“Praying for his baby? You needed to be praying for Cassandra,” Mattie said as she advanced on both men. She turned to JT and said, “Don’t try to act like you don’t hear me. My daughter is fighting for her life because of you. You are a low life and I hope someone stabs you.”
JT looked at Mattie with sadness as he told her, “I’m not going to get into this with you right now. I need to go check on my wife.” He turned back to bishop and asked, “Would you mind looking after Lily while I go see about Cassandra?”
“No, Son, go see about your wife. I’m sure I remember how to take care of a baby,” Bishop said.
JT’s heart was heavy as he stood up. On one side, Cassandra’s dad was calling him son, but on the other, her mother was calling him a low life. He wished he knew what God thought of him right now. Had the Lord searched his heart and found him to be a low-life as Mattie had, or would the Lord finally, once again call him son?
Mattie ran toward the nurse’s station. The woman behind the desk had a startled look on her face as she looked up. “Can I help you?” she asked Mattie.
“Yes. I want you to bar this man from seeing my daughter,” Mattie said as she pointed to JT.
He was walking toward the nurse’s station so that he could gain access to the ICU. He stopped as Mattie angrily pointed to him as if he was an escaped convict she was turning in to the police. He didn’t know if he was suppose to run like Harrison Ford in the Fugitive or continue standing there so he could be cuffed and hauled off to prison where he belonged.
The nurse looked at him and then turned back to Mattie and said, “Only immediate family is allowed in ICU, so if he’s a boyfriend, he can’t come back anyway.”
JT picked his feet back up and continued walking toward the ICU. He told the nurse, “Cassandra is my wife. I need to check on her.”
The nurse turned back to Mattie and said, “You can’t stop her husband from seeing her.”
“Why not? He’s the reason she got stabbed in the first place.”
The nurse stood up. She put her hand on the telephone on her desk. “Are you telling me that her husband is the person who stabbed her?”
Bishop picked up Lily and rushed over to the nurse’s station. “No, ma’am, he certainly did not stab Cassandra.”
“How do you know?” Mattie screamed. “You weren’t with Cassandra when she was stabbed. You haven’t been with her for most of her life if you want to get technical.”
Bishop turned to the nurse and said, “The police was here with us earlier. The woman who witnessed the incident and called the ambulance was here earlier also. She very clearly described the woman that she saw stabbing Cassandra.”
“And the police arrested the woman about an hour ago. The woman had also kidnapped my baby. I just got her back,” JT said.
“That’s not my daughter’s baby. He doesn’t deserve to see her. He’s no good.” Mattie screamed all of these words so loud that others in the waiting area were now either peeking or flat out staring in their direction.
“Mattie, please calm down,” JT said.
“Don’t you tell me to calm down. You are destroying my child. And you think I’m just going to sit around here and do nothing to stop you?”
“I love Cassandra. Do you actually think I would have ever wanted something like this to happen to her?”
Mattie put her body against the door to the ICU, folded her hands around her chest and rolled her eyes upward. Her stance was that of complete defiance as she told JT, “You’re not going back there.”
“Be reasonable, Mattie. You can’t stop JT from seeing Cassandra. As her husband he could stop you from seeing her. But he hasn’t done that has he? No. He asked me to pick you up and bring you here,” Bishop Turner said.
“Can you call security, please?” JT asked the nurse.
The nurse picked up the telephone and then looked at Mattie. “I really don’t want to call security on you while your daughter is in ICU, but if you refuse to remove yourself from that door, I have no choice.”
Mattie rolled her eyes and kept leaning against the door.
“Stop this, Mattie. If she calls security, they will put you out of this hospital and you won’t be able to check on Cassandra,” Bishop told her.
Slowly, Mattie moved away from the door. She kept her eyes averted as she walked by JT. She went back into the waiting area and sat down.
“I’m sorry about all that,” JT said to the nurse. “Can I go in to see about my wife now?”
She pressed a button to unlock the door to the ICU, then she leaned over and whispered to him, “I’m sorry about your wife; and your mother-in-law.”
“Me too,” JT said. He then turned to Bishop. “Are you sure you’re okay with watching Lily for a little while?”
“You go on in. I’ve got this little one,” Bishop said
However, Lily picked that moment to flex her lung muscle. JT smiled at her. He rubbed her cheek and said, “There, there Little Princess. I bet you’re hungry, huh?”
“I’ll get her bottle out of the diaper bag you brought. Now, go see about your wife,” Bishop said.
JT opened the ICU door and walked down the hall toward room number eleven. When he reached the room, he stood there for a moment wishing that he could turn back time. If he could, he would have talked to Cassandra more. He would have told her the truth about how he felt when Sarah died. Maybe if he had done that, he wouldn’t have found comfort in the arms of other women, and his wife wouldn’t be in the hospital right now.
He shook his head trying to ward off the memories as he pulled back the curtain and walked into Cassandra’s ICU room. She was still asleep. He sat down in the chair next to her bed. She still looked so peaceful; like she didn’t have a care in the world. He then thought about when he laid in a hospital bed a few months ago. Cassandra didn’t want to see him, and only visited him twice the entire time he was in the hospital. He couldn’t blame her, though. If she had done as much to him as he did to her, he probably wouldn’t be sitting there right now.
He wished she would wake up. He had so much to tell her. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it as he told her, “I got Lily back.” When he said those words to Cassandra he suddenly remembered something he hadn’t paid much attention to earlier. The woman who helped Cassandra told him that when she ran over to his wife, she heard her say, “My baby.”
JT smiled, realizing that Cassandra might be thinking of Lily as part hers. With as big a heart as his wife has, JT knew it wouldn’t take long for Lily to warm her way into Cassandra’s heart. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she, Cassandra? I’m sorry I did this to our family, but I want to keep her. I hope you decide that you want to stay with me when this is all over, because Lily and I are going to need you. And I think you, Jerome and Aaron need me also. I’m not the same man that I was, Sanni. Please give me a chance to prove it to you.”
As JT sat there staring at his wife, he finally realized how much his sins had harmed his family. With all of the horrendous things that JT had done over the past few years, he’d never considered that any of it would hurt his family. Of course he knew that his backsliding had hurt his relationship with God. But he had been mad at God, so JT hadn’t cared how God felt at that time. But now that the blinders were off and his eyes were open, he found that he did care.
In truth, he wanted to close his eyes and run away from the realities that beat him down. “I’m so sorry, Sanni. I wish I had been a better man.” He lowered his head, putting his elbow on this thigh and his hand on his forehead.
The curtain to Cassandra’s room was pulled back. Lost in thought, JT jumped when he heard the noise.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” the doctor said as he walked closer to JT.
“I was just thinking,” JT said as he stood up and shook hands with the man.
“I’m Dr. Stevens. We talked earlier, but I don’t think I told you my name.”
“Yeah, you’re right, I don’t think I even thought
to ask. My mind was so far gone at that time.”
“I understand,” Dr. Stevens said.
JT turned and looked at Cassandra. “How is she doing? Tell me the truth, will she pull through this?”
“Most of the stab wounds were in her arm and shoulder. So we were able to stitch them up without a problem. However, she had two stab wounds in her back, those are the ones I’m most concerned about. She lost a lot of blood, but I still think she can pull through, we just need to give her a reason to believe in the possibility of pulling through.”
“What do you mean?” JT asked.
“I think right now, the best thing you can do is to be upbeat and to talk positively around her.”
Positive and upbeat? JT didn’t know what that felt like anymore. His life had been a tragedy. Everything he touched got all messed up. The only good thing that had ever happened to him was his family and he had single handedly destroyed them too.
CHAPTER 29
So, in order to be positive and upbeat as Dr. Stevens asked him, JT decided to let go of his pity party and remember the good times. He sat back down, put Cassandra’s hand in his and drifted back to better days.
“Where are you taking me, JT?” Cassandra asked as they drove down the streets of Cleveland in JT’s ten year old Oldsmobile.
“You just sit over there and be patient,” JT told her with a sheepish grin on his face.
“You know I’m too nosey to be patient. You’ve been hiding a secret all week long and I’m just about going crazy to know what it is.”
JT loved how fidgety Cassandra got when she tried to figure something out. She was truly nosey and he loved every minute of making her wait. JT had only spent two Christmases with Cassandra, but each one was enlightening. The first Christmas he purchased her gifts a month in advance. They weren’t married yet, so he left her gifts under the tree at Cassandra’s house. Every time he would come to visit he noticed that the presents had been moved from one place to another. Then one day he noticed that a piece of the wrapping had been torn off of one of the packages. He’d asked Cassandra, “What happened to the wrapping paper?”
She rolled her eyes and admitted, “I couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled off a piece of the paper in order to see what the box said, but the box is blank.”
He laughed. “Are you that impatient?”
“I’m terrible. I’ve never been able to wait until Christmas. Please tell me what my presents are.”
From that day on, he tortured her with surprises. He would tell her on Monday that he had a surprise for her, but he couldn’t tell her what it was until Friday. Right now, however, he was taking her to see his surprise on Wednesday instead of Friday because Cassandra had threatened to starve him if he didn’t ‘fess up sooner that Friday.
They pulled into the driveway of a small two-story house that was in a low-to-middle income neighborhood. “We’re here,” JT told her as he turned off the engine and got out of the car.
Cassandra got out of the car and asked, “Who lives here?”
“No one right now. It’s vacant.”
Before Cassandra could ask her next question, Carl, one of the deacon’s at their church who was also a realtor, pulled up. He jumped out of his car and ran over to them. “Sorry I’m late, Pastor.”
“You’re fine, Deacon Carl, we just pulled up ourselves,” JT said.
“Well, let’s go check this place out then,” Carl said, rubbing his hands together.
Cassandra pulled on JT’s sleeve. “Why are we here, JT? Are we buying this house?”
With a big smile on his face, he said, “You tell me. I brought you here to see if you like this house as much as I do.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s check it out then.”
JT and Cassandra walked into the house hand in hand. They were currently living in a four hundred square foot one bedroom apartment. Space was limited and they were constantly bumping into each other. However, since they were still newlyweds, neither of them minded the close proximity all that much.
Cassandra’s eyes got big as she said, “This place has a living room and a family room.”
JT ran up the stairs and hollered back down. “Sanni, there are three bedrooms. I can finally have an office to work on my sermons. Come up here and look at the bedrooms.”
She did and she also made note of the fact that there was a bathroom downstairs and one upstairs also. Once they were finish looking the house over, Cassandra turned to JT and said, “I like it, but can we afford this place?”
They were in a neighborhood where the houses ranged from seventy to ninety thousand dollars. Carl handed Cassandra the flyer with the price of the house on it. “This house is eighty-four thousand dollars. We just got married eight months ago, JT. You’re not earning all that much at the church. How can we afford this place?”
“Baby, don’t worry about it. I earn enough at the church to pay for this house, and both our cars are paid for.”
“My car is six years old and yours is ten. We are going to need new cars within the next few years.”
“The church is growing, Cassandra. We will be able to handle this. Come on, honey, trust me with this one. Okay?”
Cassandra looked at the flyer one more time. She walked through the house again and then she turned to JT and said, “Can we really have it?”
“Yeah, Baby, we can.”
Cassandra handed the flyer back to Carl and told him, “Let’s do the contract, but only offer them eighty thousand.”
“We used to love that house, didn’t we, Sanni? It wasn’t much, but we loved deeply in that small house.” JT was holding Cassandra’s hand as he continued to reminisce. “We lived in that house when you told me you were pregnant with Sarah. Remember how you ran to the door as soon as I came home and surprised me with the news. That was a good day for us, Sanni.” He was about to apologize for the many bad days that came after Sarah died, but then he remembered that Dr. Stevens asked him to remain upbeat.
He then tried to think about some good times that he and Cassandra shared in their current home. But since he was now being honest with himself, he had to admit that there weren’t many good times. By the time he’d moved Cassandra into their mini mansion, JT had already started cheating on her. “What was I thinking?” he asked himself as he pulled his hand away from Cassandra and hit his own head as if he was in a V-8 commercial.
At this moment, JT couldn’t think of anything positive to say, so he stood up and left the room. He didn’t want to contaminate Cassandra with his regrets. He went back into the waiting room and told Mattie that she could sit with Cassandra for awhile. But before she went in, he said, “The doctor says that we need to speak positively. So, please try to talk to her about good things.”
“I’m not a fool. I know what I need to do for my own daughter,” Mattie snapped.
“I’m begging you, Mattie, give her a reason to return to us. Don’t fill her mind with hate.”
She rolled her eyes as she walked through the ICU doors.
JT sat down next to Bishop Turner. He took Lily out of her baby carrier as he said, “I don’t know why that woman is so hateful.”
Bishop said, “She hasn’t forgiven herself for what we did all those years ago. So, she’s grown bitter.”
“Lord, please don’t let me become bitter like that,” JT said as he looked down at Lily. She cooed and he said, “Look at you, Little One. Why aren’t you asleep?”
“She’s been a good baby, hardly cried at all,” Bishop told JT before changing the subject. “Do you remember when you asked me if I had ever felt forsaken by God?”
Rocking Lily, JT said, “Yeah, the day you put me on suspension.”
“I didn’t answer your question then, but the truth is, I have felt forsaken.” He had this far away look in his eyes as he continued. “I only strayed from my marriage once and that was with Mattie. I was just trying to comfort her after her husband died. But one thing led to another, and before I knew it, we had
Cassandra.”
“I know how mistakes are made, Bishop. So, you don’t have to tell me,” JT said.
“Well, after I made my mistake I felt disconnected from God. It took me two years to get back to where I had been with God. After that ordeal, I never wanted to be separated from my Lord again.”
“Yeah, I’m fighting my way back right now. I just wish I knew how long this misery will last.”
Bishop looked toward the ICU doors where Mattie had swept through a few minutes ago. He said, “That’s why I can have compassion for Mattie. I know that she still holds all that guilt. She never figured out how to accept God’s free gift of forgiveness. Consequently, she lives a tortured life.”
When JT went back into Cassandra’s room he had a whole new view of his mother-in-law. He no longer saw her as his enemy, but rather a victim of sin. JT added Mattie to his prayer list. He decided that he would pray for her until she was free of guilt. He sat down in the chair next to Cassandra’s bed and lowered his head to pray.
“Where’s Lily?”
JT slowly lifted his head. Cassandra’s eyes fluttered as she tried to lift herself up in bed. JT stood up and rushed to Cassandra’s bedside. “Don’t try to get up, you might pull some of your stitches.”
“Where’s Lily?” she asked him again.
“She’s fine, Cassandra. I got her back and the police put Vivian in jail.”
“Thank God,” she said right before she turned away from him and went back to sleep.
JT ran out of the room and alerted the nurse that Cassandra woke up and spoke to him. The nurse walked into Cassandra’s room and then JT ran out to the waiting room to tell Bishop Turner and Mattie the good news.
“She woke up!” JT shouted when he saw them. Bishop was holding Lily, but he and Mattie appeared to be engrossed in conversation.
Bishop halted his conversation in mid sentence and stood up. “Did you say that she woke up?”
Former Rain-Forsaken Box Set Page 38
