Page 60 of Love me Like XO

“To go handle what Irish, there is nothing we can do right now.”

“Nah, I don’t believe that. Fiona knows something, and I swear to God, on my momma’s life. She’s gonna tell me.” Then he walked off without another word.

I was torn because part of me wanted to go with him, while part of me wanted to be here with everyone else. Then the part of me that knew that he was about to go do something reckless followed him out of the hospital.

“Where are you going?” he asked as soon as he realized I was getting in the passenger seat of his car.

“With you, if you do something stupid, I do something stupid.”

He didn’t say another word. Instead, he started the car and sped out the parking lot within seconds.

A few minutes into the ride, my phone started to ring. When I looked down, I saw that it was Malik calling me. I answered.

“Hello.”

“Where did you go?” He sounded concerned, which I knew he was.

“With Irish, we should be back that way soon.”

He was silent for a moment, which let me know he knew what was up. “Be safe, man.”

“Okay.” We hung up not a moment later. We pulled up in front of Grandma’s house seeing all of the lights out. She wasn’t there, but there was one other place she could have been. As if he was reading my mind, Irish pulled away from the curb and we went toward the north side. Fiona’s pissy ass mother lived really far up north. It was nothing to go slap that ho around until she spit out a few answers about her daughter’s whereabouts. That turned out to be a waste of a drive as well, because she wasn’t there, and neither was her mother.

“You don’t think she would be with Benson, do you?”

“Nah, that nigga stays with his baby mama and sh?—”

“Remember, Empress told us she saw Benson, Zero’s sister, and Fiona at the mall the other day. She said they were all booed up and hanging tight. Then that day at Grandma’s house they were all out there. You don’t think he wou?—”

“Hell nah, that nigga ain’t stupid.” Irish dismissed the idea, but I didn’t.

When we madeit back to the hospital, they said there was no change in her condition. That the surgery was a success, but she was still out. Zero stood in front of her bed like a bodyguard, staring at her body, waiting for some sort of movement that probably wouldn’t come tonight. I hated this for him, for all of us but I told myself that she would be alright, that this too would pass because Empress was one of the toughest bitches I knew. She was a fighter and so were those babies because they were of her.

“Do you want to go home?” Malik’s tone broke my mental rampage.

“No, I don’t want to miss anything. I want to be here when she wakes.” I knew she wouldn’t wake tonight, but my body wasn’t permitted to go anywhere and be there for any longer than I had to be. My body knew that we needed to stay here, close to the person who held everything for me, close to my sister. “You don’t have to stay.”

“Yes, I do. That’s fam right there. We’re all here, babe.”

I nodded my head and allowed him to pull me into his body. I needed that. And his warm arms, in this moment where everything seemed so uncertain, where death loomed in every corner. As the thought that I could possibly lose my sister threatened to settle into my bones. I needed him.

I didn’t get much sleep through the night. If anything I’ll probably got a wink, But every time a hospital monitor went off, my eyes are open, and I was staring toward the room they had put her in. We ended up taking over the hospital waiting room. Then somehow my grandmother was able to make the nurses bring us warm blankets to sleep. Sleep. It didn’t come to any of us.

It was about eight o’clock in the morning when Malik told me we needed to go home to shower, and we could come right back. I didn’t want to leave, but he was right. He was sure we will be right back, so I allowed him to take me home.

He didn’t speak much on the ride there and neither did I. Because he had things on his mind, and I had things on my mind. Like, where the fuck was Fiona and who the fuck had run my sister off a road.

About six minutes into the ride, he got a call from someone named Marbles. He put him on speaker and put the phone on his lap.

“Yeah.”

“I got that tape for you, and I sent it right on through.” After he said that, everything was a blur. I felt like I passed out, butprobably the exhaustion from being up all night took over. Like sleep had been forced upon me and the only thing I wanted to dream about was my sister.

EMPRESS

They were crying but I couldn’t silence their cries because I couldn’t find them. I couldn’t locate the babies that I knew were not in my womb because the plane that I was in was not home. I was in a place where everything seemed to be floating, even me. Where was I? What had happened that had me so suspended that it hurt? So isolated that I could feel everyone around me but say nothing to them. I couldn’t even comfort the man I loved who stood near this bed in the most excruciating pain. He reeked of pain. I didn’t even have to look at him or be able to see him, to know that he stood here in pain, his footsteps moment after moment, pacing the room, with pain. I couldn’t tell him that I would be alright because I didn’t know if I would be alright because I was not familiar with any state that I was in.

I had never been here before. Not when I had my appendix taken out and I had to go under anesthesia for surgery, and definitely not in high school when I had to get my ankle fixed because I had broken it in four places. I’d have never been in this place where I couldn’t control what I was doing. I couldn’t control what I was hearing.

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