Obsession 3 (2 page)

“Secret, I can't—”

Secret cut her off by squeezing the doctor's hand with her other hand as well. She was pleading like a prisoner being held captive begging for their freedom. “Please, Doctor. I can't have my baby in jail. I'd rather die. I'd rather it die.” The tears continued to stream. She trembled. A contraction hit her, but she clamped her teeth together to bear the pain. Only the doctor telling her what she wanted to hear would give her peace of mind.

“This baby is not going to wait, honey. There is nothing I can do,” the doctor told her. “It's not really up to me. That baby is coming when it's ready. Now I have to get you prepped so I can assist your little one.” The doctor eagerly went to walk away. Not only did she need to help bring Secret's baby into the world, but she could no longer stand to look into Secret's eyes. There was too much desperation and pain for her to witness.

“No, please.” Secret refused to let go of the doctor's hands. “Don't do this to me.” Secret shook her head back and forth.

The doctor had no idea what was going through her patient's head, but she could only imagine. Who wanted their child to walk around for the rest of their lives with the stigma attached of being born in jail? But her hands were tied. It was in God's hands. He was the one who decided when a life would come into the world. She was just there to help.

The doctor leaned down close to Secret. “I understand how you feel, I really do. But if I don't help get that baby out of you, it will die. It will lose oxygen and die and maybe so could you.” The doctor lifted up and went to walk away.

Yet again, Secret refused to let the woman go. She pulled the doctor back down to her. With a trembling lip and meaning every word that escaped her mouth she said to the doctor, “Then let us die.”

The doctor just stood there for a moment. Secret's words had penetrated her soul, splintered her soul. She knew what she had to do as guilt instantaneously flooded her being. She hoped she wouldn't live to regret her decision. She hoped her patient and her patient's unborn baby wouldn't suffer the results of her decision.

“The head is out!” the EMT shouted just as the ambulance pulled up to the hospital emergency room doors. “I told that idiot we needed to deliver there.” He then seethed under his breath, “Frickin' jailhouse quack.”

“Oh, God! My baby! It hurts!” Secret was torn between the feeling of pleasure and pain, kind of like how a girl might feel when she's losing her virginity. Secret wouldn't know about all that because when she lost her virginity, there was no pleasure in it at all. There was just pain, humility, and disgust. She'd felt so violated like she was being raped. She hadn't known the man on a personal level she'd lost her virginity to, but she had willingly given her body to him. That's what her daddy had wanted her to do. For years she'd longed to be a daddy's girl to her father whose coming in and out of her life wasn't even as consistent as her monthly menstrual cycle. She just wanted to please his heart, which was why she agreed to lie on her back and give up the most precious thing she possessed. She allowed the stranger to run up inside her right there on his kitchen floor while her father waited in the alley behind the house in his car.

He'd owed people money, bad people. They were going to kill him if he didn't pay them. According to the spiel he had given his daughter, he'd been doing anything and everything himself to gather money to pay off his debt and now he needed her to do the same. At first Secret refused, but she couldn't allow her father's blood to be on her hands. Besides, this would be the ultimate act of showing her father how much she loved him. The little girl inside of her just knew if she did what Daddy wanted, he'd come around more. He'd be indebted to her. So she slept with the man who offered her alcohol and Kentucky Fried Chicken as if on a cheap date. But he wasn't cheap. After he'd had his way with Secret, not only did he give her an envelope full of cash to give to her father, the man he'd purchased her pussy from, but he'd also given Secret a li'l somethin' somethin' for herself. That was Secret's first time tricking, first time having sex, and first time getting pregnant. Now she lay in the back of an ambulance suffering the consequences of it all. She was alone.

“Just everybody calm down,” the female EMT said, who was also in the back of the ambulance with Secret and her coworker. She was specifically talking to her partner but wanted to remain as professional as possible and not call him out.

“You're the one who agreed with the dumb-dumb back at the jail to transport her instead of just letting her give birth there first,” he spat as he tended to Secret as best he could.

The female EMT opened her mouth, but nothing came out. There were no words to defend why she insisted on transporting Secret to the hospital instead of them just assisting in the delivery of the baby at the jail and then transporting a healthy mother and baby to the hospital. But the pleading of both Secret's and the jailhouse doctor's eyes had swayed her to go against what she knew was more medically sound: “My baby can't be born in jail, please!” Secret's pleas had penetrated her heart.

Her coworker had fussed the entire time from the minute they transferred Secret to their gurney up until now.

“If anything happens to mother or baby . . .” His words trailed off at his warning, or perhaps it was a threat. He said none of this out of anger, but out of fear that something, anything, could go wrong.

The female EMT looked down at Secret and their eyes just happened to lock. She squeezed Secret's hand, an unspoken gesture that everything was going to be okay.

“What do we have?” Another voice shouted through the ambulance. It was a man.

“Doctor, we have an eighteen-year-old female in labor, water broke, fully dilated, baby's head coming out,” the male EMT said to the middle-aged Caucasian man.

The doctor didn't reply. He just climbed into the back of the ambulance and went right over to Secret. The nurse who had come out with the doctor waited outside the back of the vehicle.

The doctor did a quick check on Secret and then looked to the EMTs. “Surely this all didn't just happen in the short period of time you transferred her.”

The first responders remained silent as they stared at one another. The male EMT's look was burning a hole through the female.

“Yes, we know, Doctor,” the male EMT said, not throwing his counterpart under the ambulance like he wanted to.

The doctor hopped off the ambulance as he started shouting out orders. Both the EMT and nurse scurried behind the doctor who did a light jog back through the emergency room doors. The nurse was right behind the doctor paying close attention to his direction as the EMTs carted a screaming Secret.

Right as they bust through the swinging doors into a chilly room, Secret's upper body shot straight up as she spread her legs as far as she could. She let out an ear-piercing yelp. To her it felt like a million people were scrambling about the room and they were speaking in unknown tongues. Everything felt so surreal.

There was some tugging, some pulling, someone was wiping her forehead with a white towel. Someone was asking her questions that she couldn't comprehend. There was the clinking of medical tools as the doctor called out what he needed. There was a stinging between Secret's legs as if she'd been ripped and not surgically cut with one of the tools.

“You're doing good, sweetheart,” the nurse who stood by Secret's side told her. “One more push, I promise.”

Secret hadn't even realized she'd been doing any pushing. That baby was so ready to come out, surely it had been doing everything it could on its own to escape from her dark womb and into this dark world.

For nine months Secret felt like she'd eaten a basketball that wouldn't digest and pass through her intestines. Well finally in the matter of two seconds the basketball exited her body and she felt the weight of the world being lifted from her. Maybe not the weight of the world, but seven pounds six ounces of weight had been lifted from her.

The sound of a faint cry brought a peaceful hush over Secret. This sound had instantly changed her life. It changed who she was completely. She was now a mother. God had just given her the huge responsibility of bringing a life into the world and nurturing it. There was probably a woman somewhere right now wishing the Almighty would bless her womb with a child of her own. Instead He'd blessed a young girl who was just eighteen years old without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. A young girl who couldn't take care of herself, let alone a baby. God had gotten things twisted somehow, so instead of feeling blessed, Secret felt what all the women in her family had been: cursed.

“It's a girl,” the doctor called out.

Tears flowed out of the corners of Secret's eyes. It was a girl, confirmation that she was cursed indeed. Her baby was cursed by default, poor thing, and all because she had been born to a Miller woman. If Secret was in a position to do so, she'd protect her baby from everything, everyone. She wouldn't even let her out of the house, home schooling her. She'd do whatever she could to keep the street's paws off of her baby girl. But she couldn't. Unlike the woman who God should have blessed with the baby who had a big house, car, and a husband waiting for her and baby to come home from the hospital, Secret was going back to jail and her baby was going God knows where.

Secret hadn't talked to her mother, Yolanda, since the day the two had a knock-down drag-out fight and Yolanda put her out, which was somewhere around six months ago. Even if Secret had been in touch with her mother, there was no way she would have wanted that evil bitch to raise her baby. Her father was out of the question. He'd figure out a way to sell the baby on the black market for money: either money he needed for drugs, or money he owed to some bad guys because of drugs.

The only other family Secret had was Shawndiece and strangely enough, Secret hadn't heard from her in over two weeks. The first and only one to come visit Secret in jail for the month she'd been locked up so far, Shawndiece had promised to be there for Secret and now she was ghost. That concerned Secret. Worry set in when she had tried to call Shawndiece on her cell phone and it was turned off. Shawndiece wasn't blood family, but being Secret's best friend since she was ten years old, Shawndiece had been more like a sister than just a friend.

Secret had been living with her grandmother in Farmington until she passed away. Farmington was a nice suburb, nothing like the apartment complex Secret had to move into with her mother. It was culture shock for Secret, but Shawndiece's little ghetto tail had been there to show Secret the ropes and take her under her wing. Shawndiece never could put the hood in Secret, but the hood respected Secret nonetheless. At least nobody ever tried to mess with her. Secret didn't know if it was because she kept to herself and didn't bother anybody, or if having the roughest female in the hood as her best friend had something to do with it.

The two best friends were complete opposites. Oil and water for sure, with Shawndiece's sharp tongue being a hint of vinegar. “We balance the universe out,” was what Secret had once told her high school counselor, Mrs. Langston, when she'd asked her why she hung around that ratchet girl. Secret had laughed first hearing the older white woman use a slang term surely one of the other students had taught her. If anyone else had said it, Secret would have probably been offended, but she knew her counselor meant no harm. Mrs. Langston was just looking out for Secret. She'd looked out for her all four years of high school.

“There's something different about you from most of these other kids,” Mrs. Langston had told Secret one day in her office while she helped Secret fill out some scholarship applications. “You don't belong here. College is going to take you away to the land of opportunities. And if nothing else, it will take you away from this town.”

That's all Secret had worked hard toward throughout her schooling: to get a scholarship so she could get the hell out of Flint and as far away from her family curse as possible. A scholarship to OSU was going to be her golden ticket. So when Yolanda broke the news to Secret of the letter that came denying her the scholarship, Secret gave up on her dreams. There was no other way she could afford to attend without scholarships. And then when Yolanda put her on the streets pregnant, she couldn't even afford to live. So she resorted to doing what her father had introduced her to: tricking.

Not that it made it any better, but Secret only tricked with one guy in particular, Lucky. Although Secret never straight-out asked Lucky and he never straight-out told her, she knew he had his hands in the streets. For lack of better terms, he was a baller, street pharmacist. The plan was that she'd pretend she liked him, sleep with him, and then tell him that the baby she was already pregnant with was his. She'd at least have a baby daddy with a bank roll to take care of her. It worked for all of ten minutes. Secret's conscience wouldn't let her go through with the scheme, especially once she started to fall in love with Lucky. But the day the cops pulled them over in Secret's car that had a trunk full of dope that Lucky had put there, Secret's luck ran out. Lucky, unwilling to take the blame for the dope, since the car was in Secret's name, she went down for it and went to jail. Now here she was giving birth to her child while she waited on her trial to start. She had no idea how much longer she'd been in jail. What was even worse, she had no idea what she was going to do with her baby when she went back to jail.

“The mother's blood pleasure is dropping by the second. We can't stop the vaginal bleeding. Get her upstairs, stat!” the doctor yelled as two of the nurses handled the baby and two other nurses helped him tend to the patient.

Upon the doctor's orders, one nurse opted to assist with the situation going on with Secret. The new born baby was in good hands with a single nurse.

“Go give the staff on two the heads-up,” the doctor said to the nurse who had just come over to assist. “Let them know the situation and to prep accordingly. Looks like we're going to have to do an emergency procedure to stop the bleeding.” The doctor was turning red with fury. “If anything happens to this patient and her baby, those EMTs . . .” He shook his head.

The nurse receiving the instructions nodded and whizzed out of the room after acknowledging with, “Yes, Doctor.”

Secret just lay there in and out of consciousness. She was moving her lips and every now and then a faint, “My baby,” would manage to escape her lips, but it wasn't loud enough to be heard over all the commotion going on in the room. Among the commotion, though, there was one thing that Secret noticed she didn't hear; her baby wasn't crying anymore.

If Secret didn't know any better, she would have sworn someone was playing with the light switch. Light, then darkness. Darkness then light. She fought to keep her eyes open, to stay awake. She could not fall into a sleep without first knowing if her baby was okay. She was feeling weaker and weaker by the second. It was becoming a losing battle.

“My ba . . .” She couldn't even get the last word out she was so weak. The next thing she knew, it felt as if someone was spinning her around and around when hospital assistants entered the room and began to wheel her from the room. Light then dark. The world was spinning. Dizzy. “My baby,” she managed, still too faint to be audible.

“You're going to be all right, baby,” an older African American nurse leaned down and said to Secret as the roller coaster of a ride continued through the hospital corridors.

All Secret could do was stare at her with heavy, fluttering eyelids. She was pleading for answers with her eyes. All she wanted to know was if her baby was all right. She couldn't have cared less about herself. Was her baby all right? Was she alive?

Those words her grandmother used to say all the time flashed into Secret's head. Secret had cried out to God and prayed that her baby be spared of the generational curse. She didn't want her baby to have to live the same life she had lived. To suffer some of the things she'd suffered in her lifetime. She didn't want her baby to have to live in the streets of Flint, Michigan, raised by those streets that had their own twisted way of nurturing kids. Her baby could not live that way.

A wave of heat followed by a freezing chill flushed through Secret's body. Had God actually answered her prayers in a way she'd never meant for them to be answered? Since she didn't want her baby to have to live this way or that, had God decided to take care of that by not allowing her baby to live at all?

“Ahhhhh!” The cry of agony at the mere thought of her baby left dead back in the delivery room in the arms of a stranger, a nurse, had no problem escaping Secret's throat.

“It's okay, baby,” the comforting nurse consoled Secret again. “We're almost there.”

The elevator doors closed. The whirlwind of a ride Secret was on was becoming harder and harder to withstand. Dizzy. Faint. She just wanted to close her eyes and let her body rest. But she couldn't rest, not until she knew the state of her baby. Then after that, God's will be done as far as her life was concerned.

“Hey, I know her.” A team of nurses had been waiting at the elevator bank for the arrival of Secret. Apparently one had recognized Secret's face.

The nurses on the second floor immediately took over and relieved the nurse from the ER. The nurse who had been consoling Secret relayed Secret's situation for their own confirmation to the nurses. She then watched Secret be wheeled away, getting back on the elevator along with the assistants, returning to their assigned units.

“What's happening?” Secret moaned.

“Yes, honey, what did you say?” One of the nurses leaned down, placing her ear as close to Secret's mouth as she could while at the same time keeping up with the moving bed.

Secret couldn't repeat her words. It had taken more strength than she'd had to get them out the first time. She just shook her head as tears seeped out of the corners of her eyes, creating wet spots on the sheet beneath her.

The nurse stood after a few seconds of Secret not responding. She looked down at her and saw the tears. “Don't worry, Li'l Muffin, it's going to be all right. Just . . .” The nurse's words trailed off, from both her mouth and Secret's ears.

Secret had heard that nickname before. She'd heard that exact same voice calling her by that name before. Was she going crazy? Was she losing it? Was her mind going back in time, as if her life was flashing before her eyes?

“I know her,” the nurse said, the sound of her scrubs brushing together as if they were about to start a fire. That's how fast her petite legs were moving in order to keep up with the hospital aides who were wheeling the bed. Standing only five feet and three inches tall, it wasn't as easy of a feat as one might think.

No one acknowledged the nurse's comment for yet a second time, as they wheeled Secret into the operation room where another doctor and two more nurses waited with faces masked and hands gloved. There was some mumbo jumbo, from what Secret could hear, among all the voices in the room. Whether the nurse knew or simply thought she knew who Secret was, was no longer relevant. There was a life that needed to be saved. As far as Secret knew, two lives.

There was a prick in Secret's arm. Within seconds, no matter how hard she tried, she could not get her eyes to open. The lights were out. She was in the dark. The voices faded. She was clueless as to what was going on. Was she falling asleep, or was she dying? She didn't want to do either without first knowing what had happened to her baby. But she was at the mercy of the doctors, the nurses, and whatever that liquid sleeping pill was they'd injected into her veins.

Seconds later Secret opened her eyes. She felt groggy. She felt empty. She went to place her hands on her belly. Her arms weren't yet privy to the fact that they couldn't move as fast as her brain was. They stopped midway. Her body was stiff. An immediate wave of pain shot threw her just from the small, quick movement. She flinched and her face scrunched up. Her brain got on the same page as her body and this time she slowly went to place her hands on her stomach. They still stopped midway. She looked down. Handcuffs. She was handcuffed to the bed. She looked at her belly that, the last time she'd seen it, had looked as though she was toting around a beach ball. Now it was somewhat flat. Her baby, it was gone.

Panic set in and Secret began to wriggle her wrists, as if she could escape the metal bracelets with a few strategic movements. She looked around. She wasn't in her jail cell. She looked to be in a hospital room. She hadn't even worn handcuffs in jail. Why did she have them on in a public hospital?

She began to rack her brain, still trying to free her wrists from the cuffs; then everything started to come back to her. Her mind took her all the way back to sitting on her bunk in the jail and her water breaking. She was in an ambulance and then in a hospital delivery room.

She heard the baby cry. The lights kept going on and off. The room was spinning; the world was spinning.

Li'l Muffin.
She'd remembered hearing those words, and it hadn't been the first time.

The lights went out again and now they were back on again. And even though it had felt like only seconds between the last time they went out and were just now on again, it had been hours, two to be exact.

“Li'l Muffin.”

Secret heard the voice again. This time it wasn't in her head. It was right there in her room. She turned her head and looked toward the doorway, where a petite woman wearing scrubs was entering. Why was that nickname so familiar? Why was that voice so familiar? Secret squinted her eyes and tried to focus. The face, there was even some familiarity to that, but why? Where did Secret know this woman from? With the tone of endearment behind the woman's words, clearly she wasn't struggling to recall where she knew Secret from.

The woman's lips spread into a smile as if she'd been waiting to see Secret again. She stepped over to Secret's bed. “How are you feeling?”

Secret blinked. Her eyes were still a little heavy, so it was a slow blink. She wet her whistle by allowing as much saliva as she could to form in her mouth. She thought it might take away the pain in her throat caused by dryness. She spoke. “Okay.” She really wasn't. In her body she was okay. She wasn't suffering from any type of unbearable pain, just discomfort. But her spirit wasn't okay. She was anxious and concerned about her little one. “Where's my baby?”

“Your baby is just fine,” the nurse said as she began to check the IVs in Secret's arm.

Secret's entire body went as limp as a noodle. The tension had released itself all at once.

“She's in the nursery stealing all the shine from all the other babies. It's her mother we were all concerned about.” The woman took out a machine and took Secret's temperature with it. Secret would have asked more questions about her baby, but it would have to wait. She now had a thermometer in her mouth. But as the thermometer rested between her lips, she couldn't help her mind from wandering, trying to place this nurse.

There was a beeping sound. The nurse removed the stick from Secret's mouth. She popped the little plastic piece off the stick and then pitched it into the trash.

Secret licked her lips and tried to moisten her mouth again.

“I'll go get you some water, but let me grab your blood pressure first. After all, that's part of why you ended up here in the first place.” She wheeled over a little machine to take Secret's blood pressure. “Your blood pressure dropped so low. You were losing mad blood. The doctor did an emergency procedure on you that I'm sure he'll be in to explain more thoroughly than I can,” she informed Secret.

“When can I go see my baby?” Secret asked.

The nurse looked down at Secret's handcuffs and then back up at her patient. “Well, you can't,” was her reply.

Secret's blood pressure would have skyrocketed had the nurse not continued talking.

“They'll bring her down to see you. I'll let them know Mommy is up and ready to lay eyes on her little one.” She smiled. She announced Secret's blood pressure. “Much, much better,” she said, then wrapped up the machine and rolled it back into its proper place. “Now let me go get that water.” She was out of the room in seconds.

Secret was so pleased to know that her baby was okay and that in a few moments she'd get to see her. Now the next thing that bothered Secret was the fact that she couldn't figure out where in the world she knew this nurse from.