Page 40 of This Is Law 3

Chapter Fifteen

NOELLE WALTERS

The sound of Kross’s room door opening caused me to jump out of my sleep.

These days, a pen could drop, and I would wake up.

Being in this hospital, sleeping on this uncomfortable ass couch was the reason why I couldn’t seem to dive into a deep sleep, so literally the smallest of sounds would have me jumping out of my sleep.

This hospital has depressed me in ways that I couldn’t even explain.

I wanted nothing more in the world than to go back to California, but there was just this small piece of me that was going to have some kind of mom guilt if I were to leave my son alone.

I hated that I even allowed myself to have mom guilt because Kross, and I hadn’t had a healthy relationship with each other in years.

I know that it was such a fucked-up thing to say, but it’s almost like I’d given birth to the devil.

I should have known that having a child with a man like Dutch was going to bring on some issues in our child.

Dutch, and I were never in a relationship or anything like that.

Back then, any time that he would be in Cali, he would call me for sex, or when I would come to Miami with my girls, I would always swing over to him for sex as well.

He likes to think that I purposely trapped him and had a baby by him when the truth is, I went so far into the pregnancy not knowing that I was pregnant, so by the time that I found out, it was already too late to terminate it.

Leave it to him, I trapped him because he was a dope dealer and had money, when that was the furthest thing from the truth because all I’ve ever fucked with were men in power, and men with money, so he wasn’t my first shot at that.

I chose not to tell Dutch about the pregnancy nor when our son arrived because I knew that there wasn’t anything good that was going to come from it.

I knew that Dutch didn’t want children. I would be around the nigga when he would speak on those things, so early on, I just knew that he probably wouldn’t be a good father to our son, so I didn’t bother.

As Kross grew older, he literally left me with no choice but to tell his dad about him.

At five years old, Kross was a menace. He’d already been kicked out of three elementary schools for fighting, and for disrespecting the staff.

Since public schools weren’t working out, I decided to have him home schooled, but two of his home schoolteachers ended up quitting for the same thing.

I was left with no choice but to reach out to Dutch because I couldn’t raise him on my own.

I remember everything about me putting in that phone call to him.

I got called all kinds of bitches, and hoes, and he went on and on about me keeping a baby for the money.

Meanwhile, I went the first five years of our sons life and never asked him for a dime.

After all the shit talking that he did, he ended up coming the next weekend to see Kross.

Kross was the spitting image of his father, but Dutch still wanted a DNA test, which I couldn’t blame him for, and once he found out that our son belonged to him, he did step up and do his part.

The biggest thing we would go at it about was me not allowing Kross to go to Miami with him.

Dutch was deep into the drug game at the time, and I didn’t like not having control of the settings he would have my son, so for years, I wouldn’t let Kross leave California.

By middle school, Kross left me with no choice.

His behavior had only worsened in school.

He was getting in trouble with the law, and his disrespect towards me had heightened, talking to me as if I was just some random bitch off the street.

Before I ended up killing his ass, I put that call in to Dutch to get his ass, and he did just that, allowing me to wash my hands with him.

Over the years, I would still call and check up on my son, but by the time he turned eighteen, I had to cut off communication because he had become someone that I grew to hate.

I couldn’t tolerate the disrespect, and for years, I would force the relationship because he was still my only child at the end of the day, and I did want the relationship, but it wasn’t worth my peace.

To go no contact with my son for the time that I did, to now being in this hospital with him day in and day out was so crazy to me.

Nothing was improving with his status, so I was already prepared to have that tough talk with the doctors and nurses by this weekend, so that they could go ahead, and remove him from this fight that he was still fighting with life.

Someone had walked inside the room, and it was a black doctor, dressed in his lab coat.

I’d never seen him before, and for the time that I’ve been here, it’s pretty much been the same doctors and nurses on call.

This doctor walked in with a stethoscope around his neck, his badge clipped to his coat, and his eyes danced around the room until they landed on me.

He was an older gentlemen that looked to have been in his late fifties.

Very handsome. Dark skin, eyes that were light brown, and his face was clean, with just a patch of chin hair.

I found myself smoothing down my hair, trying to look somewhat decent for him.

With a smile on his face, he cleared his throat.

“How you doing? I’m Dr. Joseph. They have me scheduled tonight to cover the overnight rotation,” he let me know. I nodded my head, not really thinking anything of it.

He walked over to where Kross was in bed, and he stood over him, examining him for a few seconds.

“I was looking over his chart, and he’s due for an IV change, so I’m going to handle that, and I’ll be on my way, so that you can finish resting. It’ll be quick,” he assured me.

“That’s fine,” my voice came out a little raspy because I was tired as hell.

The doctor ended up leaving the room, and then he came back about two minutes later with the IV.

I watched him, just to see if he knew what his ass was doing, but like he could do this in his sleep, he changed the IV with no problem, examined Kross for a few more seconds, smiled at me, and he finished it with telling me to enjoy the rest of my night. I thanked him, and he left.

I turned back on my side, resting my head on the pillow, and pulling the blanket over my body.

Literally, the second my eyes closed, alarms started going off in the room.

I quickly jumped up from the couch, ready to rush for the button on the wall to call for the doctor, and nurses, but I didn’t have to because a full team was already rushing in.

My eyes looked up at the monitor, which had been the same monitor that I’ve been watching since I’d come here, where I could see his heart rate.

The heart monitor slowed down, then it spiked, and seconds later, it just totally flat lined.

“What’s going on? What’s happening?” I screamed, asking anyone.

“Ma’am, can you wait outside? Just for a few seconds, we need you to go outside,” that was nurse Jill. She’s been here working with Kross for as long as I’ve been here.

I just knew that whatever was going on with my son, it wasn’t good.

I left out of the room like they’d asked me to because I didn’t want to do anything to slow them down on working on him.

The machines inside the room were blaring inside, and even as I stood outside the door, I could still hear it.

I pressed my back against the wall, standing here, with my head down.

My son has given me hell for as long as I could remember, and I remember when I arrived in Miami, after Dutch had told me what was going on with Kross.

I came with the mindset of coming down, agreeing to pull the plug, have the funeral services, and I would go back to California like nothing happened.

Sitting here in this room with him these past few weeks, looking at him, talking to him, wondering the things that I could have done better as a mom, so that our relationship wouldn’t have been as tainted as it was, were all things that I had been thinking about.

I started coming up with my own version of what our life could possibly be like if by any reason a miracle happened, and God allowed him to wake up from this.

The way those machines were going off felt much different than the last time.

This happened before. The day that Dutch was arrested, the machines had gone off that day as well, and I thought that that would be the moment where we lost him, but he stuck through it.

This time it felt different though. I could feel it in my heart that I was going to lose him this time.

I was the only one that was standing outside of my son’s door.

The security that Dutch had in place was now gone.

Word was getting out from the jail that Dutch had something to do with Knox being murdered.

That word was traveling fast. At first, I didn’t know anything about it, but the security guard Chris came to me, telling me what he found out, and because of that, he made it clear that he didn’t want to do the job anymore.

Dutch would call me at night from a phone that he was able to keep smuggled in his cell.

For weeks, I wasn’t picking the phone up for him because we’d gotten into a bad argument because he started disrespecting me once he learned that I was allowing some of Kross’s friends to come into the room and see him.

I wouldn’t answer the phone for him for a while, but once Chris quit, I answered for him, telling him what Chris had told me.

I was seeing it with my own two eyes, as people were losing respect for Dutch because he reached out to a few security guards to take on Chris’s old job, but no one wanted to be involved.

Did I believe that Dutch might have had something to do with Knox’s death? Of course. Dutch had shady ways about him, and I knew that he was one of those people that was always out for himself, so he could have very well killed Knox, so that he could take over the company, and run it himself.

I wiped my eyes, and I continued standing here, trying my best to drown out the sounds that were going on inside Kross’s room.

Something in my spirit told me to look to the left of me.

Down the hall, to my left was the end of the hallway, and where the staircase was.

I looked in that direction, and there stood a figure there that was dressed in all black.

They had the hood of the sweater pulled low over their head, and hands buried into the sweater as well.

I squinted my eyes for a little bit just to see if I could get a glimpse of who the person was.

The figure slowly lifted their chin just enough for me to get a small hint as to who they were.

My eyes locked with them, and I swear my jaw touched the floor when I saw that it was Law standing there.

Law had a distinct face, and I remember he would come around as a little boy when Dutch would fly into Cali to see Kross.

It’s like he wanted me to know that he might have had something to do with whatever was going on with my son because he smiled at me, and he disappeared into the staircase like nothing ever happened.

Before I allowed myself the time to even process what the hell just happened, Kross’s room door opened, and one of the doctors, and two of the nurses stepped out, each looking at me with sympathetic eyes, and they didn’t even have to say it because I knew.

I knew what happened. The fact that the hospital room was now quiet, and you couldn’t hear the loud blaring of the machines told me everything that I needed to know.

“I’m sorry….

The doctors voice trailed off. I didn’t have it in me to listen to what he was going to say to me.

As a mother, of course, this hurt to know that I’d lost my only child.

A child that I didn’t have the best relationship with, but it still hurt, nonetheless.

I had been prepared to have that talk with the doctor this weekend anyway and allow Kross to go off in peace.

I felt like he went off in total disruption, and that’s the part that saddened me about this.

Dutch wasn’t the first street dude that I’ve dealt with, so I knew what this was.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew that Law sent that “doctor” into my son’s room to kill him.

That was retaliation. Dutch killed his father, so it was only right that Law got his get back, and he killed the one thing that Dutch had.

I wasn’t going to snitch though. How could I?

As fucked up as it was that my son had to be the pond in the middle of this, the way I saw it was that Kross wasn’t going to make it anyways.

The staff had been preparing this for me for weeks.

This was a blood for blood situation.

With a tear slowly falling from my eyes, I stood here, going to have to prepare to walk back in that room with my son.

I would have to use this week to prepare for his funeral.

I knew that Dutch wasn’t going to take this news easily.

They had denied his bond, so he wouldn’t be able to be here, and watch his son get laid to rest.

I tell you what, after the funeral services were over, Miami will probably never see me again.

There was nothing else left for me here.

What kept me here had just finished taking their last breath.

I hate that Kross made some of the choices in life that put him in this situation.

I hated Dutch for his role that he played in his life, which dragged my son even deeper into his shit.

I also hated that Law had to be the one to end it.

It was his payback though. It was him evening up the score, and something told me that he was going to have Dutch killed in that jail, too.

I couldn’t say that I blamed him if he was cooking up something.