Motown Throwdown (25 page)

It’s been three weeks since she died.

Three weeks since I’ve seen or held Kandace, too. After the funeral, Bishop followed me back to the house and stayed a while but he didn’t come just to be a friend. He came to let me know I was the biggest prick he’d ever met. It doesn’t make it right but I know I said awful things to her, I just don’t remember doing it.

Bishop had no problem letting me know in detail exactly what I said. Laying that on her wasn’t fair but I can’t lie and say that when I first saw her come through those doors wearing the look of loss that I didn’t blame her. The anguish was just so fucking intense. I needed someone else to take it for a minute but it should have never been her. Habit had me falling back on hurting her and the guilt over that was a heavy weight. My grandma wouldn’t have wanted that and to top it off, I put my hands on her too.

I’ve called, texted, and went by her place so many times I’d lost count. I didn’t have the balls to try the hospital but I was worried about her. No one at Lush knows shit so today before work, I decided to go by her dads’ place in case she was staying there. Sitting in their driveway, I lost the nerve to get out. But I didn’t have to wait or worry because Peter came to me.

“Come inside, son,” he says opening my door. Following him in, he advises me to sit while he called for Dick. Having them both staring at me had me tapping my foot. But it was Dick who spoke first and I did not like what he had to say.

“She’s gone, Rome,” he says crossing his arms over his massive chest. “She left two weeks ago.”

“Son,” Peter says sitting next to me. “We are so sorry about your grandmother. She was a lovely woman.”

“Now that the condolences are out of the way, show him out, Peter.” Dick says leaving the room.

Standing up to leave I wanted to grill Peter but didn’t. She left, because of me and I knew it. Honestly, I just couldn’t believe she did it.

“Rome,” he says quietly. “In the quiet times when you find yourself blaming her I’d like you to remember she loved Clara too. My daughter is tough, yet extremely fragile. She has a gift, a gift to heal but sometimes it’s out of her tiny hands and placed into the Lord’s. Kandace tried for nearly six hours to keep her with us. She wept for your grandmother and for the man she loved. Now, she didn’t share what happened, but I suspect it was why she left. For my daughter to leave I can only assume it was to lick her wounds. Because it’s not the lives she saves that keeps her going, pushing her to go that extra mile, it’s the lives she doesn’t. Losing Clara and then you was too much.”

“I told her she failed me,” I choke out. “That I hated her.”

“Oh, son,” he whispers.

“You said that to
my
daughter?” says Dick throwing me into the wall. With a forearm in my throat, I didn’t fight him. I simply said,

“Yes sir, I did.”

“Then you are the piece of shit no father would want near their daughter,” he yells in my face. “You bullied her in school, humiliated her and still she stood by your sorry ass! She even got us rooting for your worthless hide! Don’t you look at me like that boy, you don’t think her brother didn’t have eyes and ears back then? She sat in that courtroom and mourned for you. She brought you here, to meet her parents and was proud of you. She never gave up on you and when she fell to her knees in my God damn kitchen crying over your ass, I swore if I ever saw you again---“

“Enough!” says Peter pulling him off of me. Coughing, I move toward the door to leave for good but it’s Peter who stops me. “She made us promise,” he says giving Dick a look that said shut the hell up. “That if ever we ran into you or had we gone to the funeral we were never to tell you that Clara’s last words to her were,
take care of my Rome, he needs you
.”

“Fuck,” I cry into my hands.

“Now you know,” says Dick opening the door to show me out.

Walking out to my car I could barely find the ignition. Yeah, now I knew but there wasn’t shit I could do about it. Working that night took everything I had. When work was over I had nothing, no one to go home to. In the break room Bishop ended his vow of silence and sat down next to me.

“How you holding up?” he asks cracking a can of Dr. Pepper.

“How does it look like I’m holding up?”

“You talk to the Doc ?”

“No,” I tell him. “She’s gone.”

“Explain that.”

“Doctors without Borders, Sierra Leone,” I yell in his face. ”Fucking gone!”

“Well whose fucking fault is that?” he yells back in mine.

“I get it, asshole. It’s mine, happy now?”

“So that’s it? End of story? You ain’t gonna call her or write her? No apology? Just boom, you failed me now fuck off? The only failure here brother, is
you
.”

“You’re right,” Then like a switch went off, I shot up from my seat and drove home with a plan. It had to work. In the event it didn’t, I’d be calling Jules to help get me a passport. Either way, I was getting Kandace back.

“You date much, Teach?” he asks.

“Do you mean, do I go out and get to know someone or do I just fuck?” I counter. When his eyes go round I smiled to myself. Over the last few months I’ve figured out what he’s really trying to say when he asks a simple question it’s never that question, it’s the opposite. “Do I fuck much is what I believe you meant to ask and the answer is, no. But if you did mean do I date much the answer is, yes.”

“I don’t date at all,” he says, shocked he said it. So when Roman says that it means all he does is fuck which makes me very sad.

“You should try it,” I offer not wanting him to try it or continue fucking his way through the campus.

“I’ll stick to what I’m good at,” he mumbles.

Roman Peterson had so much to offer and had no idea how. He also would never let me show him or let me in. Never would he date me or fuck me and that messed with me on every level.

I loved him unconditionally and he’ll never know.

Speaking with my dads today was bittersweet. Of course they were full of news and wanted to hear all about my time here but, when I explained the dire situation, they demanded I come home. However, coming home wouldn’t be that easy. The village I was in was dealing with an outbreak of Ebola and we were losing people daily. It was a matter of time before the US media caught wind of it. Especially when a group of doctors and nurses left for home earlier in the week and according to our rep, will have to be quarantined. Yep, the United States is going to blow this one up.

You would think death would get easier after seeing it so much, when in fact, each passing made it harder to handle the next. These people were suffering, knew death was waiting and knew we couldn’t stop it. Now it was spreading quickly and word that nearby villages and towns were affected heightened the panic here.

For me and others like me who have been here since the first case hit, leaving was no longer an option because chances were high that we were also infected. Although as of today, I show no signs. I worry that should I contract the virus I’ll never see home again.

Then there’s the downtime. Night time, I found, was the hardest for me.

Between hearing patients screaming and the desert-like conditions, I would focus on him to get me through. So many years had come and gone, where I had nights like this one wondering how he was. I can count on one hand how many times I regretted going into medicine. When trying to be noble blew up in my face. The night Clara passed, I went to see my dads for comfort. Not having anyone else to turn to, I fell to my knees screaming at the unfairness of death. An emotional shit show, I asked them why. Why after pining for him all these years would it come down to this? Having my heart trampled again did not feel good. In fact, there were times when I could feel it fracture and the gap widen.

The very next morning after Clara passed, I called my rep for the program and was cleared by my physician for travel the three days after that. With so much shit on my shoulders, I knew that I had to go. I needed to replace the bad with some good. I could make a difference and follow a dream even if the circumstances were less than pleasant. Regardless of what he said, that he threw me away, I still missed him so much, at times breathing was impossible. Then when I couldn’t catch my breath, I panicked that it was a symptom and ran to the clinic for testing.  Being here may be helping others but I wasn’t doing myself any favors.

I was a fucking wreck.

Vowing to check in with my dads daily by email, I crawled on top of my cot and prayed for sleep and for Rome. I wasn’t a religious person but I was a spiritual one. Hard not to be when you see the Lord’s work first hand. Everything may happen for a reason but in my case, I couldn’t figure out what it was. Loving someone came with challenges, I knew that but I wanted to make Rome’s life easier not harder. Turns out I failed at that too. Leaving was best for both of us. Rome had the crew at Lush who loved him, they would be his support system now.

Grabbing my chest I begged myself to stop reliving that night, to move on, accept that it wasn’t meant to be. But dammit, I had just told him that I loved him, had loved him the whole time. He admitted to loving me for ten years. How do two people love each other for that long then lose it? The injustice of it sucked. The urge to write to him and beg him to forgive me was making my fingers twitch but I didn’t do it.

He said I had failed him, twice.

He said that he fucking hated me.

He had called me, Teach.

Stuffing my face in my pillow to scream, the flap to my tent was opened by Becca one of the nurses here. “Dr. Kane, it’s Adjoa. You asked to be called in when it was time.”

Squaring my shoulders and wiping my nose, I rush putting my gear on to reach Adjoa in time. She was a beautiful girl, fourteen if I had to guess. She was smart and passionate. Before losing her ability to speak she shared with me that she wanted to become a doctor, to help people, like I did.

Now at eleven eighteen she was leaving this life after weeks of suffering. Holding her gently, I sang to her. She wouldn’t know who Sam Cooke was, but his gospel song, I had hoped would ease her. When she took her last breath, I closed her eyes and grabbed my journal to record time of death.

The next morning I researched her beautiful name, Adjoa.

I did this for each patient, no exceptions.

Adjoa meant Monday born.

She died in my arms on a Monday as well.

“My boy’s in love with a doctor,” she says.

“Yes ma’am.”

“She waited ten years for you, I can’t say I know many that would. She’s special, that one. She saved her love for you, Rome, take care of it.”

“I will, grandma.”

“I know you will, I raised you right. See you two on Sunday.”

There was a relief in her voice when she spoke to me. After years of misery, my grandma knew I was finally happy and on my way to being whole. That was the last conversation I’d ever have with her.

Sleep could wait, this couldn’t.

Dumping every letter I ever wrote to her on the floor, I started arranging them. Her shoe box with the letters she wrote to me sat on my kitchen table and I wasn’t in a strong enough place to read them yet. But I could start here, with the letters I wrote.

The process took hours because there were hundreds. Reading them again was a sucker punch, that’s for damn sure. The problem was I wasn’t smart enough to date them so I had to go by memory of where I was in my head at that time. One letter in particular had me sobbing. The one where I asked her for forgiveness, having no idea she already had given it.

Because that was Kandace, always forgiving me.

Staring at the clock knowing I couldn’t hit her dads’ place this early, I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote another letter. This went on for several hours and before I knew it, it was almost ten am and my letter was close to nine pages long. Eight of those pages were memories I’d had of us, of her.