Page 72 of Ten

Chapter Twenty-Two

WhenIwokeupin the hospital after Kiki tried to kill me, I thought I was dead. My ears were ringing from the gunshot blasts, and my vision was blurry and unfocused. The lights above me were so bright. My addled brain decided I was in heaven.

The sudden searing pain informed me I was in hell.

Amid the ringing in my ears, I picked out voices—men and women, all of them tense and taut. I couldn’t make sense of their words. Everything was garbled and sounded as if it were coming from inside a tin can.

The pain was so bad. It was killing me. I tried to get their attention, but no one noticed my lips moving. I lifted a hand, and smacked at the plastic mask covering my nose and mouth. A nurse gently grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand down, leaned over, and spoke loudly and clearly, “Nisha, you’ve been shot. You’re in the emergency room.”

“My baby,” I said, my mouth dry and my lips sticking together. “My baby.”

If she heard me, the nurse didn’t confirm it. No one seemed to care what I thought or what I needed. Once I was recovered and undergoing intense therapy, I would feel so much anger and frustration toward the medical staff. I had gone from being completely controlled by Kiki to completely controlled by strangers who thought they knew what was best for me.

Theydidknow what was best for me. They saved my life. They gave me a chance to heal and recover and live a life so good it seemed like a dream.

But that night, writhing on that exam table, strapped down when I became combative, I hated them. I hated everyone.

The pain of the crash c-section knocked me unconscious. The anesthesiologist had been furiously attempting to get me sedated, but there wasn’t enough time. The first cut happened before I got a full dose of pain medication. Years later, that ungodly burning, tearing pain would wake me up in the middle of the night, leaving me clutching my belly as phantom surgeons hacked into me.

When I woke the next time, I was in the ICU. My memories were fuzzy still, and my head throbbed. My stomach felt strange, and the realization that my baby was gone left me in a panic. I shouted for help, desperate to find her. Had they taken her to the NICU? Had CPS come and taken her away because I was unfit?

No, it was worse than that. So much worse.

The nurses who came in to help me and the doctor on shift that day were so kind to me. They didn’t blame or lecture me. They weren’t rough or nasty. They were gentle in their care and reminded me again and again how strong I was to have survived what I did.

I would hear that so much over the next few months. I didn’t believe it. I wasn’t strong. I was weak. I was stupid. I was useless. I was worthless. I deserved all the bad things that had happened to me.

It would take a long while to forgive myself. Therapy, so many group meetings, and hundreds of Sundays in a church pew listening to sermons on love and forgiveness. It came upon me slowly and finally arrived the morning I sat in the front pew at Mimi June’s funeral service. She had known her end was coming, and had planned out her funeral right down to the last detail including the readings.

Mark 11:25.

The pastor began reading, and it was as if I finally understood the words. It was my grandmother’s last piece of advice, chosen before her death and given to me after she was gone. The tears began to fall, and I wept, purging and cleansing myself of all the guilt and shame.

But I couldn’t bring myself to forgive Kiki. After everything he had done to me and to others, it was impossible. Maybe that made me a bad person. Maybe it meant that I hadn’t learned a damned thing in therapy. Maybe it meant I hadn’t actually received the full grace of forgiveness my grandmother had wanted for me.

I could live with that. The same way I had to live with the loss of my daughter.

Lorelai was a beautiful baby. There was nothing of Kiki in her face. She was all me, all chubby cheeked and little nose. They let me hold her as long as I wanted. She was bundled up tight in a receiving blanket, and one of the nurses had put a tiny bow right on top of her dark hair. It was easy to imagine she was sleeping as I rocked her in my arms.

Mimi June was with me when it was time to let Lorelai go. I cried so hard, so violently overcome with mourning, that I popped my staples. I was in a gaping, raw, endless chasm of grief, and I didn’t know if anything would assuage that pain.

In time, that pain faded and morphed into a sense of longing and emptiness. It would spring to life sometimes, reminding me of what I had lost. The sight of a little girl in Target. A little girl making faces at her brother in the church pew in front of me. A little girl in my cousin Willa’s living room having her hair braided. The air would rush out of my lungs, and I would be overtaken by visions of what could have been.

I never gave up hope. Someday, I would find a man who wanted to be my partner, who wanted to have children and raise a family. I would find a man worthy of my love.

Only I never could have imagined that man would be a nearly seven-foot-tall Russian ex-con who cooked delicious meals and collected old books and even tolerated my grumpy, persnickety cat.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Tenpulledinandparked behind the row of storage units where Kostya conducted his less-than-savory business. “Stay quiet. Don’t make any stupid moves.”

“I understand.” Alejandro sighed. “Let’s get it over with.”

As much as Ten hoped it wasn’t going to get bloody in there, he knew that it was likely. There were rules in the underworld and consequences for breaking them. Alejandro had taken a made man hostage with a gun and knife. Back in the gas station bathroom, Ten had wiped away the trickle of dried blood on his neck, but Kostya would zero in on that cut with his eagle-eyed stare.

When they reached the door of the storage unit, he knocked three times and stood back, making sure he could be seen fully in the camera mounted above him. The door swung open, and he spotted Nikolai in the center of the retrofitted container, arms crossed and leaning back against a rolling toolbox that Ten was fairly certain held not one single wrench.

“You’re alive.” Nikolai looked him over like a mother duck would a lost duckling.

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