Two Tears in a Bucket (31 page)

What the hell is a Code Blue?
Simone wondered as the hospital turned into a madhouse. Doctors and nurses scrambled about in a frenzy, all heading to Thomas’s room.

Mae burst into tears as Simone tried to decipher the reasoning behind the chaos unfolding before her eyes. Nurses and doctors were scrambling all over the place.

“
What’s going on? What’s wrong?” Simone wondered aloud, but her question fell on deaf ears.

“
Umm, excuse me.” A tender, relaxed voice stood out in the midst of the confusion. “Hi. I’m the hospital chaplain, responding to the Code Blue. Can we gather your family? I came to pray with you.”

Simone stared at the blonde-haired white man dressed in a simple pair of khakis and a burgundy button-up shirt.
What the hell?
She backed away from him. What was really happening? Why was a chaplain sent to pray with them? As Mae fell into the chaplain’s forced embrace and released a flood of tears, Simone reached out for one of the doctors.

Somebody’s going to tell me what the hell is going on.

“
Excuse me!” she hollered out. “Excuse me, please,” she pleaded. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“
You need to clear this area,” he said without anything further.

“
Excuse me,” Simone called out again to one of the nurses, rolling a huge piece of machinery into the room.

“
Ma’am, you can’t be in the hallway. Somebody call security,” she yelled toward the nurses’ station.

Nurse Elaine rushed from Thomas’s room. Simone grabbed her by the arm. “Nurse Elaine, please,” she pleaded. “What’s going on? You said he was having a seizure. What’s a Code Blue?”

Nurse Elaine stopped and looked intently into Simone’s eyes. “Sweetheart,” she said softly as she grabbed Simone’s hands and squeezed. “You need to go somewhere and pray.”

“
Oh my God,” Simone whispered as Nurse Elaine released her hands and hurried down the hall. “I gotta pray,” she mumbled. Looking around in a daze, she saw that Mae and the chaplain had disappeared.

“
Excuse me, ma’am.” A security officer stormed down the corridor dressed in a black and gold uniform that sagged from her small frame. Simone sized her up, knowing the small, unarmed officer wouldn’t be a challenge if she really wanted to stay in the hallway. But, she wasn’t looking for a battle; she needed to pray. She needed to find the hospital chapel. “You gotta clear the hallway.”

“
Okay, but can you tell me where the chapel is? The nurse said I need to pray.”

“
It’s in the basement. C’mon, I’ll show you where it is.”

Simone followed the security officer to the elevators.

“
Okay, this is my first week here,” the officer shared as the doors closed. “I don’t know exactly where the chapel, is, but we’ll find it.”

A thin, cool breeze greeted them the moment the elevator doors slid apart, exposing the creepy-looking basement. Furniture covered in white sheets crowded the hallway. Spider webs drooped from the ceiling.

“
What is this?” Simone said, hesitant to step from the elevator.

“
It flooded down here a while ago,” the guard said as she exited the elevator. Rubbing away the chill, she looked around, apparently having no idea where to go. “They’re still remodeling. I don’t think any of the offices have even moved back.”

“
Yeah, but is the chapel down here?” Simone asked impatiently.

“
Yeah. C’mon, we’ll find it.”

Simone followed the guard all around the ghostly basement. The click-clacking of their hurried footsteps bounced off the walls as they searched office after office for the chapel.

“
Oh my God. Where is it?” Simone panicked. She had to get to her knees in God’s holy place and beg God to please, please help her father.

“
We’ve only checked half the basement. C’mon, let’s check down here,” the guard said.

“
No!” Simone cried, angry with the stupid guard. They were back at the elevators. “We already checked down there. We just went in a big-ass circle.”

“
Well, let’s just look one more time.”

Simone stood frozen. Her eyes pooled tears as a weird, yet peaceful feeling engulfed her in a seemingly ghostly embrace.

“
Do you feel that?” she whispered.

“
Feel what?” The guard stared at Simone from the corner of her eye. “You’re scaring me.”

The doors to the elevator slowly squeaked opened. “Oh my God,” Simone said. Waking from her daze, she jumped onto the elevator that no one had summoned and frantically pressed the CLOSE button over and over again. “Close! Close!” she screamed as her train of tears fell.

“
Hold up!” the guard yelled, jumping through the closing doors. “Where you going? We didn’t find the chapel.”

“
I gotta get upstairs. Something’s wrong,” she cried. “And I didn’t get to pray,” she mumbled. “I didn’t get to pray.”

The elevator doors opened on Thomas’s floor. Mae was standing in the lobby, screaming at the doctors. Simone shot past the small crowd and ran to her father’s room, ignoring the yells from the nurses and doctors.

Running into the room, she screamed, “Daddy! Daddy, you okay?”

Once in the room, she snatched back the curtain. Thomas was stretched out on his back with his hands at his sides. His eyes were wide open in a blank, ghostly stare.

“
We’re sorry, ma’am,” the doctor said, entering the room. “Your father had a blood clot in his leg.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

A light drizzle splattered from the sky as Simone sat on the pile of dirt that had become her father’s resting place. She’d come to the gravesite every day since the funeral a week ago.

God, why’d you take him?
Simone cried.

“
Excuse me, miss,” the elderly groundskeeper called out to her. “Are you okay? I don’t have an umbrella, but I can get you a bag or something.”

“
No,” Simone cried, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “I’m okay.”

“
Well, I’ll be in this general area if you need anything. Hey, umm…is that your Mercedes? I think that’s one of them unmarked police cars. I hope he ain’t getting ready to give you no ticket. I’ll go talk to him.”

“
No, no,” she said, recognizing Andre’s cruiser as he slowly drove off. “That’s my husband. I guess he’s just coming to check on me.”

“
Oh, okay,” the groundskeeper said as he pulled the few weeds sprouting from a grave a few sites away.

Simone pulled her cell phone from her pocket and called Andre.
Where’s he going?
she wondered as he whipped a U-turn, heading back towards the entrance.

“
Yeah,” he answered.

“
Where you going?”

“
I was coming to make sure you were a’ight, but I see your boyfriend’s taking care of you.”

“
My boyfriend? Andre, he’s an old man.”

“
Yeah, whatever. I’ll talk to you later.”

“
Where’d your husband go?” the groundskeeper asked as Andre’s car disappeared.

Engulfed in her emotions, Simone couldn’t even respond. Instead, she looked to the heavens and cried, “You see what you left me here with?”

The groundskeeper gingerly strolled to Thomas’s grave site. Standing before Simone, he studied her as she sat in the midst of the dying flowers.

“
Sweetheart,” he said in a raspy voice, grunting as he knelt down next to her. “I’ve seen you out here crying by your lonesome the last few days, and God wanted me to tell you that your father is
fine.
He’s in a place far better than what we have here on earth. A place so marvelous that the entire city is made of gold and jewels.”

The groundskeeper’s eyes slowly closed as he recited the wonders of the spiritual place. “A place where pain and suffering no longer exist and people live in the everlasting arms of peace and love. Umm…man, oh man,” he said, snickering just a bit as he opened his eyes. “I get excited just thinking about it.”

“
You act like you’ve been there,” Simone mumbled.

He looked at her with a raised brow. “Yeah, I guess it does sound that way, huh?” He smiled as a blast of thunder tore through the sky. “Come on, Miss Simone. Your daddy wouldn’t want you sitting out here in no storm.” He pulled his aging limbs from Thomas’s resting place and extended his hand to her. “Remember, weeping may endure for a moment, but joy will surely come in the morning.”

“
How’d you know my name?” Simone asked, standing.

“
Excuse me?”

“
You called me Simone. How’d you know that was my name?”

“
Oh.” He chuckled, dismissing the question with a wave of his hand. He then pulled a folded trash bag from his pocket and passed it to her. “Put this bag over your seat. I’ll look after your father. I mean, his site of course.”

Simone accepted the bag and said, “Thank you, Mister…”

“
Johnson.” He smiled. “Curtis Johnson.” Another blast of thunder tore though the sky. “I know. I know I’ve said too much,” he mumbled as the rain came down in buckets.

With the bag in hand, Simone headed to her car, unhurried.

He never told me how he knew my name,
she said to herself. “Mr. Johnson!” she yelled, looking over her shoulder. But Mr. Johnson was gone.

That night, Andre flooded Simone with apologies. While lying in bed, Simone listened as the bullshit explanations spilled from his mouth. She couldn’t comprehend his words as she lay there thinking about her life, her future. She was tired of him, tired of the lopsided union they referred to as a marriage. But how could she leave now? She needed the scraps of love Andre tossed to her now more than ever. There was no other love available.

Andre positioned himself on top of Simone for yet another round of makeup sex—the only kind of sex present in their marriage. Simone didn’t protest. She simply lay there and allowed him to pound away until he was finished.

A week later, Andre surprised Simone with a family trip to Orlando, Florida. “You need to get away for a while,” he convinced her.

“
When are we coming back?” she asked halfheartedly, tossing her things into the suitcase. “I have to get Jordan on Friday. Angela and Ricardo are going away.”

“
You need a getaway more than your mother. She didn’t just lose her father,” Andre said, while tossing his bag of toiletries into the suitcase. “Man, had I been thinking, I would’ve included Jordan, too. It was so last-minute. I wanted us to stay for a week, but we can stay a few days and fly back Friday morning. I’ll have the tickets changed.”

“
Just call Angela and let her know. The last thing I need is to hear her mouth.”

● ● ●

Simone tried to fight the grief hovering over her like a cloud as they bounced from park to park. Kayla was in awe at the sight of Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and all the other characters. Simone tried to share in her daughter’s excitement, but in the midst of all the fairytale princesses were elderly men holding the hands of their grandchildren while they stood in line for ice cream and autographs. The images were daggers to Simone’s heart. Her girls would never have such a luxury.

In the midst of all the grandfathers, Simone spotted men and women wobbling around with their impairments. Their stiff limbs or the limps in their walks told Simone they, too, had possibly suffered from a stroke. Unlike Thomas, they’d made it through.

“
I gotta go back to the hotel,” Simone said as she let Kayla’s hand go. “It’s one of those days.”

“
Just fight it,” Andre replied. “Don’t let it get the best of you.”

“
I’ve been fighting it all day. I can’t take it. Y’all stay here and have fun.”

“
Simone, just fight it. Cry if you have to.”

“
I don’t wanna walk around the park crying, Andre.” She stood, fanning her face in hopes of drying the tears before they fell. “Y’all go
’head.”

Sucking his teeth, Andre mumbled, “That’s what I get for trying.”

Back at the hotel, Simone lay across one of the freshly-made double beds.
I should call and check on Mae
, she thought as she grabbed her cell from the nightstand. Simone had two messages.

“
Simone, where are you at?” Angela huffed in the first voice mail. “We want to leave today. Give me a call back.”

Andre never called you
. Simone sighed as she dialed Angela’s number, knowing she had probably left the second message, too.

“
Hey,” Simone said plainly. “Andre didn’t call you?”

“
Call me for what? Did you get my message?”

“
Yeah, I got your message, but we’re in Orlando. We fly back tomorrow—”

“
Orlando?” Angela cut her off. “Simone, I told you that I needed you to keep Jordan so Ricardo and I—”

“
AND!” Simone yelled over her mother. “I just told you we fly back in the morning. Andre was supposed to call you.”

“
Thanks a lot, Simone,” Angela said, slamming the phone down.

“
You’re welcome,” Simone said as she tossed the phone on her bed. She had a surprise for Angela. It was time—past time.