in there who ain’t dead,” Stan told her.

“What?” Dr. Hopkins rushed into the emergency operating room. She clasped Quadir’s pulse. Sure as shit, he had one. She rushed to the wall and pressed the intercom.

“Stat. Emergency room personnel to the OR, stat. This is Dr. Amelia Hopkins. Emergency room surgical personnel to the OR, immediately!”

Masked emergency room personnel ran into the operating room, some of them still covered with Quadir’s blood from minutes ago.

“We got a live one here, people!” Dr. Hopkins shouted. She rushed to a corner of the room to scrub up before several nurses dressed her in surgical garb. Two more surgeons, Dr. Benjamin Brant and Dr. William Hartley, rushed into the room. “Ben, he’s still alive.”

“Hot damn!” Dr. Brant rushed to Quadir and immediately began working on him.

Dr. Hartley began issuing orders as he scrubbed up and the nurses dressed him in surgical garb.

“You’re a tough son of a bitch, aren’t you?” Dr. Brant said, smiling at Quadir. “Fight, son. That’s right, fight.”

“Set up a pint of plasma for him.” Hopkins ordered one of the nurses. “Get him hooked back up so that we can monitor his blood pressure. What’s the deal, Benny?”

“Couldn’t find that last fucking bullet. It hid behind his heart. He flatlined and we couldn’t get him back. We called him.”

“You need a woman’s touch in here,” Hopkins told him. “My hands are a lot smaller than yours. Let me see if I can work my way around in there and get that little booger.”

Dr. Brant maneuvered out of the way and allowed Dr. Hopkins to become the primary surgeon. Within seconds she was smiling at him beneath her surgical mask.

“Was this the pesky little thing you were looking for?” she asked, holding up a small, bloody, lead ball. She placed the bullet into a small dish, and then proceeded to repair the internal damage it had caused.

“Ben and I repaired most of the damage already,” Hartley told her.

“I see; you guys did a fantastic job,” she told him, assuaging their egos. Dr. Hopkins reconnected a severed artery, suctioned the blood from the wound, and monitored her patient for several moments before turning to a nurse. “What’s he looking like?”

“Blood pressure has climbed to 112 over 70 and is holding steady. Everything looks good.”

“Close him up for me, get him into ICU, and page me in an hour with his vitals,” Hopkins told them. She lifted the chart from the bottom of the bed. “Deceased” had been scrawled across it. “Get him a new chart. The patient’s name is John Smith. Everybody clear on that?”

Dr. Brant peered over at his colleague.

“I’ll alert the authorities and his family,” Dr. Hopkins told them. “Until I or the authorities say otherwise, Mr. Richards is deceased. Mr. Smith, however, is alive and doing quite well.”

“I signed the death certificate,” Hartley told her.

“I’ll take care of that, too,” Hopkins said. She turned to the orderly, who had watched the whole thing from the corner of the operating room. “Come with me.”

Amelia Hopkins led Stan out into the hallway and maneuvered him into a corner. “Stan, what I am about to say to you is very important. And I need to have your undivided attention. Do I have that, Stan? Do I have your undivided attention?”

Stan nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Stan, I have a patient in there who had a whole lot of bullet holes inside of him. Somebody doesn’t like Mr. Richards, and thought it best that he not remain with us in this life. My job, as a doctor, is to see to it that he does. But in order to do that, I am going to need your help. Can I count on you to help me?”

Stan nodded again.

“Good. Now, how many John Does do you have down there in the morgue?”

“Right now, about four or five, but the weekend is coming up. We should have a shitload of ’em coming in.”

Amelia Hopkins nodded. “Any of the ones we have fit the description of Mr. Richards in there?”

Stan smiled and scratched his chin. “One, maybe. A buddy of mines works over in the morgue at the County Hospital. I’m sure I could get you a John Doe close enough to match.”

It was Dr. Hopkins’s turn to smile. “You do that. You get me a John Doe to match, and you put this chart on him. Make sure that John Doe becomes Quadir Richards. And you let no one in to see it. He’s already been identified by his family, and you tell them that the authorities are not allowing anyone else to see the body at this time. You got that?”

Stan nodded. “Dr. Hopkins, in a few years, I’ll need a surgeon to intern under.”

Amelia shoved the chart into his hand. “You want to be a surgeon, I’ll get you there. But you better have the grades and the stamina to keep up with me.”

Stan nodded. “Deal.”

Dr. Hopkins walked to the nurses’ station. “That patient in the OR. I need for you to get me his family’s address and telephone number. You’ll probably have to look it up. You know what, see if you can cross-reference the information that you find and get me the name and telephone number of his parents.”

The nurse nodded and lifted a large telephone book from beneath the nurses’ station.

Dr. Hopkins knew that one thing was for certain: a mother would do anything to keep her child alive. A wife or girlfriend could be after an insurance policy, or her jealous lover could have been the gunman. But a mother, she would kill or die to protect her offspring. She needed the mother’s address.

The nurses and a couple of ICU orderlies wheeled Quadir out of the operating room, heading for the elevator.

“What’s he look like?” Hopkins asked.

“Vitals are stable. Blood pressure is 118 over 80.”

“Good job, Amelia,” Dr. Brant told her, exiting the operating room.

“Thanks, Benny.”

“I’m heading over to the cafeteria. Want to join me?” Dr. Brant asked.

Amelia nodded. She could use something to eat. Besides, she wanted to run a few things by Dr. Brant. He was her mentor, and she trusted him completely. It had been Dr. Brant who had trained her and helped her to hone her surgical skills to what they were today. Benny Brant was probably one of the top surgeons in the country. And for him, a wealthy Jewish surgeon from New York, to have taken a poor black girl from the Alabama countryside under his wing was unfathomable. He had dozens of doctors from some of the finest families all over the country trying to intern under him, some of whom where the sons of his colleagues. The fact that he had pulled her under his wing was something that she would forever be grateful for.