A Constant Reminder (7 page)

Jane held back tears. “You need a bond hearing.”

“No way. I told you no. You will not mortgage your house or use dad’s life insurance or put up the family businesses for me.”

“I want you out of here.”

“No, the time I’m in here will count toward my sentence. I’m here. I deserve to be here.”

“You sound like you’ve given up.”

“Mother no I haven’t. I’m going to do what Vincent tells me. I’m going to fight my case but I’m not going to inconvenience you anymore than I have already. I’ve done that for long enough.”

“Adam, I just don’t understand how a smart young man like you could get wrapped up in this? You were at the top of your class. Now you do this, committing crimes like some common criminal. What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

Jane hung her head. “Vincent Boyd is the best criminal lawyer I could find. He will figure something out.”

“I want to prepare you mother. I’m not getting out anytime soon.”

“This is your first offense. You don’t know that. There are people who will testify on your behalf.”

“I know I’m in here for a long time, if not a lifetime. I have come to accept that.

“This is a nightmare. Tony Demarco shot and killed the manager. That man had a wife and three kids. He’s dead.”

“Yeah mother I know. I’m sorry it happened.”

“His children are without a father. Can you understand the concept of that? I know you can. You’re father is dead. You have just transferred your pain onto three innocent children.”

“I understand my part in this and I’m really sorry.”

“Sorry gets us nowhere.”

“What’s done is done. I’m not trying to sound cold.”

“Well Adam, that’s exactly how you sound.”

“I wish I could take that entire night back. I swear I didn’t know Tony was going to shoot the guy. I didn’t think he would ever shoot anyone. One day everything was all fun and games and then the next things just got real intense. You will never understand the lure of the drug.”

“I hate that you are locked up in here.”Jane looked around the room in disgust. The room was fairly disgusting by any standards.

“You can’t hate it more than me. Let’s just look on the bright side.”

“Is there one?” Jane asked.

“I’m still alive.”

“You’re right. I thought you would overdose. There is one good thing about this place.”

“Really now, what’s that?”

“You’re no longer on those drugs.” Jane gazed into Adam’s sober eyes. “It’s been a long time since I could look into your eyes and see the little boy that I love so much.”

Adam eyes watered but he managed to stop tears from forming and falling from his face. He had to be tough in jail. He had to at the very least pretend to be tough. Adam looked down than back up at his mother after he reigned in his emotions.

“I love you mother. I’m sorry I put you through this. Please tell Daniel I’m sorry.”

“I will. I love you. Please remember that. Don’t lose yourself in here. You’re still a good boy.” A single tear fell from Jane’s eye.

***

Going back to school wasn’t easy but Roxanne was able to trudge through her emotions. She was able to push on regardless of the untimely and horrendous circumstances.

She had fallen into a normal routine. She focused only on her studies for the last three months. She was still living at home with her mother. She felt the condo was secure. This helped in her recovery process.

Roxanne’s mother had texted her earlier to remind her of her annual doctor’s appointment with the gynecologist. Roxanne’s mind was so deep in her classes that most things slipped her mind.

Roxanne had a lot of studying to do but her mother told her that she would be charged anyway if Roxanne didn’t show up for the office visit. So Roxanne grudgingly went to the doctor’s office after her last class. She had planned to go to the library right after the doctor’s visit. She had more studying to do.

The gynecologist office was small, cramped and very impersonal. It was also a little dusty. She had inherited this doctor from her mother. As soon as she graduated and got a job with a prominent insurance company she was going to find her a more suitable doctor.

Roxanne sat in a lavender office chair with her brown backpack on the floor beside her. She snuck a peek over to the receptionist desk and noticed the Asian American secretary sitting quietly. She could never remember her name. The office phone rang.

“Good afternoon Dr. Chase’s office. Can I help you?” The receptionist answered without a smidgen of any Asian accent.

Roxanne turned her attention away from the receptionist. She looked out the window at cars passing by on the street outside of the small clinic. At least she was the only one in the waiting room.

After ten minutes the closed door that led to the examination rooms opened. An older nurse peeked out of the opened door. She peeked out into the waiting area.

“Roxanne.” The nurse called to her with a warm welcoming smile.

Roxanne paused for a second like she didn’t recognize her own name. I’m an idiot she thought as she grabbed her backpack off the floor. Roxanne stood and headed to the door where the nurse was holding her chart with one hand and the door open with the other.

It was the same old drill. First go to the restroom and pee in a cup, second, stand on the scale right outside the restroom to be weighed. Third, grab your bag and follow the nurse.

Roxanne followed the nurse into examination room two. Roxanne somehow always got that same room. There were four examination rooms but it never failed. She always was directed into room two. Maybe two was her lucky number. Ever since she lost her virginity she had dodged a lot of bullets. Her friends had somehow contracted almost every curable STD there was.

She had never had any STD’s and she viewed herself as lucky. Her best friend from high school got an STD from her boyfriend the first time she had sex. They were a couple for three years and she was clueless he was even cheating on her.

Roxanne didn’t think for one minute that it was just the slutty girls that got sexually transmitted diseases. She knew that her friends had gotten STD’s from asymptomatic losers that they loved and trusted.

A hard-hitting flash of what happened to her hit her hard. She blocked the thought of it as soon as it came at her. She was good at pushing that night into the deepest crevices of her brain.

Roxanne sat on the edge of the examination. The nurse looked over her chart, asked the basic questions and took her blood pressure and gave her a huge paper sheet to cover her lower region.

The nurse left and she disrobed from the waist down. She wasn’t feeling a breast exam today. She just hoped she wouldn’t freak out with the doctor put the speculum inside her.

She hopped back on the table swinging her legs and staring at a mock poster of a woman’s reproductive tract.

It was always cold in that office. Roxanne watched the clock. After five minutes there were three knocks. The door swung open and Dr. Chase filed in with a warm hospitable smile.

“Hello Roxanne. How are you feeling?”

“Hi, I’m good.” She faked a smile.

“It’s been a year since I saw you last.”

“Yeah, a year.”

***

After the doctor’s office Roxanne decided to visit Erika. She didn’t decide it as much as she felt she didn’t really have a choice.

Her ex-roomie was always pissed because they barely saw each other anymore. They didn’t have any of the same classes. Erika could feel the distance that had grown between them.

Roxanne wasn’t intentionally putting a wedge in between them. She just needed space to deal with her demons. Demons she buried inside.

Today was different. Roxanne needed support. Roxanne needed a friend. She needed her best friend and Erika was her current best friend. They hadn’t gone to high school together but she had known her since freshman year of college and she had never betrayed her.

There was a familiar knock on the door. Erika recognized it right away. Roxanne barely came to visit the dorms anymore and she could understand why. This is where she was attacked. Erika rose from her chair to answer the door. She looked through the peephole but she knew who it was. She opened the door to her closest friend.

“Hey there.” Erika tried to act the same way she did with Roxanne before the attack. She wanted to treat her normal since she knew Roxanne was trying to block that entire night out.

Roxanne walked in behind Erika closing the door behind her.

“Hey.” Roxanne mumbled.

“What’s up stranger? You came to hang out?”

Roxanne walked over and turned the television off. Erika frowned but didn’t say anything about it.

“I’m here to hang and talk. I need to talk to my best friend in the whole entire world.”

Erika gave her the side eye. “Girl you need some money or something?”

“Who me? I live at home. No I don’t need any money.”

“Huh, you sure about that?” Erika twisted her lips.

“I’m serious. I just want to talk.”

“What’s wrong?” Erika took a seat on the bed. “I know something is up. I may need to sit down for this.”

Roxanne walked over to the window and looked out into the parking lot. The campus looked beautiful in the daylight. She stayed away from campus at night for obvious reasons.

“I just got back from the doctor’s office.”

Erika raised a perfectly penciled in eyebrow and waited for the punch line.

“Yeah okay.” Erika smirked. Roxanne sat on the windowsill. “You okay?”Roxanne held on to the silence. “You just went to the doctor a few months ago. What could be wrong?” Erika asked trying to coax the words out of her friend.

“No, I actually didn’t go a few months ago.”

“What?” Erika asked. “Why not?” Erika reiterated.

“I didn’t want to be poked and prodded.”

“God Roxanne, you were raped. Why didn’t you go to the doctor?”

Roxanne looked as if she couldn’t answer the obvious question. “It doesn’t matter now. I just didn’t go.”

“Uh, I guess not.”

“There’s like good news and bad news. That’s if you want to look at it like that.”

“Stop playing and tell me.”

“The good news is I don’t have any STD’s.” Roxanne looked out the window then back at Erika. She turned her attention back to the campus scenery.

“Okay, that’s good. What could be bad?” Erika frowned twisting her lips sideways. “You’re not pregnant. Are you?”

Roxanne turned slowly from the window. Her silence spoke volumes. Her silence bounced off the walls and suffocated the oxygen in the room. She answered Erika with the look in her eyes and the slight tilt of her head.

“Oh no Roxanne.” The dismay registered in Erika’s voice.

“I cried in the car on the way here. So I think I already suffered my emotional breakdown. Now I think I’m going through shock which will probably be followed with a rush of complete and total denial.”

“You couldn’t be that far along.”

“The doctor said about eleven weeks.”

Roxanne looked down and out the window at the carefree students passing by. She remembered when she was one of them. It was eleven weeks ago.

“You still have time to get rid of it.” Erika stated.

“I haven’t gotten there yet. I’m still dealing with the initial shock of this unexpected news.”

“You don’t have to deal with it. Just get rid of it.”

“I don’t even want to tell my mother.”

“Well you got to get the money from somewhere.”

This was a distraction from the future Roxanne had envisioned. This wasn’t in her plans. This was something she wished she could just pretend wasn’t happening.

She tried to erase the attack and here it was growing inside her.

CHAPTER 6

Roxanne chose to ignore her present medical condition and focus on her classwork. She started spending a lot of time at the campus library. She worked a few extra shifts and studied there often when she wasn’t working.

She sat alone at a wooden table in the back by the windows. Her books were arranged on the table in front of her. Roxanne read from a book and tapped a pink highlighter marker on the side of her face.

Quincy Moore was a tall handsome senior with dark chocolate skin he inherited from his Nigerian father. He spotted Roxanne from a few feet away and hopped down in the unoccupied chair beside her at the table.

“Hey there stranger.” Quincy casually greeted her with a wide infectious smile.

Roxanne looked up from her textbook. “Hi Quincy.”

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for weeks. Did you change your cell number? I texted you. I called you.”

“I lost my phone and all my contacts were in there.” That was a lie, a quick lie to spare his feelings. She had blocked his number along with every other guy’s number in her cell phone. Her cell phone was sitting right there on the table in front of her. She hoped he wouldn’t notice. She hoped he would go on about his business.