“She also sustained a concussion and swelling of the brain.”
Samuel became alarmed. He knew that while painful, the lacerations, fractures, and breaks would heal over time. But a brain injury, particularly swelling of the brain, was cause for concern. “How bad is the brain injury?” he asked.
“The swelling is quite significant . . . seventy percent.”
“Jesus in heaven,” Donetta said as she fanned herself with her hand.
Dr. Pauloza stared at Donetta. “Ms. Mayfield is getting the best possible treatment we can provide.” She reached out and touched Donetta’s arm to comfort her as she continued. “We’re going to use a pharmacological treatment that reduces swelling by targeting a specific group of negatively charged molecules in the brain. In layman’s terms, we’re going to use a steady dose of drugs to reduce the swelling. I anticipate that it will subside fairly quickly.”
“Will she have any long lasting side effects?” Samuel asked.
“It’s hard to say. In most cases no. She seems to be responsive, so that’s a good sign.”
Samuel nodded with relief.
“We’re going to keep her a few days, and we should have a room ready to take her up on the floor in the next thirty minutes. She’s in a lot of discomfort, so we’re giving her IV pain meds, which has her kind of groggy, but she’s conscious.”
“Can we see her?” Samuel asked.
Dr. Pauloza nodded. “Yes, I’ll take you back, but there’s one other thing I need to tell you.”
Samuel braced himself because he knew this was it. Dr. Pauloza was going to deliver the bad news that his gut had been preparing him for since he’d arrived at the hospital.
Dr. Pauloza looked at Samuel with compassion and paused, as if the words were stuck in her throat. “I’m so sorry. She was pregnant, and she lost the baby.”
The doctor’s words echoed in his ears like thunder. He’d been prepared to hear that Geneva might need surgery, or that some of her injuries might leave permanent scarring, but in his wildest thoughts, losing a baby had never entered his mind because he didn’t even know she was pregnant.
“Geneva was pregnant?” Donetta said, looking at Samuel.
“This can’t be happening,” Samuel whispered in a shaky voice.
Dr. Pauloza swallowed hard, empathizing with Samuel’s pain. “She didn’t know, either. And understandably, she took it hard. We gave her a valium to calm her.”
Donetta shook her head and held Samuel’s hand in hers.
Samuel’s head and heart ached so badly he could hardly breathe. He and Geneva had spent countless hours talking about, and making plans for, the family they hoped they’d have one day. It had been both their desires to have children for as long as they could remember. Samuel had felt happy every time he thought about his and Geneva’s future, raising a family of their own and enjoying life while they did it. Hearing this news felt like a part of his dream had been snatched from him, and it was all at the hands of Johnny Mayfield.
“That sonofabitch!” Samuel yelled in an angry outburst. Samuel wasn’t a man prone to raising his voice or speaking harshly, but now he was doing both. “Geneva’s in there suffering, we lost a baby, and it’s all because of that fucking bastard!” he yelled. “And he’s walking around just fine, but he won’t be for long. I’m gonna kill Johnny Mayfield!”
Donetta wiped a tear from her eye and looked at Samuel as if she was going to erupt like a volcano. “Not if I kill that muthafucka first!”
Chapter 26
VIVANA
Vivana listened to the engine run as she sat in her car in front of a small brick building where she was parked around the corner from the salon. She concentrated on the humming noise coming from under her hood in her efforts to drown out the memory of what had just happened.
She was so mad at Johnny Mayfield she thought she would explode. It wasn’t enough that he’d physically accosted her last night, giving her a swollen, black eye, but he had to go a step further by disrespecting her in front of Geneva and a salon full of women.
Johnny was the last person she’d expected to see in the salon this morning, but he was the sole reason why she’d walked into the shop with an attitude. She was still pissed that he’d hit her and stayed out all night. Each time she called his phone, which she’d done every fifteen minutes for five hours straight, her calls went directly to his voice mail. She’d wanted to kick herself for suspending her BrickHouse GPS vehicle tracking service a few days ago. She’d felt she could stop monitoring Johnny’s whereabouts and the monthly fee she’d been paying could go back into her pocket. She didn’t see the need to monitor him as closely because he’d been keeping a low profile, mostly staying in the house while his injuries healed. But if she’d been able to track him last night, she would have gone to wherever he was and beaten the shit out of him.
She hadn’t slept a wink all night and when she awoke this morning, unable to open her swollen eye, she cursed Johnny for what he’d done to her. She’d thought about canceling her appointment with Geneva when she looked into the mirror and saw her face. But after a few minutes of quick reflection, she decided to go anyway because she didn’t want to miss an opportunity to get on Geneva’s nerves, and actually, her injury would give her leverage to act out worse than she usually did because she knew Geneva would show her sympathy.
Vivana despised Geneva, she loathed Donetta and Shartell, and she couldn’t stand any of the other stylists, or their clients, either. Each time she sat in Geneva’s chair, she did her best to make things uncomfortable for her and everyone around in the salon. Vivana enjoyed watching Geneva squirm whenever she made a rude or inappropriate comment, and she felt free in pushing her to the edge because Geneva was one who tried to avoid conflict.
Fucking with Geneva had become the highlight of Vivana’s week. But this morning it didn’t take much for her to have an attitude, thanks to Johnny. And just when she was ready to really act out, Johnny appeared, sending everything into a nosedive from that moment forward.
“That bastard!” Vivana screamed. She thought about how she’d asked him to leave with her, but he’d refused and even had the audacity to tell her that he’d come there to talk to Geneva. The thought made her blood boil over with anger.
“I’ll fix him,” Vivana said as she looked at the small brick building in front of her. “And I know just how to do it, too.” She turned off her engine and got out of her car. “He fucked with the wrong one this time,” she said in a sinister tone as she walked inside the pawn shop.
“It’s not over until I say so,” Vivana said into the mirror. She was sitting on the stool at her vanity table applying concealer under her eye. The swelling had gone down but the black ring underneath remained. “If Johnny thinks he can mistreat me, use me, and dog me out without having to pay, he’s crazy as hell.”
It had been a week since Johnny had shown up at the hair salon and humiliated her in front of people she didn’t even like. When she walked out of the salon last Saturday, she’d vowed to never speak to him again, and so far she hadn’t. She didn’t want to have contact with him in any way, ever again. But she knew that was going to be hard given the fact that she would need to be near him in order to kill him.
She ran her hand across the small black pistol that she’d purchased from the pawn shop last week right after she’d left the salon. She had seven whole days to devise a plan to shoot Johnny and get away with it.
“The best time to strike is when they least expect it,” she said in a sly voice. Vivana smiled, filled her gun with bullets, and pointed the pistol at the mirror. “Bang!” she said, pretending to fire the gun. The weapon felt good in her hand, and she knew it would feel even better using it. As she thought more and more about how much fun she was going to have watching her ex-lover suffer, a brilliant idea popped into her mind. Since she was going to kill Johnny, she might as well kill Geneva while she was at it.
Chapter 27
GENEVA
G
eneva sat up in bed as Samuel placed a wooden tray on her lap. Sausage, eggs, hash browns, toast, juice, and coffee. He’d gone to Waffle House and gotten her the exact same meal she’d ordered four months ago when he’d come to her rescue. And this morning he was saving her once again, helping her recover from hurt, pain, and a devastating loss.
Today made a week since Johnny had walked into the salon and turned her world upside down in one quick move.
“Baby, try to eat something,” Samuel said. He took a seat beside Geneva on the bed. “You’ve got to build up your strength.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
“I know, but you still need to eat. The doctor said it’s important in your healing process.” He scooped up a forkful of eggs and placed them at Geneva’s mouth. “Please, baby. Eat something for me.”
Geneva looked into Samuel’s loving eyes and could see that he was hurting just as much as she was. The only difference was that he did a much better job of dealing with it. He’d been a pillar of strength over the last week, encouraging her, nursing her, protecting her, and loving her.
From the moment Geneva had opened her eyes in the emergency room, Samuel had been by her side. He’d slept on a small cot in her hospital room each night, and had come back to visit her during lunch each day. When she was released from the hospital two days ago, he’d brought her to his apartment to recuperate, and had taken the rest of the week off work so he could take care of her.
“Come on, baby,” Samuel urged again. He returned the eggs to her plate and picked up a piece of toast. He spread a small amount of strawberry jam on the bread and dangled it in front of her mouth. “You’ve got to put something in your stomach. Try this toast.”
Geneva looked at the food and closed her eyes. She knew she needed to eat, but she couldn’t bring herself to open her mouth to do anything except cry, which she’d been doing since last week. She choked back tears when she thought about the fact that she’d lost a child.
She’d known women who’d had miscarriages, but until Geneva experienced it for herself, she hadn’t understood the pain and loss it could bring. And what made her situation even harder to accept was that she’d found out she was pregnant and lost it within the same instance. Every time she thought about the chain of events that morning, she felt a pang of guilt and secret shame that was eating her up inside.
She looked at Samuel and shook her head. “I’m so very sorry about what I did.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked with concern.
“This is my fault. What happened is my fault . . .”
“Baby, don’t say that. What happened to you . . . to us, wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes it is. If I hadn’t walked Johnny to the door, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have fallen and our baby would still be alive, growing inside my stomach.” Geneva burst into tears that she couldn’t control. “I purposely told him that I was happy, and in love, because I wanted to hurt him the way he hurt me. But I ended up hurting an innocent, unborn child in the process.”
Samuel moved the tray of food to the side, slid next to Geneva, and held her close. “This isn’t your fault, and I don’t want to ever hear you say anything like that again.”
“I lost our baby and that bastard walked away without a single solitary scratch! Not even a limp!”
Samuel’s eyes became enraged. “Don’t worry. He’s gonna pay dearly for what he did, and he won’t be able to walk away from what’s in store for him. Trust me on that.”
His tone sent a chill through Geneva because she’d never heard him sound so hard and almost vicious. She felt even worse because again, she knew this was all her fault. “Lord, what have I done,” she whispered.
They stared at each other in silence before Samuel spoke. “You’re a good woman and you deserve happiness. Don’t let what he did make you feel guilty.”
“But I do, and I wish I could go back in time . . . I would do so many things differently,” she said in a low voice. “I would’ve canceled my appointment that morning, too.”
Samuel shook his head. “I’m not going to allow you to go down this road, Geneva. We have to move forward from this. When I was sitting in the waiting room at the hospital, I beat myself up with ‘would haves.’ I wished I would have listened to my instincts from the very beginning about Johnny and Vivana, and I wish I would have insisted that you didn’t go into the salon that morning. I even wished I would have come by and brought you coffee, that way I could have intervened. There were so many would haves that went through my mind. But after almost driving myself crazy, I realized that no matter what either one of us would have or could have done, everything happened the way it was supposed to.”
Geneva looked at him with questioning eyes. “How can you say that? Do you really think we were supposed to lose our baby?”
“I think we’re supposed to face whatever challenge comes our way, and stand strong in our faith that things will work out.”
“We lost a child,” she whispered.
Samuel nodded and squeezed her hand. “And we’ll have another one. This entire experience showed me that even in the face of tragedy, everything is going to be all right as long as we have each other. I love you more and more each day.”
Geneva’s heart swelled with joy. Just as she was about to sink into more despair, Samuel pulled her out and made her believe that happiness was around the corner. He’d just told her that they would have another baby, and looking into his eyes, she knew they would.
“This bump in the road isn’t going to stop us, baby. What God has in store for us is already planned, we just have to have faith and trust that it’s going to be all right. I believe it will . . . don’t you?”
Geneva smiled. “Yes.”
Samuel reached for her tray, picked up the piece of toast, and this time Geneva took a small bite.
Later that night Geneva lay in bed, unable to sleep. But unlike the other nights over the last seven days, her inability to rest didn’t stem from sadness. Geneva was wide awake, excited about her future. She was finally starting to feel like her old self again. She’d been down, but she hadn’t broken, and she knew that she had a lot to be thankful for. She looked up when she saw Samuel come into the room carrying a hot cup of tea in one hand and a bottle of her medicine in the other.
“Chamomile?” she asked.
“You know it. It’ll help relax you.”
She smiled and yawned. “Thank you, baby.”
Samuel opened the bottle of pills and handed one to her. “Take this. It’ll help you sleep.”
Geneva looked at the small but powerful pill. She had forgotten about the Ambien that the doctor had prescribed for her. “This medicine, combined with the chamomile, is gonna knock me out,” she said.
Samuel nodded. “That’s the point. You need a good night’s sleep, and this is going to do it.”
“You haven’t been sleeping well, either,” she said. “I’m concerned about you.”
Samuel smiled, removed his jeans and t-shirt, and climbed into bed beside her. “Now that I know you’re okay, I’m going to sleep like a baby.”
Geneva rested her head on Samuel’s chest while he held her close. Within a few minutes her eyes felt heavy, and she was glad for the deep sleep that was about to come. She felt safe and loved while she listened to Samuel’s slow breathing as he drifted off beside her. This was the first night in seven days that a smile came to her face when she closed her eyes.
Chapter 28
JOHNNY
Johnny placed the cold slice of pizza back in the box, unable to eat it. His life was in shambles and he didn’t know how to fix it. “I should’ve requested a late check-out and stayed my ass in bed,” he lamented, thinking about last Saturday morning. Today made a week since the horrific accident at Geneva’s salon, and he still couldn’t get it out of his mind.
He hadn’t meant to hurt Geneva in any way. All he’d wanted to do was tell her that he was sorry, and ask for h
er forgiveness. But things hadn’t played out the way he’d wanted. He had no idea that Vivana would be there posing as a client. Each time he thought about the standing Saturday morning hair appointments she’d kept over the last four months, he had to shake his head. She’d played him in much the same way he’d played women all his life. Lies, secrets, and scandalous behavior weren’t new to him, but they took on a different meaning when he was on the receiving end of them.
“This is what it feels like to be shit on,” he said, looking around his empty house. For the first time in years he was all alone. Even though his relationship with Vivana had been dysfunctional, tumultuous, and full of drama, she’d filled the void that Geneva had left, but now, even she was gone.
“I guess I’m getting my payback,” Johnny said as he walked into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and reached for a bottle of his favorite imported beer. He leaned against the counter and took a long swallow as his mind went back to Geneva.
When she left him a few months ago, Johnny knew she was hurt and angry, but he thought those feelings would eventually pass, as they always had. He’d fully expected her to come back to him, and that’s why he never signed the separation papers. But as time went on, she didn’t return, and now he knew why. He hung his head and mouthed words he never thought he’d say. “My wife is in love with another man.”
When Geneva told him that she’d moved on, and that she was actually in love with someone else, a surprising pain had gripped Johnny’s chest that he’d never felt before. He wanted her back. He wanted to hold her. So he wrapped his arms around her and set tragedy in motion.
Every time he closed his eyes, the vision of Geneva’s body lying limp on the ground plagued him. “I need something stronger than this,” he said as he downed his beer. He walked over to the cabinet. “This is more like it.” He opened the bottle of Ciroc, put a few ice cubes in his glass, and filled it to the rim with the premium vodka. “Ahhh, that’s what I needed.” He drank the liquor until his glass was empty, and then filled it again. But no matter how hard he tried to block it out, the vision was still there.
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