The Reason Why (31 page)

“Take us to your crib so we can hit your safe,” Slick said.

“And then we can fuck your bitch!” Dirty added.

“And if she gives good head, we might let her live,” Red said.

“Please, don't kill me!” Chino pleaded. He lowered his head to the ground crying.

“Man, this nigga's a real bitch made nigga!” Red said, laughing.

“If I weren't a straight up G, I would make him suck my dick!” Dirty added.

“This crying-ass nigga would probably do it!” Slick said. He kicked Chino in his side, causing him to roll over on his stomach. The three abductors broke into laughter. Slick moved in too close to Chino, while laughing hysterically. Chino made his move.

Chino grabbed the gun from Slick's hand, while kicking him in the side of his knee. Slick's knee snapped like a dry pretzel and he buckled instantly. Chino aimed the gun and shot Slick in his gut, then turned and popped Red in his chest, dropping him. He quickly shifted his weapon and fired several shots toward Dirty, who caught a round in the head. Chino quickly rose and backed up against a corner wall. He fired his gun at Red once again, striking him in the head.

“Piss on that, bitch!” Chino told him.

Suddenly he heard what sounded like someone running up some steps. He didn't know how many of them there were. He searched the room for an exit. Bullets ripped through the room. Chino ran for a window across the room and dove through it. To his unfortunate surprise, it was a third-floor window. Chino landed on
the roof of the front porch, then rolled off into the yard. His back was hurting, and his leg felt like it was sprung, but he got up and ran anyway. He ran as hard and as heavy as he could. He was so busy trying to escape that he had forgotten that he didn't have any clothes on. He was running butt-ass naked with a bloody gun.

Chino huffed and puffed and raced down the street, making it to a main road. He raced into the road and stopped an oncoming car. It was an older white man inside.

“Help me!” Chino told him.

“Oh, my God!” the man exclaimed. “Get in!”

Chino made his way to the passenger side and climbed into the car. The old man raced off.

“Is anyone chasing you?” the old man asked.

“Probably,” Chino said, breathing heavily.

“We need to get you to the hospital.”

Chino shook his head. “I need to go home. I need a hot bath, and I need some clothes.”

The old man looked at Chino's bloody and naked body. “You're bleeding bad, young fella. You need a doctor.”

Chino shook his head. “Please, they'll ask questions, and then call the police. I'll be okay. I just need to get cleaned up.”

“What happened to you?” the old man asked.

“I was kidnapped. But other than that, you shouldn't ask too many questions.”

The old man nodded. He knew when to shut up.

The nurse ran into Chino's room and pressed the emergency alarm. Soon she was joined by several other doctors and nurses.

“What happened?” one of the doctors asked.

“I just came in here because his heart monitor was going off, and I found him like this.”

Chino was covered in sweat and convulsing violently. His nightmare had caused his heart to palpitate excessively.

“We need a sedative!” the doctor shouted. “We need to make sure that he doesn't go into cardiac arrest.”

Chino's dream found him in his bedroom kneeling, and Pam rushing to him. She found him naked, bloody, and weeping. But in his dream, his Pooh was with him now, and so his heart calmed down to near normal beats. He had his Pooh with him in his dreams. He was better now.

T
he nurse walked into Chino's room and checked his monitors. She wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm and placed the end of a stethoscope against his arm, just beneath the cuff. She pumped up the cuff and listened and timed his heartbeats as it deflated. His blood pressure was still a little on the low side.

Nurse Jen then checked his IV fluids and placed a thermometer in his armpit to measure his temperature. It was also a little low. Chino was not doing well.

Nurse Jen shook her head. Chino was on his way to being another statistic. She had seen way too many of those in her ten years as a triage nurse. Gunshot wound victim after gunshot wound victim poured into the Columbus hospital night after night with alarming regularity. Almost always it was an African-American male who had been shot by another African-American male. Black-on-black crime was the reason she had gone into the medical profession in the first place. It
was black-on-black crime that had taken her younger brother from her.

Nurse Jen's younger brother Jarod had gone to a party one night, and for no apparent reason, while he and his friends were leaving the party, a crew from the Southside rode by and unleashed on them. Northside against Southside, Eastside against Westside, it was always the same shit. Blacks killing other blacks for bullshit reasons. And now she had another one. This one was, more likely than not, a victim of crack violence, she surmised. One way or the other, crack was going to destroy all in its path. Whether you used it or sold it, it was going to catch up to you in the end. It caught up to the users by making them addicts. It caught up to the dealers by sending them to prison or, even worse, to the morgue. This one was headed to the latter, if he stayed in the condition that he was in. That thing about the first thirty-six hours being critical was true. But what they don't tell you is that if you haven't gotten better in the first thirty-six, then you were in more and more trouble with each passing day. Open wounds, infections, low blood pressure, low body temperature, and so many other things all conspired against you. Time was not on your side.

Nurse Jen rubbed Chino's arm.

“Fight, baby boy,” she said in her thick West Indian accent. “Fight. I need you to fight for your life.”

Chino moaned and turned his head to the side.

“Pooh, those muthafuckas tried to play me,” Chino said.

“It's okay, you're home now,” Pam reassured him. “What happened?”

Chino shook his head. “Pooh, this is murder one, baby. Ain't
no turning back if I tell you. From this point on, you my accomplice. Either you down, or you can turn and leave now.”

“Chino, you know I got you, boo. Now, what's up? Whatever happened, I'm sure that they got what their hand called for.”

Chino held up a gun. It was a gun that Pam didn't recognize as one of his.

“Pooh, baby, this is murder,” Chino repeated. “Without this weapon, they got nothing, though.”

“Chino, let's do what we gotta do,” Pam told him. The two of them stared into each other's eyes and embraced. She could smell the blood on him.

Chino kissed Pam gently on her forehead. “You all I got, Pooh.”

“Christonos!” Nurse Jen called out to him.

Chino was turning his head rapidly from side to side and moaning. She was scared that he was going to become unsettled or even violent and pull out his tubes. They should have strapped him down after his first episode.

“Help!” Nurse Jen shouted into the hall. “Help me!”

The park was near their new home up I-270, off Route 161, near Dublin. Chino and Pam walked through the darkness toward the boat docks.

“Keep an eye out, Pooh,” Chino told her. “We don't want nobody to see us. If somebody sees us and wonders what we're doing, they may call the police or come and see for themselves.”

The two of them made their way to the docks, and then down an embankment to a shed beneath the docks where ropes for the boats were stored. Chino pulled on the shed door, but it was locked.