by Erica Hilton
There was so much to do to keep her busy, she actually thought it was a blessing in disguise that Nico had flown back to New York because she knew all he would have wanted to do was gamble and fuck.
Mia had a slew of fine dining choices to choose from, and she made sure that she ate well for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She did it all. All except for the nightclubs on the resort. She wasn’t in the mood to get hit on by anyone. She also didn’t trust herself anymore when she drank in public. The last thing she wanted was to have a repeat of what happened to her when she flew to Miami and ended up getting drunk and fucking a friend of her arch nemesis, Jasmine.
***
The doctor acknowledged the police officer who stood guard outside Jasmine’s hospital room. He walked up to her bed, where her mom stood on one side and her father on the other.
Jasmine’s parents were grateful she was alive, but they were angry with her for putting herself in that position where she’d almost been killed. And they were even angrier with her for resisting their demands that she leave Nico alone for good.
“Jasmine, you heard what the doctor said,” her father reminded her. “You were a fraction of a centimeter away from having that bullet pierce your jugular vein, and then what? We wouldn’t be standing here talking to you right now.”
The doctor patiently waited for an opening to interject.
“But I’m okay!” Jasmine stressed.
As it turned out, Jasmine was extremely lucky. The bullet that had hit her in the neck had actually been more of a deep graze wound. But the bullet had managed to tear off a large piece of flesh from the right side of her neck.
Jasmine’s mom and dad were taking turns tag-teaming her while also bashing Nico.
Thankfully for Jasmine, her doctor stepped in. “Excuse me. If I may just interrupt,” he respectfully said.
“Sure, sure,” Jasmine’s father stepped to the side to allow the doctor to get closer to Jasmine.
“I know this is an extremely emotional and traumatic thing that you all have experienced as a family. And although Jasmine’s condition had been upgraded to stable, it’s important that she gets her rest. The more she can relax without dealing with anything emotional, then the quicker she will return back to normal.”
“Thank you for saying that. Now, Mom and Dad, stop stressing me!”
Powerless, Jasmine’s mother and father looked at each other. There was an awkward silence in the room.
The doctor tried to put everyone at ease. “So, does anyone have any medical questions for me?”
“Yeah. When can I go home?’ Jasmine asked.
The doctor smiled. “We’re doing our best to get you home as soon as possible.”
Jasmine’s mother shook her head. She asked the doctor if the surgery was still planned for the next day, and if he could re-explain what the surgery entailed.
“Yes, the surgery is still on for tomorrow morning. And what we are going to do is repair Jasmine’s deep ulnar branch.”
Her mom asked, “And what is that again?”
“Well, there are two main arteries that enter the hand—the radial artery and the ulnar artery. You can think about those two arteries as being the trunk of the tree, so to speak. And then think of two big tree branches that grow out of the trunk of the tree. We have to repair that branch that grows out of that main tree trunk.”
Jasmine’s father nodded his head to tell the doctor that he understood.
Her mother said, “And, if I understand correctly, that branch that you are going to operate on, it also has other smaller branches that stem off of it?”
“You got it.” The doctor smiled. “You should have gone to medical school,” he joked.
“So is that the only purpose of the surgery?’
“Ugggghh!” Jasmine sighed in disgust. “Ma, what’s with all these questions? He’s Chinese, so you know he’s smart. I’ll be fine. Goodness!”
Jasmine’s mother was embarrassed, but the doctor smiled. He didn’t take offense to what Jasmine had said.
“Yes, that is the only reason for the surgery, and after the surgery, of course, we will have to have a splint for about two to four weeks for the bone fracture in her hand to properly heal.”
Jasmine shook her head. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“I been worried about how everything is going to heal, and I was thinking that what I’ll do is just get a tattoo on my hand and on my neck to cover the scars and I—”
“Oh, Lord Jesus, help me!” Jasmine’s mother screamed out loud, her right hand held to the sky.
“And I just want to know how soon would I be able to get a tattoo?”
Her father said, “Jasmine, if you get a tattoo on your neck, you better never step foot in my house again! And I mean that.”
The doctor didn’t know how to respond, but he wanted to remain neutral.
“Well, why don’t we take things one step at a time? Let’s deal with the surgery first and seeing how quickly we can get you back home and back to normal.”
“I feel fine now. I’m ready to leave.”
The doctor smiled. “You know, many times people hear about gunshot wounds to the leg or to the arm or to the hand, and they dismiss it as being not that serious. But just as in your case, Jasmine, very often major arteries are impacted, and that is what makes the wounds life-threatening. Never forget just how fortunate you were to be able to get medical attention as soon as you did, because there is always the possibility of losing too much blood to the point where it becomes fatal.”
“Lord knows I pray for this child every day,” Jasmine’s mother said. “Can’t nobody tell me the Lord doesn’t answer prayers.”
Jasmine remained quiet, but she was disgusted that she hadn’t yet heard from Nico. She was starting to resent him. She also began to wonder if it was he was the one who sent Bebo to kill her. She desperately wanted to speak to him just to see where his head was at.
The doctor and Jasmine’s parents left, leaving her alone with her thoughts. The only conclusion she could come to was, after she had gotten arrested, Nico must have figured she was talking to the police—that she had told them he was a co-conspirator in Shabazz’s murder.
That’s why he wants me dead, Jasmine thought.
Jasmine was human, and she couldn’t help but wonder if Mia was somehow starting to work her way back into Nico’s life and reclaim her wifey status.
Oh, my God! I gotta get out of here! she said to herself in a panic.
Her mind was playing all kinds of tricks on her. One moment her mind was telling her that Nico loved her, the next moment Nico had sent Bebo to murder her. Another moment her mind was telling her to just relax, that Nico was just dealing with a lot and that he would explain everything to her as soon as he could. But then again, she kept thinking that Nico was back to fucking Mia.
Jasmine was beyond stressed out. She took a painkiller, which made her feel euphoric, but that soon wore off. She fell asleep wondering if she would wake up and see Nico the next day.
Eleven
After a successful surgery on her hand, Jasmine was recovering in the post surgical unit, resting and trying to decide what she would do when she got out of the hospital. She was wondering if it would make sense to go back and live at Nico’s estate. She didn’t know how safe it would be living there, or if Nico even wanted her there, since she still hadn’t spoken to him.
Her options were limited because she hadn’t stashed enough money to get her own place, and she definitely wasn’t going to move back in with her parents. She thought about asking her friend Simone if she could live with her for a little while, but she quickly decided against that idea. Jasmine knew it would take all of two days for Simone to do something to piss her off, and they would end up in an argument or in some ki
nd of drama she didn’t need.
With no viable options coming to mind, she decided not to stress herself out. She reached for the remote control with her good hand and started flipping through the limited channels the hospital had available. As she channel-surfed, she heard a knock on her room door.
Jasmine assumed it was one of the doctors or nurses coming to check on her, but instead she saw Agent Battle walking into her room accompanied by a handsome black man wearing a suit and a tie.
Purposely wanting to be rude, she continued to channel-surf and avoided looking directly at Agent Battle or the man with her.
“Hello, Jasmine,” Agent Battle said in a soft, neutral tone.
Jasmine really had no choice at that point other than to acknowledge Agent Battle, so she returned the hello.
“So how are you feeling? I hope you’re recovering well.”
“I’m good,” Jasmine said, flipping through the channels.
“Jasmine, do you mind if we talk for a few minutes?” Agent Battle asked.
Jasmine turned up the volume on the TV once she found ESPN.
The black guy asked her, “You a Lakers fan?”
Jasmine looked at him and rolled her eyes. She wasn’t a huge sports fan, but there was nothing else on TV worth watching. Plus, she didn’t know who he was, so she kept her mouth shut and ignored him.
“May I?” Agent Battle said, reaching for the remote control.
Jasmine didn’t answer her, nor did she object when Agent Battle took it upon herself to turn off the TV.
“Jasmine, this is Agent Gosling. I asked him to come with me, so I could revisit what we spoke about when we last saw each other.”
Jasmine looked at her and didn’t say anything.
“Jasmine, let’s be straight up with one another. I don’t know if you believe in miracles, but I think you would admit that your being alive and able to talk to me right now is pretty much a miracle. Would you agree?”
Jasmine had a nightmare the night before in which she relived the moment when Bebo fired the two gunshots at her. It woke her up in a panic about twelve hours earlier. She slowly nodded in response to Agent Battle’s question.
“So tell me—how many more miracles do you want to live through?”
Jasmine wondered why Agent Battle was the one doing all the talking. She asked the black man, “You a cop too?”
Agent Gosling nodded his head. “Yes, I’m a federal agent.
“Cop, federal agent, po-po, fed—it’s all the same shit.”
“Jasmine, we can talk, right?” Agent Battle asked her in a tone that was trying to get her to lower her guard.
“Yeah. That’s what we’re doing, right?”
“No. I mean, can we talk black woman to black woman, black man to black woman, no holds barred?”
“Yeah . . . I guess.”
“Jasmine, the people who came and shot you, you do know that wasn’t just some random shooting, don’t you?”
Jasmine wondered if Agent Battle had some specific information about the shooting that she didn’t have. She shrugged.
“You can shrug your shoulders, but let me just tell you, when you got shot the other day, please understand that that was a targeted hit on you. There was nothing random about it. There was no other motive behind that shooting other than to take you out. Hits aren’t random; hits are planned. You do follow me, right?”
Agent Battle’s words confirmed the thoughts Jasmine had been having about if Nico had tried to have her killed for snitching. Still, she made sure not to show her hand to Agent Battle.
Agent Gosling added, “So whoever did this to you will be coming back to finish the job.”
“Okay, and? Tell me something I don’t know.” Jasmine shook her head. “Cops make me laugh. Y’all never around to arrest nobody when shit happens, and y’all never know who did shit after it happens, and then y’all always come around after the fact, talking about the obvious. How about walking in this room and telling me that y’all arrested the muthafucka who shot me?”
Agent Battle looked at Agent Gosling, and in her heart she knew where Jasmine was coming from. “In many ways you’re right, Jasmine, and that’s why we’re here. We can’t effectively do our job without sources.”
“You mean, snitches,” Jasmine interjected.
“No, I mean sources. Snitches do crimes, and then to get their own asses out of a sling, they tell on the people involved with the crime. That’s not what our sources do.” Agent Battle reached into her jacket pocket and handed Jasmine a photo of Narjara lying naked on a silver coroner’s table with a huge hole on either side of her head.
“Why are you showing that to me?” Jasmine hollered. Her blood pressure rose, and her chest began to heave up and down. She dropped the photo on the floor.
“Jasmine, who is that in that photo?”
“You know who it is.”
“No. Who was she to you?”
“She was my friend.”
“No, she was more than your friend. Yeah, she was your friend who didn’t have a felony record, she was your friend who was in college trying to better herself, she was your friend who had all kinds of potential to be whoever she wanted to be. She was your friend who would have been a nurse, and a wife and a mother some day. But you know what?”
Jasmine looked at her and didn’t respond.
“Narjara is never going to get the chance to live out her life and chase her dreams. Never. It’s over. For Narjara—and you can correct me if I’m wrong—but it was just one random night that ended her life. One night where she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and just like that”—Agent Battle snapped her fingers—“her beautiful life was snatched away from her through no fault of hers.”
Agent Battle took hold of Narjara’s picture, and tears came to her eyes. “Jasmine, this could have been my daughter in this picture laying there dead on that table. That could have been you laying on that coroner’s table waiting for your parents to come and identify you.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“Exactly. It wasn’t. But you know what our sources do? Our sources help us put away the scumbag muthafuckas who have the audacity to do shit like this to beautiful young women who haven’t even had a chance to live.” Agent Battle handed Agent Gosling the photo, so she could wipe a tear from the corner of her eye.
Jasmine could sense that Agent Battle’s tears were real. She couldn’t believe that a cop could genuinely care about a victim.
“Jasmine, I’ll be honest with you like I was honest with you when you were in the federal building in Manhattan. I could lock you up on a murder charge tomorrow, and a grand jury could indict you with no problem. I am absolutely confident of that. Or you could leave this hospital later today and end up on a coroner’s table like your friend. I’m confident of that as well. But whether you leave here and end up dead, or I lock you up and send you to the penitentiary, the end result is just going to be another beautiful life that is wasted. And you know what? Jasmine, I don’t want that. I don’t want you wasting your life, and when I say that, I mean it.”
“Why the fuck do you care so much? I mean, just do what you gotta do and let me do what I gotta do. But I ain’t no snitch.”
“I care because I have a responsibility to care.”
Jasmine held up her hands and looked at Agent Battle with a confused look, as if to say, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I have a responsibility to care, just like you have a responsibility to care. And the only difference is, I take my responsibility seriously. Like, if I were you and I had a friend in my life like Narjara, I would look at it as my responsibility to do whatever I had to do to put the people away who did this to her.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know who shot us,” Jasmine lied.
Agent Battle just looked at Jasmine and knew she was lying, so she kept quiet.
“I’m serious, I don’t.”
Agent Battle got the picture of Narjara from Agent Gosling and attempted to hand it back to Jasmine.
“Don’t give me that picture!”
“Jasmine, do what’s right for your friend, and do what’s right for the millions of other Narjaras out there. Do what’s right for the millions of parents out there who are trying to avoid their child becoming the next Narjara.”
“That’s what our sources help us do,” Agent Gosling added. “They help us do what’s right for everybody. Jasmine, all Agent Battle is asking you is to help us help you, and in doing that, you’ll be helping so many other people. Jasmine, you’ll be making a difference.”
Agent Gosling had done his homework on Narjara and had found out from interviews that he’d conducted with some of her friends that Narjara looked up to Jasmine as a big sister and that she often went to Jasmine during her battering crisis with her boyfriend.
“Help y’all help me?”
“Yes. Just like Narjara would reach out to you for help with her abusive boyfriend.”
“How did you know that?” Jasmine asked.
“When you do good like that, word gets around. Good has a much bigger impact on people than evil.”
Jasmine had never thought about things from that perspective.
Agent Gosling added, “Jasmine, even in death, Narjara is counting on you to continue to look out for her.”
Jasmine did always like feeling like the big sister and protector to Narjara, and when Narjara had gotten shot, she felt like she had failed her big time. Now Jasmine was truly starting to see working with the feds as a way to do right by her dead friend and turn a negative into a positive.
“So if I help you lock up the people who murdered Narjara, you’re saying you could help me?”
Agent Battle didn’t want to seem too overly excited, but those were the words she was waiting to hear. “Obviously that would be a start. But what we’re proposing is that you become a source of ours, a paid source, and the information that you would help us obtain would be information that would hopefully lead to the arrest of the people who murdered Narjara. We would also be looking for you to help us obtain information we could use to help us connect the dots on criminal targets we’ve already identified.”
