Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Sixty-Seven

I wasn't dead.

At least I didn't think so. Maybe I was, and the afterlife was just how they portrayed it in second-grade Sunday School class and old Disney movies – clouds, a buffet of Salmonella-free food, winged creatures playing harps, and my long-deceased grandma sitting in a white oak rocking chair.

For some reason, though, only half my angels played harps. The others were on turntables, scratching out Can It Be All So Simple.

I had just started to bob my head when I heard a commotion behind me. It sounded like two of my heavenly DJs were shouting and on the verge of fighting.

There was something about being "woke" and a challenge to "come around," and I wondered if fistfights were really permitted on Cloud 9.

A hand pressed against my forehead.

"Hey, this is not my beef," I shouted. "Leave me out of it! Work it out, fellas!"

Two more hands hit me in the chest. I tried to fight back, but more hands grabbed me, and I lost consciousness.

###

When I awakened, I was in bed but propped into an almost upright position, a forty-five-degree angle.

Turner sat in a chair next to my bed, staring at me curiously.

"They said after your episode an hour ago that you'd probably be back soon."

"They who?"

"Dude. Seriously? You're in the hospital. Stroger."

I didn't respond. I suppose the white sheets, white bed, white walls, white tile floors, and wall-mounted television with a chain attached to it should have been a giveaway.

But when you've apparently been asleep for the better part of three weeks, things start to make sense slowly.

According to Turner, I had been rushed to the St. Anthony's emergency room with two gunshot wounds – one to my right chest, and one to the head. They later transferred me to Stroger.

I wasn't so lucky to have a Knight Rider ending – with a metal plate in my head like Michael Knight before he ended up with a talking car.

One of the panicked teenagers had fortunately been carrying just a .22 caliber pistol, and thanks to his shaky hand had grazed the side of my head.

The kids who shot me weren't so lucky. The cops suspected they might try to slip out of the building a different way, and two officers had rounded the corner of the building in time to see the youngest shoot me. Less than a minute later, one of the boys was dead, another alive but unable to move from the armpits down, thanks to a severed spinal cord, and the third, my shooter, lying face down on top of me, begging for his life.

I had awakened briefly a few times but was always delirious and had always fallen asleep again within minutes.

"What about the others," I asked. "I heard a few more shots after I got hit."

Turner nodded.

"They made it. Those extra shots you heard were probably from the police, taking out your kidnappers."

"So Jefferson, Pogano, Ward?"

"All alive and all things considered, doing well. Ward is still in the hospital too. But the nurses tell me he's milking it, having a vacation. He was unconscious for another day-and-a-half after you all were brought in. And, other than a jaw fracture, which they say will heal with time, he's fine. Pogano suffered a similar injury and was released after about three days."

"Jefferson?"

Turner laughed and shook her head, as though remembering something ludicrous.

"That kid is something else," she said, grinning. "About three hours after you all got here, a half dozen Fruit of Islam arrived and posted up outside his room. Caused quite the scene. They were fine, but you should have seen the hospital staff freaking out like a plague carrier had just walked into the ward on a raft of bow ties!"

I could only imagine the stares and reaction to FOI's appearance, and the thought made me chuckle too.

"Jefferson find religion in the past few weeks or something?"

Apparently not. He had, however, been a quiet donor for years. And in his time of distress, they came to be by his side and escort him from the hospital once it was time for him to go.

"I guess there was some question about whether he might still be in danger," Turner explained. "And speaking of danger, your girl Aretha is fine. She and her parents are safe and under guard. But, uh, still no sign of Tasha. That big cop said after a stakeout you all did, he figured out who'd had her for a while, but by the time police raided, the place had been cleaned out and the suspect was in the wind."

No one thought I was still in danger I guess, because no one had been sent to guard my door.

There was so much more I wanted to ask, but Turner's eyes darted to the door and she leaned back from my bedside. I was grateful that she kept her hand atop mine, though.

Before I could turn to get a good look, I heard two familiar, boisterous laughs, and my mother walked in, arm linked with Bessie Stone. They were smiling at each other like old friends.

Behind them, Tasha Stone and my dad.