Page 50

Quasim

Recommendation: Walk Through The Fire by Yung Bleu ft Neyo

“You been in there for a minute, my love… you good?” I held onto this stupid ass walker that Knoxie was forcing me to use.

She claimed that I couldn’t do everything in one day because Rome wasn’t built in one day. Fuck Rome and whoever built that shit. I just wanted to walk without feeling dizzy, or like I was losing my balance.

Using the back of my hand, I knocked on the bathroom door. “Simmy.”

I heard the tone of her voice and said to hell with this walker, and turned the doorknob, but it was locked. “Let me in, baby.” I pleaded with her.

The doorknob turned, and she looked up at me. “When I wiped, there was blood.”

My heart jumped in my chest, and I could see the tears fall down her face. Pulling her into me, I held her while holding onto the doorway. “That’s not good, Anjo.”

“I know.”

I looked around the bathroom, not knowing what to do. The fall risk clip that was on my shirt reminded me that they would run to my room in five seconds. I pressed it, and a nurse came rushing into my room.

“Mr. Inferno, are you alright?”

“Quasim, why are you pressing the button?” Knoxie pushed past the nurse. Since she started coming into my room and told me who she was, me and Knoxie were locked in. She knew I fucked with the fall risk button whenever I was bored.

Last time I did it, the other nurse panicked because I was pretending like I couldn’t speak. A nigga was bored in here, and it seemed like life was moving on for everyone, except me and Anjo. We were stuck behind these walls, our life waiting on the other side for us.

She told the other nurse she would handle it and walked over. “What’s the matter?”

“She’s bleeding.”

“Not good when pregnant… okay, relax. That doesn’t always mean you are losing the baby.” She spoke gently to Blair.

Elijah and Peach ran into the room, and then stopped when they saw that Blair was hysterical.

Peach was determined to spend time with me and didn’t care that it was in a hospital.

I couldn’t play uno with her ass anymore.

Last time she jumped up to get some snacks for us, she had twelve cards underneath her.

Capone thought of everything when he put things into motion for this spot.

The kids were able to come without feeling like they were at a hospital.

It was less scary for both Elijah and Peach.

The reason I was cool with being here longer was because it didn’t feel so much like a hospital. “Everything alright, Dad?”

There was this feeling that overcame me whenever I heard Elijah calling me Dad. It was a name I never thought I would hear again, and he said it so fluently, like he was always supposed to call me that.

It never felt forced when he called us mom or dad.

“Your mom is having some pain with the baby. Once we get her to the other room, we can call an OBGYN to come see her right away,” Knoxie assured him.

It wasn’t until Anjo stepped fully out the bathroom that I saw blood running down the inside of her thigh. When Knoxie saw it, she remained calm and held onto her with one hand, then pulled the walker over toward me.

“Char, come here please!” She hollered, and I tried to remain calm, but this shit had me nervous.

This baby meant everything to us.

This was our second chance. I couldn’t imagine having to hold her hand while losing a second baby. I didn’t want to do it because it would break my heart.

I was used to fixing everything for her, and I couldn’t fix us losing another baby. That wasn’t something that I could fix for us.

“Everything alright?”

“Can you help Mr. Inferno with following behind us? I want to get her to a room with a sonogram machine and call an OBGYN in to take a look at the baby.”

“We don’t have a regular one here on the staff. Dr. King called in a favor the last time we had one.”

I quickly called Hassan, and his voicemail picked up. As I was about to call him a second time, he called me back. “What up, King? You straight?”

“Anjo and the baby… I need that doctor they said you called in.”

“A…alright, I can call her right now. I think she’s off today, too… give me a second.”

“Bet.”

I walked as fast I could with the nurse walking beside me.

We made it down the hall, and Knoxie helped her get up on the exam table and helped to clean up the blood on her leg.

She pulled a small handheld machine from the drawer and put this jelly on her stomach and moved it around, becoming frustrated that she couldn’t find what she was looking for with the machine.

“What’s going on?” Dr. Ramos came into the room.

“She’s bleeding… we need to know if the baby is alright. This doppler isn’t picking anything up.”

He touched my shoulder and then went to Anjo. “Before picking my specialty, I spent a few months in labor and delivery with my attending.”

I watched as he powered on the machine and pressed a few buttons before it was fully powered on. He gently touched Blair’s hands to reassure her. Walking around the other side, I held onto her other hand while kissing it.

“I can’t look, Simmy.” Tears slid down her face as she looked up at me.

“Don’t worry about it… I’ll look for the both of us, my love.” I kissed her hand again, while rubbing her face.

Everything felt normal today.

Capri was still shaken up, so I told Blaze that he didn’t need to worry about picking Ryder up. I was going to keep her with me, so he could spend time with Capri.

She watched someone end their life in front of her. It didn’t matter how many times she had taken a life, something like that stuck with you.

Aside from that happening, today felt like a normal day.

For the first time, shit felt regular. The kids were playing card games with me most of the day, while Anjo slept beside me. With how hard she slept, I knew sleeping was the last thing she had been doing when I wasn’t awake.

Anjo had woken up and told me she was going to use the bathroom while I went to take the kids down the hall to get ice cream in the kitchen.

We had been eating ice cream, and I left them to come check on her and she still hadn’t gotten out the bathroom. Something inside of me told me something was wrong. I couldn’t explain the feeling, but it didn’t feel right when I reentered the room again.

Dr. Ramos put that same jelly on her stomach. “I can assist with seeing if the baby is alright while we wait for the OBGYN to get here. I want to rest both of your minds and give you a sigh of relief if I can.”

“Just breathe, mama… we don’t have many devices for labor and delivery here. The sonogram machine is never used for pregnancies,” Knoxie informed us.

Ramos moved it around her stomach, and it was nothing but gray fuzzy shit. He pushed down with a bit more pressure and that’s when things became clear.

My lips rested on her forehead as she squeezed my hand, nervous.

She looked away from the sonogram screen, scared because of her past. I hated that she couldn’t bring herself to look.

Pregnancy had brought trauma to her, and it was something scary.

While it was some women’s highlight of their lives, it was different for Anjo.

She had lost her baby the last time she was pregnant, and at the hands of a man that claimed to love her.

As scared as I was, I had to be strong for my wife. I blamed myself because she had been carrying all this stress and there was nothing I could do about it. They had me laid out in bed with my balls out and a catheter, and I couldn’t be the strength my baby needed to be.

“Dr. Devoe did leave her files at the nurse’s station as well.” Knoxie remembered and quickly ran out the room to retrieve them.

While Knoxie was gone, Ramos continued to move the machine around her stomach, applying a bit more pressure each time. “There we go.”

He didn’t turn to look at us, he was pressing other buttons, and then sonogram tech came into the room. “Sorry, I was on lunch.”

Ramos moved, and she sat on the little stool and moved the machine around, pressing buttons. Lines appeared on the screen, and then a full view of the baby.

“Baby, turn your head for me,” I spoke into her ear, and encouraged her.

Her eyes were squeezed shut and I’m sure she was mentally somewhere else. Slowly, she turned her head to the other side and saw what I did. The technician hit a button and the room filled with the sounds of the heartbeat.

“Heartbeat is really strong.” She murmured.

Elijah ran into the room and came to stand by me. He held Anjo’s foot, and she looked down at him and gave him a weak smile. “Is the baby okay?” Anjo questioned, desperation in her voice.

“The heartbeat is very strong, and it doesn’t seem to be in distress. Right now, I think it’s best to keep your feet elevated until the doctor comes… do you want to know the gender?”

I looked down at my wife and she looked at me, wanting me to make the decision. “Yeah.”

She nodded her head, as Knoxie came back into the room with the file in her hand. Ramos took it and scanned over everything. “You’re a breast cancer survivor?”

“Yes.”

“On Tamoxifen?

“Yes.”

“Have you made an appointment with your oncologist, and informed them that you’re pregnant?”

She squeezed my hand. “She made an appointment for all that shit, but things happened, and we never got to make those appointments.”

“It wasn’t too long ago that we found out she was pregnant.”

“When?”

“A little bit before we went and got married.”

He screwed her face up as he looked at the files. “She’s well into her second trimester. Which means she was more than likely at the end of her first trimester when you both found out that she was pregnant.”

“My breasts were really sore and tender, and I thought it had to be the cancer returning. That was what happened when I found out I had breast cancer the first time.”