Always (29 page)

Cheryl closed her eyes for the first time, hearing the pain in her husband's voice.

“And on top of everything else,” he whispered, “he has you too.”

Cheryl couldn't say a word as she started to cry.

“You know something, Cheryl? When I was a kid, I was always the first one picked for anything we played. If it was marbles, twenty-one, or even high school baseball, I was
always
first team. Even when I graduated the academy, I was in the top half of my class. Will I have to live the rest of my life playing second fiddle to this man's memory? Not to what he was . . . but to what could have been? I can't compete with that, Cheryl. How can I compete with Henry fucking Davis the Second? I can't . . . and I won't!”

“Brandon,” she replied barely audible. “Brandon, I'm not asking you to compete with him. Brandon, I do love you. I told you that. And because I love you, I can't lie to you. I have to be one hundred percent honest. Maybe if I would have just lied—”

“And that's supposed to make me feel better?” he yelled into the phone so loud Cheryl jumped.

Hearing his rage and knowing her husband, she said, “Brandon, please don't hang up.”

“How would you feel, Cheryl? How would you feel if the man you loved with all of your heart, body, and soul told you he didn't love you? Or at least he didn't love you in the way you
deserved
to be loved? It's a deep hurt, Cheryl. It's a pain I can't even begin to describe. If someone had reached into my body, yanked out my veins, and dragged me down the road with them over cut glass, it would have hurt less than hearing you say what you said to me.”

As a steady stream of tears poured down her cheek, she knew she understood much more than he could ever know.

CHERYL

In 1995 I started looking at Brandon more seriously. We got married in August of that year.

I must admit, initially Brandon seemed almost like a child to me. A very fine child, I should add. But then he became kinda like a friend. Someone with whom I could hang out, go to brunch, or see a movie from time to time. But then we made love one night in his apartment, and I must say I was impressed with his maturity and flattered that at my age and with all the female attention I was sure he was getting, he would take the time to be with me.

The day after we made love, I received flowers. He sent me a dozen imported white tulips. He knew that I was really into the hidden meaning of flowers, so he sent the only flower that said “You are the perfect lover.” I loved the way he courted me. Although he was young, he was not aggressive or presumptuous. From time to time there were other guys who asked me out and a few I even spent time with. But two hours of them bashing their ex-wives or sorry children was more than enough. One guy even had a grandchild, and that left me feeling a little too close to AARP registration. I'm a woman who will tell you her age in a heartbeat and be proud of it, but I felt twenty years older when I was with most of those men.

I guess that was why Brandon was so refreshing. I knew very little about him. He was not secretive by any stretch of the imagination, but he was always shining the light on me. No man had ever done that. Henry had a one-track mind, and poor Darius . . . well, he didn't have one at all.

Two days before Thanksgiving of '95, I was running to the elevator in Jackson Memorial Hospital, a few minutes late to work. The previous night I had gotten only two hours of sleep, and the bags under my eyes were evidence. Some time back I had I found out that Sarah was still seeing Austin before he was finally sent back to jail. I must say one thing about him, he didn't leave her empty-handed. A month after he was sent up to the state penitentiary for a ten-year stay, she discovered he'd left her pregnant and with herpes. When I found out I was livid, but I was glad that due to his incarceration, he would be kept away from her. So on top of everything else in my life, I was now a grand
mother taking care of a newborn with colic while Sarah worked nights in a factory.

As I rode up the elevator, I was thinking about the meal I needed to start preparing for the holiday. Brandon was bringing a couple of friends from the department, and my mom wanted to bring a girlfriend of hers as well. The nice cozy dinner I'd planned for my mother, Brandon, and me had grown to a soft nine, which meant cook for twelve because there would likely be more. As the elevator door opened, I was already tired and I had yet to tend to a single patient.

“Good morning,” said Erica, who was one of my best friends on my floor at the hospital. “Another sleepless night?”

“Yeah,” I said, walking over to the coffeemaker and noticing it was empty.

She continued her conversation with Stan, one of three male nurses we had in our ward. “So what was she doing when you were taking her vitals?”

“Actually I didn't take her vitals. I just walked in and she was knocked out. I glanced at the chart and I don't remember what Snodgrass prescribed, but she was dead to the world. I mean I'm not into older women, but with her I'd make an exception.”

“Yeah, I saw her on the news a few months ago jogging in a five-K for cancer or something.”

“Girl is fine as hell. But I heard he was flirting with Vivica A. Fox. You know . . . the sister from
Soul Food.”

“I heard that too, but you know how rumors are always floating about him. At one time they even had him with one of the white chicks from
Friends
. But on the fo' real, Senata is finer than I don't know what!”

I was about to have my time card stamped when I heard the words, and almost time-marked my forefinger.

“I mean,” she continued, “you can tell he's a little shy because he was on this show one time and this sister started telling him how handsome he was. He started blushing and
that just made him look cuter. Fine as all outdoors with those dimples and—”

“You all talking about Henry Davis?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Stan said as he reloaded his meds tray. “His wife's upstairs on the ninth floor under the name Yvette Shaw. I think it's her maiden name.”

As he spoke, I tried to keep my thoughts from showing on my face.

“She's up there for exhaustion, and they kept her overnight to test for Epstein-Barr.”

“Oh really? When did she check in?”

“Early this morning,” Erica replied. “Girl, you know half of Miami claims they either knew him, grew up with him, or slept with him. Wait a minute, you grew up here . . . Did you know him?”

“No,” I said as I retrieved my supplies to make my rounds. “So who's her attending nurse?”

“Tina. Why? . . . Mrs.
Married
Lady.”

“Please. I was just curious.” As I left the room all I could think about was a way to get Tina to switch patients with me, even though she and I rarely even spoke to each other. Switching patients was not common, but if you did have a patient you could not get along with, it was allowed. Why did I want to see Leslie? I have no earthly idea except maybe seeing her would give me the closure that I so badly wanted. Let's face it, Brandon was the type of man most women dream of, but I was being held hostage in my mind to the memory of this eighteen-year-old man-child in shoulder pads. I think a part of my reason for holding on to the past was that it was something I knew in my heart I could never have. Marrying Brandon had closed most of the hole inside of me; now I needed the job completed. At that moment I saw Tina walking toward the lounge, and I went in after her. We talked for three minutes and it cost me two days off. I think she thought I wanted to sell pictures or something of Leslie to the tabloids, because she told me any money I got, I had to split. I just ignored the comment like I usually ignored her.

Needless to say, the first patient I checked on was Mrs.
Yvette Shaw. As I got to the door I quickly thumbed through her medical records and saw Dr. Snodgrass's notation regarding her early menopause as well as his scribbles concerning the cysts on her ovaries which prevented her from bearing children. As a child, Henry had always talked about having children, and I wondered why they had not had any. Now I understood.

When I walked in the door of the large private room, it was dark due to the blinds being drawn to block out the morning light. I was extremely nervous. Then I thought,
What if Henry shows up to visit her, with me in here?
My second biggest fear was that he would recognize me. The biggest . . . that he wouldn't. Leslie was sleeping quietly and her hair looked like a cheap wig. As I walked over to the bed, in spite of my happiness with Brandon, I wanted to ask her if she knew just how fortunate she was. She probably didn't. Looking at her, I thought,
This is the woman who sleeps with the man I dream about, and I bet she takes him for granted. Bitch
. Then she opened her eyes.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” I replied, methodically and reached for her meds chart to justify why I was in the room.

Looking around to see where she was, Leslie instinctively put her hand up to her head, and said, “My God, I must look a mess. Do you have a mirror?”

“You look fine, ma'am.”

“Please.” She giggled. “I must look like I have not only mousse but a little bit of
squirrel
in my hair too. Wait a minute, is it time to check me out again? That little white girl just left not too long ago.”

“I know . . .
Mrs
. Shaw. I am just following up.”
I'd bet anything she sleeping around on him
, I said to myself.

She looked at me and her eyebrows lowered. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes,” I said, flipping the pages of the medical file. “It says ‘Yvette Shaw.' I hope that's correct, because if it's not, we have a problem.” I put the file down and abruptly grabbed her wrist to take her pulse.

“Yeah,” she said as her eyebrows relaxed and she moved
her head from side to side on her pillow searching for a comfortable spot. “That's me, all right.”

As I took her vitals, I noticed her squint at the closed blinds, and then she asked, “What time is it?”

I wanted to say morning, but instead I said “A little after seven.”

“What time does breakfast come around?” And then looking at my pin, she added, “Cheryl?”

“They should be on this floor within the next thirty minutes. So you have an appetite? That's good.”

“Not really, but I could use some coffee . . . and a smoke.”

“The coffee, we can handle,” I said with a smile, and then wondered if Henry, too, was a smoker.

She closed her eyes and asked, “Can you open those blinds? I don't know what they gave me last night, but I hate feeling this groggy.”

“Seems they gave you a Valium.”

“Umm. Well, if this is how they make you feel, I hope he doesn't give me any more.”

As I pulled up the blinds, I heard the door crack as if someone was just peeping in, and my heart stopped. If that was him, I had no idea what I would say. Then she said, “Marcus? Is that you?”

“Yes. Is it okay to come in?”

“Sure, I'm decent.”

I turned around to find this chubby Asian gentleman who spoke with not a trace of an accent. Actually the only accent one could detect was a tinge of Alabama'nese in his vowels. “So how ya feeling this morning?”

“Fine,” she replied, and then looked at me with a smile and said, “except for that little unwarranted no-smoking policy they have in this place.”

“Well, you look better,” he said. “Had us worried last night.”

“I felt like shit. I had a sore throat most of the day, but then I got a headache and felt like I was about to black out.”

“I know. All I could think of was not to let anything happen to you on my watch. Henry . . . I mean Louis would
have gone through the frigging roof,” he said with a smile in his tone.

As they spoke, I busied myself by adjusting the IV and the monitors in the room to justify my eavesdropping. And then he said, “Well, I need to run to the lounge to make a few phone calls. Can I bring you something to—”

“You could bring me—”

“Besides cigarettes.”

“Oh, then nothing,” she said with a smile as she stretched, apparently feeling the full effect of the medication. As Marcus left, I tucked her bed. “Cheryl?” she asked. “How do you enjoy working here?”

“I like it. The hours are crazy . . . but that just how it is in the medical field.”

“I've often wondered about that,” she said as she closed her eyes and then yawned. “Why they would have doctors working thirty-six-hour shifts when they're making life-and-death decisions. I mean, air traffic controllers only work six-hour shifts and they get a two-hour break. I guess it's all in the number of people you kill at once, huh?”

“Yeah, the hours are long, but I think it's been done that way forever, so I doubt it'll ever change.” I picked up her medical records, preparing to leave, and said, “Okay, Mrs. Shaw, everything looks—”

“Tell me something else,” she said, looking at me with sleep weighing heavily on her eyelids once again. “When you were in high school—”

My heart came to a dead stop.

“—did you want to be a nurse?”

“Oh. I mean, umm, no, actually I didn't. I had a sick husband and I nursed him so much I decided to make it a career.”

“Umm,” she said. “So how long have you been married?”

I could tell she wanted to enjoy not being Mrs. U.S. senator's wife for a while, so I put the files down and returned to her bed. “Actually, I'm a newlywed. My first husband passed away.”

She opened her eyes, which appeared fatigued, and looked at me as if she really did care as she said, “I'm sorry
to hear that, but congratulations on your marriage. Do you have kids?”

“I have one. Her name is Sarah.”

“That's wonderful,” she said, closing her eyes with a wistful smile. “That's wonderful. It's good to have kids, isn't it?” And then her voice blew out like the soft light of a candle. Just as I turned to quietly walk away, her eyes reopened. “I'm sorry, this medicine has got me falling asleep. So, Cheryl, when you were a kid, what did you want to be?”