Page 133 of Kissed By the Trillest Thug 2

I said it to try and be strong for Malik, but I wasn’t sure if I believed it.

Hours had passed. I knew because my lower back ached and the numbness in my behind had spread all the way down the backs of my legs from sitting in the same hospital chair for so long. Every now and then I’d stand just long enough to stretch before sitting back down again. Nobody had said much. What was there to say? The man responsible for holding our family together was behind those double doors.

I looked over at Maliah; she had cried herself into silence. MJ hadn’t moved much from the chair beside me. Tahari stood off to himself near the window, his head hanging low as he stared out into the parking lot. The waiting… it was the hardest part about all this shit. The elevator doors opened across the hallway. A few seconds later, I spotted Tori, and Sha was right beside her.

The second my sister’s eyes landed on me, she hurried across the waiting room.

“E.”

That was all she said. I stood just as she wrapped both arms around me. The tears I’d been fighting for hours finally escaped. I buried my face against her shoulder.

“I know…” Tori whispered as she rubbed slow circles across my back. “I know.”

For a few seconds I let myself be vulnerable instead of everybody else’s strength. Sha walked over and quietly rested a hand on MJ’s shoulder before pulling him into a hug.

“You good, nephew?”

MJ nodded once.

“I got Ma.”

“I know you do.”

Eventually, Tori eased me back just enough to look at my face.

“He gone get through this.”

I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure I believed it.

“I know.”

She wiped the tears from my cheeks before helping me back toward my chair. Just as I sat down, the double doors leading back to surgery opened. Every conversation in the waiting room stopped. A doctor wearing blue scrubs stepped into the hallway with a clipboard in his hand. His eyes slowly moved across the room.

“Mrs. Browne?”

My heart dropped into my stomach. I slowly turned toward him.

“I’m Mrs. Browne.”

I stood from my seat and then closed the space between him and me.

I searched the doctor’s face, hoping I’d find something that would prepare me for whatever he was about to say. Relief. Concern. Compassion. Anything at all. Instead, his expression remained unreadable, and the longer I looked at him, the tighter the knot in my stomach became. Without even realizing I was doing it, I began twisting my wedding ring around my finger before my hands found each other completely.

My fingers intertwined and pulled apart repeatedly as I tried to keep myself together. I couldn’t stop thinking about Malik lying somewhere behind those doors, and the not knowing was becoming almost unbearable. The entire waiting room had fallen silent. The nurses walking past seemed farther away, the television mounted on the wall had faded into meaninglessbackground noise, and every pair of eyes in the room had settled on the doctor standing in front of us. It felt as though time itself had stopped, leaving all of us suspended in a moment none of us wanted to face.

Before I could say a word, I felt MJ step up beside me. He reached over and took my hand, giving it a firm squeeze that reminded me I wasn’t standing there alone. I held on just as tightly, grateful for the strength my son was trying so hard to lend me even while he was carrying his own fear.

“Doc,” he said quietly, his voice steady despite everything we’d been through, “just tell us.”

The doctor looked at each of us before lowering his eyes for a moment. When he looked back up, he slowly drew in a deep breath. He removed his glasses, folded them carefully, and let out a heavy sigh that settled over the waiting room before a single word ever left his mouth…

TO BE CONTINUED