An Inconvenient Friend

by Rhonda McKnight

  I nodded. She patted my hand and walked out of the room.

  Wow, I thought the woman had bad eggs. It never occurred to me that they had a child that died. I really felt guilty. I had to. I’d actually hugged her. I never hugged anybody that didn’t have testosterone, not even my mother. Hugging came real natural to Angelina. I noticed that from the way she grabbed all the other sisters in church, and the way she wrapped her arms around me with such ease. Hugging was church protocol. If I hung around her much longer, I’d be hugging everybody too.

  I closed my files and put them in my briefcase. I needed to focus less on this woman mentoring stuff and more on why I was here in the first place because there was one more thing I had noticed when the church sister of the year had pulled away from me. Angelina Preston was wearing a new perfume.

  Chapter 19

  “I wasted medication,” I announced. Perspiration covered my upper lip and my hands shook as I closed the lid to the small sink like bowl. “Can I get someone to sign for me later?”

  Nadine, one of the new per diem nurses on the floor, asked, “Why would you put it in before you let me see it?”

  She was referring to the pills I’d dumped down the sink where we disposed of the ones that were no good. “Oh I’m sorry,” I said, sarcastically, “we all trust each other on this floor to sign because we’re busy.”

  “But I’m standing right here,” Nadine said. “I could have witnessed and signed for you.”

  “But you saw me.”

  “I saw you near the sink, but I don’t like to sign unless I see the drugs myself.”

  I picked up the chart for my next patient. “Then don’t, Nadine. I can ask someone else.” I walked away. It didn’t matter. I could get any one of the nurses I worked with to sign for me that the meds were not useable. I didn’t need Nosy Nadine.

  I entered my next patient’s room and removed her medication from the cart. She was a cancer patient who was recovering from surgery. The surgeon had ordered a Fentanyl patch. It was applied to the skin and medication slowly released over a three day period. I raised the patch and stared at it in the light. This was what June needed. One of these things that would last for days. Although I had heard crazy stories of ways people stole them, I didn’t dare even think about taking one of these babies. Stealing one of these involved withholding pain meds from the patients; no way was I going to do that. That was cruel.

  I applied the patch to my patient’s arm, completed my charting, and just as I turned to walk out of the room I nearly collided with Nadine. She was such an annoying little person. She had dirty blond hair, bad skin, and no fashion sense whatsoever. Her uniforms looked like they came straight off of Dollar General’s sale rack. I shuttered at the thought. “Need something?” I asked, walking back to my cart.

  She hesitated for a moment. “I was wondering if you could cover me for my break.”

  We exited the room, and I turned to look at her like she was as crazy as she sounded. Miss Technical about wasting medication had just committed a major customer service no-no. “You came into a patient’s room while I was administering medication to ask me to cover your break?”

  “I have an important phone call to make, and it needs to happen in five minutes,” she replied. “I promise you won’t miss me.”

  Well, she did have that right. I certainly wouldn’t. I shrugged. “Go do what you gotta do.”

  I finished the last of the medication rounds and my charting, and then gave report. I was glad when the shift was over. I climbed into my car, leaned against the headrest, and closed my eyes. Stealing was stressful. More stressful than it had been so many years ago when I was taking jeans and leather jackets from Macy’s and Dillard’s with Mekhi. He’d teased me.

  “You good, girl, but you gotta stop looking nervous. I’m going to make a professional thief out of you yet,” he’d said the day I’d unhooked my first leather coat from a chained rack in Wilson’s. He’d been proud of me. I’d been proud. Funny how it never occurred to me until just this moment how much Mekhi’s words had come to pass. I was good at stealing. I was stealing all the time—men, pills. All these years later I was still taking things that didn’t belong to me.

  I reached into my scrub pants pocket and removed three small pills, one green, one peach and one white. Oxycontin, the opid of champions, or of fools depending on who was taking it. I opened the center console of my car and removed a small white envelope. I dropped the three pills in with the two others that I’d managed to get last night. I needed two or three more and that was going to be it. If I kept wasting pills they’d be all over me like barbeque sauce on ribs. June was going to have to get some help, or settle for something cheaper I could pick up on the street without breaking the bank.

  Rap ... rap ... rap ... the loud knock on my window almost caused me to pee my pants. I looked at my driver’s side window and there was that dang Nadine. I folded the envelope and quickly tucked it in the top pocket of my scrub shirt. Then I let down the window. What did this heifer want now?

  Nadine leaned in toward the window, closer than I would have liked. “Thanks,” she said.

  I cocked my head. “For what?”

  “I really appreciate what you did earlier. I wanted to thank you.” I knew I looked perplexed because I was. “For covering my break. My boyfriend is in prison in Nevada, and he gets to call me at exactly 8:00 P.M. their time, which is ten here. I really wanted to talk to him.”

  I nodded. Surprise of all surprises. Nadine didn’t strike me as the type to have a man in prison. Actually she didn’t strike me as the type to have a man period. I, for sure, would have pegged her for the type who couldn’t buy a date. Not with that ugly eighties haircut and those jacked up glasses. “What’s your man in for?” I didn’t really care, but I figured I was supposed to be curious.

  “Selling Ox,” she said, solemnly.

  I had to do everything I could to keep my face straight. I mean my eyes seriously wanted to eject from their sockets like a jack-in-box that had been sprung. “That’s messed up.” I turned the key in the ignition.

  “Really messed up. He was a pharmacist. He had a bad hiking accident a few years ago, fell off a trail down the side of a mountain and hurt his back. The doctor prescribed Ox and he got addicted. I didn’t even know he was out there that bad.”

  She seemed really sad. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost, but I was too busy thinking about the fact that ole boy got caught and was in prison, to be empathetic.

  “He messed up, but I love him you know.”

  “Yeah.” I shook my head. The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and my heart was racing like crazy. “Look, I gotta go.”

  She stepped back and raised her hand to give me a signal that the coast was clear for me to back up. I waved to her and noticed that Nadine was looking at me strangely. I almost thought I saw some kind of weird sympathy in her eyes, and for some reason, I felt I had been warned.

  Chapter 20

  Angelina had been trying to wait Greg out. She’d talked to Felesia on the phone for twenty minutes, looked at the proposal from the Sparks for the teen camp, and now she’d stared at Rae’s perfect schedule for the health fair until she couldn’t look at it anymore. Still, he was engrossed in a novel.

  She put the files in her attaché, made bustling movement out of the bed, and went into the bathroom. With no particular reason to be there, other than to kill time, she checked her appearance in the mirror. She was wearing an above the knee length lavender and white negligee. An Internet order that had come in the mail today. It was as sexy as the picture online, and fit her toned figure perfectly, if she did say so herself. Well, she had to say so herself, because her husband hadn’t noticed it.

  Angelina picked up her scented, shimmering body lotion and applied a little more to her neck and chest area. She was already glowing; adding more was going to turn her into a night-light. There was nothing else to do in here. After tossing her hair a little to give it a slightly wild lo
ok, she reentered the bedroom, dimmed the overhead lights, and approached the bed. Her husband didn’t look up.

  She called his name. He pulled his eyes away from the book and raised his eyebrows like she was intruding. He scanned her form with little interest and returned to his reading.

  Angelina swallowed her anger and her pride, pulled back the comforter and climbed into bed. Trying to seduce him had not worked, so she decided to get to the point. “I’m ovulating.”

  Greg grunted. “That’s sexy.” He kept reading.

  “You look like you’re getting sleepy.” She hated begging him. “I was hoping you’d put the book down.”

  Greg groaned. “Then you should have asked me to put the book down.” He kept reading.

  Angelina bit back frustration, then closed and reopened her eyes. “Greg, would you put the book down?” She asked as sweetly as she could, but his attitude was making it difficult. His attitude was going to make it difficult to make love period.

  “Not tonight,” he replied, turning a page. “Not with all the ovulating you’re doing.”

  Angelina shook her head. “Was that really necessary? Do you have to be so nasty?”

  “I’m not some science project in here that you can tell to stand at attention at will.”

  She did everything she could not to take his book and throw it across the room. “Why can’t you give me what I want? That’s the least you can do.” Her words reverberated off the walls. She’d yelled them louder than she’d meant, but she had his attention. The book was closed.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? The least I could do.”

  “You are my husband. You’re the only one in this marriage with what I need. You could at least help me ... fill this void.” She paused. She didn’t want to cry. Didn’t want him to see her cry again. “I need another baby. I want one now.”

  Greg surprised her when he reached for her. He stroked her arm. “And we’ve been trying.”

  “But you know you ... we had that problem before, with ...”

  Greg let out a loud breath and tossed his book off of his lap and onto the floor. He stepped out of the bed and went to his closet. When he emerged he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.

  “No, Greg,” she begged. “Where are you going?”

  “For a drive.”

  “A drive, this time of night?”

  “I need some air.”

  “Please don’t do this. Stay with me. Let’s talk about this.”

  He shook his head. “I need some air.”

  “Don’t go. Let’s make love and see what happens.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Please, if we can’t come together on this—”

  He stood at the foot of the bed for a moment. His six foot two frame, glistening hair, and wolflike hazel eyes were a startling image in the dimmed light. He would have looked perfect if it weren’t for the angry set of his jaw and the steely look in those translucent eyes.

  Neither of them said anything for at least thirty seconds, but those seconds felt like minutes, hours, as she waited and hoped he would change his mind about leaving. When he spoke his voice was husky. “I don’t think you realize that Danielle wasn’t just your child.”

  Angelina shook her head. The tears she’d been holding back were winning. The first one fell and then others followed like water from the dam of her soul.

  “She was my daughter too. And to make it worse, she was with me. Have you ever thought about how that made me feel? I’m a doctor. I save lives for a living. I save the lives of strangers.” His words sliced her. She felt the pain that thickened his words. “I was sitting eighteen feet away, and she stopped breathing.”

  A beat passed before Angelina spoke. Before she found the courage to challenge the hurt. “Just because she stopped breathing, doesn’t mean we have to.”

  That wasn’t what Greg wanted to hear. She knew it because he made rapid steps to the door.

  “We are still here.” She called after him. “We’re still alive, and we’d still be good parents.”

  She was talking to no one. He was out of the door, down the hall and stairs. Sixty seconds later Angelina could hear the garage door open and Greg’s car pull out.

  She lay down on her bed. Pain, fury, and confusion all swirled around in her soul with their competing interests. Pain for her loss. Fury over her loss. Confusion over her loss. Where was her God? They both needed Him so badly.

  Angelina stared at the ceiling. She wanted to hear from God. Wanted to feel Him. She wanted Him to make this right for her. Don’t I deserve it? Don’t you owe me? I’ve lost so much. At least give me another child. She banged the mattress with her fist and threw a pillow across the room.

  “I’m angry,” she cried. “I’m so angry I can hardly breathe.” She thought about what Felesia had told her earlier. To trust God no matter how dim things look. Felesia had begged her to read her Bible, to find comfort in God’s Word. Angelina looked at the book on her night table. She noted the worn tabs she’d indexed that took her to the scriptures that often saved her during times like these. Times when she felt so low she wanted to die. She also thought about praying to soothe her soul, but she did neither. Instead, she rolled over on her side and cried herself to sleep.

  Chapter 21

  I stepped into my condo, dropped my purse, and kicked my shoes off in the coat closet where I kept them. I flicked the light switch and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw Greg sitting in one of the club chairs near the bay window. “You almost gave me a heart attack.” I raised my hand to my chest. “What are you doing here?”

  “Where have you been?” He stood and came toward me.

  “Working. I told you I had per diem—”

  Greg closed the space between us and covered my mouth with a hungry kiss. He raised his hand and reached for my body like he hadn’t touched a woman in ten years. I could feel the envelope shifting out of my pocket, but before I could pull away, pills began to spill on the hardwood floor.

  I dropped into a squatting position and quickly tried to pick them up, but Greg leaned over to help. “What’s this?” he asked, picking one up of the green ones. I took it out of his hand. “It’s a pill.”

  “That’s pretty obvious, but what is it? What are they doing in an envelope in your pocket?”

  I moved around him and headed for my bedroom.

  “Don’t tell me you’re stealing from the med room.” He followed me.

  Okay, so I won’t.

  “Are you addicted to this stuff?”

  I turned sharply. “No, of course not.” I couldn’t believe I had been caught by Greg. If it hadn’t been for that darn Nadine, I would have put the envelope back in the car console. These pills wouldn’t be here. “I have a sick aunt.”

  “A sick aunt without a prescription?”

  “A sick aunt without a med plan.”

  “You can’t steal pills. They’ll catch you, and your career will be over. Forget your career. You’ll go to prison.”

  Did he think he was telling me something I didn’t know? “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I came to see you.”

  “That’s pretty obvious since I live alone, and there’s no one else to be seeing, but I thought we had an agreement that you wouldn’t show up without calling.”

  “Don’t be annoyed.” He closed the space again. “If you needed money to fill your aunt’s prescription, why didn’t you ask me?”

  “I didn’t want to involve you.” I was careful with my words. Stroke his ego. “You’re already so generous.”

  “You know I’m here for you. How much is the prescription? Add it to the invoice you send to my office.”

  I feigned relief. “Thanks, baby. I’ve been really going broke helping with all her medical bills.” I decided to see if I could get more.

  “Well, stealing is not the way to help her. What would she do if you got caught? They have ways of knowing ...”

  “I know. It was just this
one time. I won’t do it again.”

  He looked concerned. I supposed it was a good sign that he gave a rat’s behind about me, but I really didn’t want him in my business like this. Especially knowing the bad. What kind of doctor’s wife would a thieving medication nurse make?

  “Why don’t you take a shower? I don’t have much time,” he said.

  I looked at him. This midnight drive by was a booty call. He’d fallen out with Angelina or couldn’t get her to give up the goods, so he got in his car and told me to go wash it off and give him some. I was starting to wonder if I were fooling myself about this man. His marriage was busted, but he never talked about his wife. It was time for him to give up some information.

  “Greg, it’s midnight. I don’t usually press this issue, but what is going on at home that’s got you out here in the middle of the night?”

  He rolled his eyes upward. “I was thinking about you. I miss you. It’s been a few days.”

  “Umm, hum, and I suppose the cow jumped over that full moon out there.”

  “Samaria.” He put his hands on either side of my arms. “Please don’t add to my aggravation with these questions.”

  I moved out of his grasp, put my hands at my hips, and continued to wait for his answer.

  “My wife and I have been having a tough time,” he offered. “We’re at an impasse about something she wants that I don’t want.”

  “Would that be children?” I asked.

  His eyebrows went up. “Why would you assume that?”

  “Because you don’t have any. You’re forty-four, and she’s whatever age she is. You’ve been married forever, and you don’t have kids.”

  “I’m aware of all of that, and if I wanted to be talking about it I’d be at home, right?”

  “So it is about kids?”

  He shot me a nasty look. I didn’t want to piss him off. The younger model’s job was not to piss the man off by reminding him of the older model. “I’d like to know if I’m the substitute for someone you can’t have or someone you don’t want.” I stepped closer to him, slid one leg between his and placed a hand on his chest. “Tell me. I think that’s a fair question.”