by Kiki Swinson
“No.”
“Well, lighten up. It’s not the end of the world.”
“You’re such an asshole!”
He smiled at me. “You know what? I’ve heard that twice today already.”
“Then it should mean something.”
“Not really,” he replied nonchalantly.
“When am I getting out of here?” I changed the subject. “I’m so tired of being confined inside this room. I wanna go outside and get some fresh air.”
“I’m getting ready to speak with the doctor on duty in a few minutes. I’m sure he’s going to release you today, because you’ve been here for two days, and by law a suicidal patient has to be in the hospital and under watch for forty-eight hours.”
“I’ve told everybody that has come in here that I won’t ever try to commit suicide again.”
“I’m sure you won’t. But a lot of people say the same thing you’re saying right now, which is why medical professionals are placed in situations like yours, just in case circumstances change.”
“Look, do what you have to do so I can get out of here.”
“Will do,” he said, and then he exited the room.
While Agent Sims went to go and talk to the doctor on call, I sat there with all kinds of emotions ricocheting inside of me. One minute it felt like I was having an anxiety attack, then feeling optimistic. But then my feelings changed again. I knew it would be hard, but I wanted to be at peace. Be at peace with everything going on around me, regardless of my outcome. I guess in time, I might get just that.
It didn’t take Sims long to come back to my room. “Got some good news,” he said, giving me the phoniest smile he could muster up.
“So I’m being released today?”
“Yes, you are. The doctor said that he’ll fill out the discharge papers by lunch and then you can leave.” I looked at the clock and it read: 9:50. That meant that I was going to be in this hellhole for another two hours. “I’ve gotta be here for two more hours?” I complained.
“He gave a window of two hours, just to be on the safe side. I’m sure he’s gonna let you out of here within an hour. So let me run back to the office and get a few things so we can take you to a safe house.”
“Please don’t take long, because I am ready to get out of here.”
“I will be right back. But if you need anything, Agent Montclair is standing right outside your door,” he assured me, and then he left.
Once again, I found myself sitting alone, trying to figure out my next step, especially since there’s only an amount of time before the cops reveal that they have Terrell’s remains. And when this happened, there’d be a strong possibility that they’re gonna want to come back and talk to me. Now I can’t allow those rookies to play me like they did the first time. I’m gonna have to be on my A game. At this point, I can’t afford to take any losses.
* * *
I started preparing myself mentally, since I was leaving this godforsaken place. It didn’t feel like I was in a freaking institution versus a hospital. I figured it probably felt that way because I couldn’t leave and go as I pleased. In addition, the fact that I was monitored closely swayed me to feel that way too.
It had been almost an hour since Agent Sims left my room. He said he had to run to his office to get some paperwork and then he was going to head back my way, so I watched the clock on the wall like the staff was watching me. While doing this, I decided to get dressed. I grabbed my purse too. I wanted to be ready when I was officially escorted out of this place.
Moments passed and I heard someone standing outside my door talking. A couple of seconds later, the door to my room opened, and in came the nurse that took care of me. She was smiling from ear to ear, carrying a beautifully wrapped gift box. “Got some chocolate-covered sweets for you,” she announced as she walked toward me.
I smiled and zoomed in on the box and noticed that it was from a locally owned gourmet chocolate shop. They were known for their chocolate-covered strawberries, bananas, and pineapples. “Where did it come from?” I asked as she placed the gift box on the wheel table in front of me.
“A young lady dropped it off to the nurses’ station and asked me if I could bring this gift to you.”
“Really?!” I said, wondering who could’ve bought me this edible arrangement. Curious as to what chocolate-covered fruits were inside, I pulled the box closer to me so I could open it.
“Enjoy!” the nurse said as she exited my room.
With anticipation, I took the bow off the box and lifted the top up slowly. Instantly I screamed. “Ahhhhhhhhhh!” I pushed the box onto the floor.
Alarmed by my yell for help, Agent Montclair burst into my room with his gun drawn. “My mama’s hand is in that box. Oh my God! They got my mama.” I began to sob hysterically. I jumped up from the bed and rushed toward the door. By this time, the nurse had turned around and come back to my room. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Meanwhile, Agent Montclair was picking up the box and my mother’s hand with a surgical glove he got from the box near my bed. “My mama’s hand was in there. They got my mama! We gotta help her before they kill her!” I started crying uncontrollably as I pointed toward the floor.
“Did you say your mother’s hand?” the nurse asked me while she stood in the entryway of the door.
“Agent Sims, you need to get back here ASAP.” I watched Agent Montclair speak through his cell phone. “Grab her things and get her out of here!” Agent Montclair instructed the nurse.
“Where do you want me to take her?” the nurse wanted to know.
“Put her in another room!” he yelled at her.
“Wait! Who’s gonna get my mama back? They gon’ kill her if we don’t hurry up and get her back!” I yelled. I wanted everyone in the freaking hospital to hear me.
“Come on, let’s go,” the nurse said after she grabbed my purse from the chair near the bed. “I’m gonna put her in the medical suite,” she informed Agent Montclair, and then she grabbed my hand and pulled me into the hallway.
Scared and panic stricken, I followed the nurse down the hallway. “What’s going on, Pamela?” another nurse asked.
“Get on the radio and call security,” the nurse with me said.
“What should I tell them?” the other nurse asked.
“Tell them we have a Code 33. And tell security to locate a young, small-framed white female wearing a blue T-shirt and white jeans. Don’t let her leave the hospital.”
“Okay, I’m on it,” the other nurse said as she raced in the opposite direction. It was apparent that she was on her way toward the nurses’ station.
Meanwhile, the nurse with me continued on our walk toward the other end of the hallway. The moment after we arrived at the room I was supposed to stay in, the nurse unlocked it and pushed the door open. “This is where you’ll stay until we are told otherwise.”
“Okay,” I said, still sobbing from the images I had in my head about my mother’s hand. I took a couple of steps toward the bed in the middle of the room and then I took a seat on the edge of it. I watched the nurse close the door and lock it while I scooted around, trying to find a soft spot on the bed.
As I sat there, all I could do was cry and wondered why my mother’s hand was chopped off and sent to me in a fucking chocolate box. It wasn’t a secret about who did it. The answer I needed was why? Why cut off my mother’s hand and send it to me? I also wondered what kind of message they were sending. And what state was my mother in? Was she dead? Or was she alive? I needed these questions answered? And I needed them now.
Trying to juggle every thought in my mind, I wondered how those motherfuckers found her. And if they also had her boyfriend, Carl, too? If they did, why take him? He had absolutely nothing to do with what I had going on. Nor had my mom. Now I’ve got to figure some things out.
I continued to cry my eyes out when I heard the lock on the door click and then it opened. When I looked up, Agent Sims walked in. I sat there and bawled my eyes out.
“How are you feeling right now?”
“I just opened a box and found my mother’s hand inside of it, and you want to know how I’m feeling? What kind of question is that?” By this time, my tears had saturated my face. Moments later, I got up from the bed and started pacing the floor in that room.
“How do you know it’s your mother’s hand?”
“Because when she came to see me yesterday, I complimented her on the color of her fingernail polish.” I cried even harder.
“We took the hand down to our office so we can get a forensic professional to examine it.”
“What is there to examine? I told you, that’s my mother’s hand. So what you need to be doing now is getting a team together and going to look for my mother,” I snapped. Agent Sims was surely testing my patience.
“Listen, Misty, I know you’re upset, but I’m gonna need you to calm down so I can get your full cooperation,” he said.
“Is it about my mother? Because I don’t want to hear anything unless we’re talking about how we’re gonna get my mother back. Getting her back is all I care about.”
“Don’t worry about your mother right now. I’ve got another team of agents searching for her at this very moment.”
“Do they know where to go? Or where she is?”
“We got some very good leads, so let us handle it. Right now, we need to concentrate on getting you out of the hospital and into a safe house, at least until all of this is done and over with.”
“Are we leaving now?”
“Yes, we are. So let’s go.”
6
MOVE INTO ACTION
Still sobbing my eyes out, I stood up and proceeded to the door. Sims snatched a couple of tissue papers from a napkin box near the door. After he handed them to me, I wiped my eyes and my cheeks. By the time Agent Sims and I walked into the hallway, two other agents were waiting for us there. The only one I recognized was Agent Taylor. The other one I hadn’t seen before. “We’re gonna take her down to the basement and exit the left wing of the hospital adjacent to the coroner’s office,” Sims said.
“Let’s move it,” Sims continued, and then he led the way to the stairwell. It was me with a total of three agents escorting me down to the basement. I had a mixture of emotions while the agents and I raced toward the nearest exit. My tears wouldn’t stop. They started coming with every step I took. And all I could think about was where my mom was and if she was still alive.
We finally made it to the basement garage of the hospital and Sims started giving the other two agents instructions. “Taylor, you stay here with me while Kennedy goes and gets the car,” he said.
“I’m on it,” the very tall, medium-build Caucasian man said, and then he walked off.
While Agent Kennedy went to fetch the car, Agent Sims and Agent Taylor started a dialogue. I stood there and wallowed in my own state of emotions and misery.
“Do you have a location yet?” Agent Taylor asked Sims.
“Yes, it was just confirmed about five minutes ago,” Sims told him.
“When we find my mama, will she be able to come where we’re going?” I threw out there. I wanted to know if they were hatching out a plan for her.
“Misty, I can’t confirm that right now. Let’s focus on getting you safely out of here and then discuss getting your mother next,” Sims said.
“That’s not good enough. You guys pulled me into some bullshit-ass drug investigation, when I wanted no part of it. And when I was forced to be your eyes and ears, I realized that I didn’t have a choice. On top of that, I lost my grandmother, my cousin, and only God knows that I could have lost my mother too. But do y’all care?”
“Yes, we do.”
“That’s bullshit! All you care about is arresting those drug dealing–ass killers and putting them in prison. Outside of that, it doesn’t mean shit to you!” I shouted while I sobbed even more.
“Will you shut the fuck up with all that crying! You’ve been running your mouth since I met you. And it’s getting old!” Agent Taylor shouted, and then he pulled his government-issued handgun. Shocked by his sudden outburst, Agent Sims and I looked at him like he had just lost his damn mind. We both looked at Agent Taylor’s gun and then we looked him in the face.
“What are you doing?” Agent Sims asked him.
“Yeah, why the fuck you got a gun pointed at us?” I asked, trying to see through my glassy eyes.
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?!” Taylor roared. I could see the veins protruding through his forehead.
“Taylor, what’s going on?” Agent Sims wanted to know. Sims even took a couple of steps toward him with his hands half up, like he was trying to play it easy and not cause any trouble.
“Stop right there. Don’t move another fucking inch or I’m gonna have to take you out,” Taylor warned Sims.
“I knew there was a reason why I didn’t like you. You’re a fucking traitor!” I spat as I gritted my teeth.
“Call me what you want, you fucking informant. I’m gonna get one million dollars to deliver you to the Malek family. And do you know what I am going to do with that money? I’m gonna get on a one-way flight out of here and never look back,” Taylor explained.
“What about your wife and kids?” Sims asked him.
“What about her? She a low-down, dirty bitch!”
“Come on, Taylor, don’t say that.”
“Don’t tell me what to say. Do you know that those two kids aren’t really mine? Now, could you imagine how I felt when I found that out?”
“No, buddy, I can’t. But I promise you, if you put your gun away, I will make sure that you get the best therapist so they could help you cope with what’s going on at home.” Sims was trying to reason with him.
“I don’t need you to help with shit. Just take your gun from your waist, put it on the ground, and slide it over to me,” Taylor told him.
“Please, Taylor, don’t do this,” Sims said carefully, still trying to play it easy.
“Look, I’m gonna only say this one more time. Take your gun from your waist and slide it on the ground toward me.” Taylor was repeating himself, and I could tell that he was getting agitated by Agent Sims.
“All right, all right,” Sims said, and slowly removed his pistol from the waist area of his pants. I watched him as he kneeled down to place his gun on the ground, and immediately after he slid the gun across the concrete floor, we heard the car that Agent Kennedy was driving. It was coming in our direction. Agent Sims and Agent Taylor and I looked back at the car to see how far it was from us. This took the focus off Agent Sims’s gun, so when they realized how close Agent Kennedy was, they turned back around simultaneously. Agent Sims rushed toward Agent Taylor and they started wrestling each other for the gun Taylor had in his hands. Seeing this gave me my way out. Before Agent Kennedy got any closer, I took off running back toward the door that led to the stairwell. As the door closed behind, I heard two gunshots. Pop! Pop! Alarmed by the sounds, I raced back up the stairs and only traveled up one flight of steps. Panting and breathing erratically, I knew that I had to calm down and act normal when I opened the door to the first floor and walked through the lobby. So that’s what I did.
I wiped my eyes as the door closed behind me. I was fortunate that only four people were sitting around near the front entrance of the hospital. I could tell that the three people sitting down near the help desk were family. The older woman had to be the grandmother, the second person was the mother, and the last person was the daughter. Three generations of love. I would do anything to have that right now. The other person was an old black man that looked like he was waiting for his wife to come back from the bathroom or something. He was reading a newspaper and was the least interested in what was going on around him.
I continued toward the front door, and luckily by the time I had walked to the curb, I saw a taxicab dropping two people off. I took a couple of steps and leaned into the passenger-side window. “Could you please give me a ride
?” I asked him, hoping he’d say yes, considering he could’ve taken another call before he dropped these two people off now.
“Where are you heading?” the white man asked me.
“Anywhere but here,” I told him without giving it much thought. My only mission was to leave this place before the agents came looking for me. Knowing that Agent Taylor had agreed to bring me to the Malek family for $1,000,000 was horrifying to think about. I mean, who could I trust now? If the Maleks managed to get Agent Taylor to work for them, then who else had they put on the payroll? Damn! My life is worth that kind of money?
I jumped in the taxi and instructed the cabdriver to head toward I-64. “Copy that,” he said.
I sat in the back seat and found myself looking out the back window at least over a dozen times. The cabdriver noticed and asked me if everything was all right. I let out a long sigh. “Yes, it is. I’m just making sure that my boyfriend wasn’t following us,” I managed to say. That answer was the only thing I could come up with.
“Listen, lady, I don’t want any problems. Men can be really crazy and dangerous. I see it all the time when guys beat up on their wives and girlfriends.”
“Sir, I promise you don’t have to worry about that.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“I’ll tell you what, after you get on the highway, take me straight to the IHOP restaurant on Military Highway.”
“Okay, we’re on our way,” he said, and then he pressed down on the accelerator a little harder. While en route to IHOP, I couldn’t help but tear up again. I was an emotional wreck right now. My mind was going in circles and my anxiety level shot through the roof. How could a young woman like me manage all this stuff that I was going through? Coping with the murders, now I sat in this back seat and wondered if Agent Sims had been shot. I do know for sure that someone had to have taken that bullet. I’d find out later who it was, I guess.
The cabdriver finally dropped me off at the IHOP, and before he pulled away, I paid him and included a tip. He was pleased and told me to take care of myself. I told him I would, and then I headed into the restaurant. I waited inside the IHOP in the sitting area and watched the cabdriver as he drove out of the parking area. As soon as he was completely out of sight, I headed back outside and flagged another taxi driving by. When he saw me waving, he slowed and came to a complete stop alongside Military Highway and Raby Road.
