Page 8 of This Is Law 3
Chapter Three
DUTCH THORNE
It was after eight in the morning, and I was at the hospital with my son.
There still wasn’t any progress from Kross, and truth be told, by keeping him here, I wasn’t doing anything but running up a bill.
I say that because yesterday, the doctor had to have a tough conversation with me, saying some shit to me that I had been fearing since I was here.
The bullets that torn through Kross’s body had done way too much damage.
The sound of these machines going off in his hospital room, that were getting on my fuckin nerves was the only thing that was keeping him alive right now.
His body didn’t have any movement. Every day that I was in here, I would squeeze his hand, say things to him, in hopes that I would get some kind of response from him, but I didn’t get anything.
The thought of pulling the plug on my son sounded fucked up.
I didn’t want to be the one to make that decision.
I didn’t want to have to live with that kind of heavy choice.
Because I didn’t want to have to make that choice, I ended up reaching out to my baby mama, Noelle.
Noelle and Kross didn’t have much of a relationship, and I couldn’t fault her because Kross was wild, and reckless, and he was known for disrespecting his mother.
Noelle washed her hands with him years ago, and she’d told him that when he learned respect, that’s when they could work on their relationship, but until then, she didn’t want anything to do with him.
Because she really wasn’t active like that in his life, she didn’t know about the shooting.
After having that tough talk with the doctor, I hit her around midnight, telling her what was going on with Kross, and what the doctors were saying.
I honestly was surprised when she told me that she would be on the first flight here this morning to see him.
She texted me about an hour ago, telling me that her plane had landed, so she should be walking in here any minute.
Even with her not being in the picture like that, this was our son that we’d created together, so if there was going to be conversations about pulling the plug, I wanted us to have that talk and make that decision together.
With my head down, looking down at my shoes, I heard a light knock on the door, followed by the door being pushed open.
I had security posted outside of my son’s room, so I knew that just anyone wouldn’t be able to barge in here.
I’d already told the security that when Noelle came for him to just let her inside.
I still didn’t know who was responsible for shooting Kross, so I just wanted to make safe choices.
I looked up, and it was Noelle coming in.
She walked in with confidence in her walk, and a heavy look in her eyes.
Her feet moved fast, as she made her way to the other side of Kross’s bed, and she just stood there, looking down at him.
Her reaction proved her absence in his life, and the fact that their relationship was pretty much nonexistent.
Any other mother who was super active in their child’s life would have probably passed out if they walked into a room, and saw their only child hooked up to all these machines.
Noelle didn’t do that. I could tell that she was saddened by this shit, but she wasn’t going to fall out on her knees by it.
Looking up at her, there would never be any kind of confusion on why I had been fuckin around with her in the first place.
Noelle was easily the finest bitch that I’d ever dealt with in my life.
She was a beautiful, dark-skinned woman with an hour glass shape on her.
She was born, and raised in Cali, and outside of her looks, and her banging body, one of the things that I liked about Noelle was the kind of person that she was.
I dealt with a lot of women in my life that would try to force a commitment out of me, knowing that I would always make it clear from the jump that I didn’t believe in marriage, and all that other shit.
Noelle wouldn’t force a thing out of me because she was confidant in herself, and she knew that outside of me, she could have any nigga that she wanted.
She didn’t nag me back then, ask me for anything, neither was she trying to change me.
She was cool with me pulling up on her whenever I would be in Cali, or those times when I would book a flight for her to come to Miami to see me.
When she got pregnant with Kross, her ass disappeared, and I didn’t find out about my son until he was already here.
Till this day, her excuse to that was she knew that I would make her get an abortion, so that’s why she didn’t reach out to tell me what was going on.
“You know who did this?” she asked, taking her eyes off Kross, so that she could look at me. Noelle had light brown eyes, and they were round. They held a seriousness to them, as she waited for me to answer the question.
“I went through his phone, and he was at a girl’s house, named Morgan.
Supposedly, they been fuckin around since he came home from prison.
According to her, she’s pregnant, and that’s the reason he was over her crib in the first place because she was going to tell him about the pregnancy.
She said the nigga got real disrespectful, calling her all kinds of bitches, and hoes, and implying that the baby wasn’t his.
That’s when she kicked his ass out, and she said moments later, after he left, that’s when she heard the gunshots.
Her and her neighbors called 9-1-1 because they all heard that shit.
I’m looking at everybody sideways, so I hit her up a couple of days ago, asking her why she hasn’t been down to the hospital to see him yet, and she explained to me that her, and Kross weren’t on that kind of level, and they were just fuckin around.
Plus, she still angry at the nigga for the way he acted when she told him that she was pregnant.
She sent videos to my phone that was captured from her camera system at her apartment.
That nigga was tripping. All in her face, putting his hands on her, and she showed me pictures, and shit of the bruises that he left on her.
I can’t even fault her for not coming down here and checking up on him.
Seeing that he would wild out like that on somebody that he was dealing with, it’s no telling the kind of shit that he was into with niggas, so it could have been anyone that popped him,” I shared with Noelle, and she nodded at my words.
“Is she going to keep the baby?” she wanted to know.
“Her ass already went and got the abortion. She told me that when we spoke over the phone,” I responded.
She didn’t say anything for about two minutes. She just kept her eyes on Kross and then looked back over towards me.
“I used to always tell him that he was going to have that temper for the wrong person one day, and they were going to kill his ass. This doesn’t make me happy to see him like this.
It truly doesn’t. I knew something like this would eventually happen, and to make it easier for the day that I knew I was going to lose him, that’s why I sent him to live with you, so that the pain could hurt a little less when I eventually received the call that he was dead and gone.
You said that the doctor told you his body doesn’t have any function.
He isn’t responding to anything. These machines are the only things that’s keeping him alive.
Why make him suffer?” her tone was cold.
She said it like it was the easiest thing in the world to just pull the plug, when it wasn’t.
I haven’t been to sleep all night because this was all that I could think about.
“Bitch, your ass is cold,” is what I responded with, and when I said that, she let out a grunt.
“’I’m not cold. It’s just the harsh truth,” she said.
I was under so much stress that I didn’t even have the words. Any other time, I probably would have cursed her out, called her all kinds of disrespectful shit, but the only thing that I could think about right now was my son, and what the best option for him would be.
We sat in silence for about five minutes, and after a while, there was a lot of chaos happening outside of the hospital door.
Before I could even question what was going on outside the doors, that’s when Kross’s hospital room door swung open aggressive as hell, hitting the wall so hard, making a loud, thumping sound.
At first, I’m thinking that it was one of the nurses rushing in to see what was going on with Kross, maybe seeing some kind of update in his progress because I knew that they could see the machines monitoring from where they were, but that’s not who was standing on the other side of the door.
Men, and women, all dressed in police uniforms barged into his hospital room.
These motha fuckas had the nerve to pull out rifles, and they had that shit aimed at me, leaving me with no choice, but to raise my hands in surrender, while I stood up, looking at them like they were out of their fuckin minds.
“What the fuck ya’ll niggas on man? Ya’ll came in this bitch a couple of days ago, asking questions, and I told ya’ll then that I didn’t have no fuckin answers for ya’ll!
I don’t know who did this shit to my son!
My son is in this motha fucka, fighting for his life, hooked up to a machine, and ya’ll come in this bitch with guns trained on me!
What the fuck is wrong with ya’ll?” I spat, angry as hell, spit spewing from my mouth with every word that left my lips.
“Dutch Thorne, you’re under arrest,” one of the detectives said, coming over to me.
“Under arrest? What the fuck am I under arrest for?” I asked, stepping back, not about to let this man touch me.
“You’re under arrest for multiple counts of possession with intent to distribute, conspiracy to traffic narcotics, weapon charges, and multiple murders. You have the right to remain silent…
His words trailed off because I got dizzy all of a sudden, it felt like the room was spinning, I could feel beads of sweat start to protrude on my forehead, and even if I wanted to put up a fight and continue backing away from this nigga like I had been doing, my body wouldn’t physically allow me to do so.
Strong hands went on my shoulder, throwing the front of my body into the wall, and my hands were placed behind my back, as cuffs were slapped on me.
Off in the distance, I could hear the sounds from the machines that were hooked up to my son continuing to go off, but it felt like they were getting louder as the seconds went by.
As dizzy as I was, and as blurry as my vision was in this moment, I could see a bunch of nurses rush into the room to tend to Kross, and all I could think about was the fact that I knew this would be the last time that I laid eyes on my boy.
Noelle didn’t give a fuck about Kross. Before these cops could get me down to the station, she was going to be telling them to go ahead and pull the plug.
The shit that was happening to me right now was a double tragedy.
For these cops to come in here, read all these charges to me, along with slapping cuffs on me, that had to mean that they had some kind of proof.
My freedom was getting ready to be on the line, and I was getting ready to lose my son, too.
I couldn’t stop whatever was getting ready to happen to Kross, but as far as my freedom came, I knew that Law would come through for me.
He has been prepared for a moment to happen like this damn near all his life.
One of the reasons he got into law in the first place was for him to help me out, just in case I ever found myself tied up in a jam like this.
Any work that he’s ever put in with any other client that he had, I knew that he would do triple the work for me. That’s just the kind of man that he was. That’s the kind of man that I raised him to be.