Hood Life and Love: It Is What It Is (Sample)

Chapter 9 (E and P)

 After Zale was shot, everything was a blur. I spent the hours at the police station. They wanted statements, needless to say nobody talked. The guy who shot him was DOA. The other guy was going to be handled by streets. The police were told the dead guy was the shooter. No one even mentioned the second guy. Joey came to the police station to get me. I went straight to the hospital after that.

Joey didn't talk the whole ride. Christian was still at the police station. I knew they were probably giving him a hard time, because he had been arrested before. He had a record.

Over a five-day period, Zale was in and out of surgery. He was on a blackout list, which made it complicated to see him unless we were with his mom or sister. There was a cop outside his room around the clock. They were other places to I was sure at least I hoped. The officer at the door always let me in. He hadn't even asked who I was. He looked like he would weather be anywhere but there. Still, I spoke every day.

They had done a craniotomy and a craniectomy. One surgery was to relieve pressure, the other was to remove debris and foreign objects. After the final surgery, the doctors came to speak to his mom. I was there, so I got the information firsthand.

The doctors and surgeons explained that the surgeries had gone well. Zale had initially suffered from TBI or Traumatic Brain Injury. They explained he was very lucky. Ninety percent of people who were shot like him didn't make it. Fifty percent of people died in the ER. Fifty percent of survivors suffered from seizures or memory loss.

The bullet that hit Zale had gone into his frontal lobe tip towards the forehead. It had been above the base of the skull, which usually causes mild damage. There was no damage to any vital brain tissue or vascular structure. The CT scan had found good brain stem functions, but his Glasgow Coma scale was five, meaning he was in an abstract coma. There was also damage to the right hemisphere, which can cause sensory impairment such as cognition, memory loss, speech and vision.

As the doctor continued to talk, I felt like I was slowly dying inside. I looked at his mom, once so full of life. Today she looked drained and as if she had been crying all day. The guilt I felt was unexplainable. If I had just done something different. I ran through every scenario that could have prevented this from happening. This was my fault.

*****

Two weeks went by and Zale remained comatose. The doctors said it was good he was at least breathing on his own and said he could wake up any day now. I just felt empty. He was fighting for his life and I was sitting here just fine, when it should have been me. That's what no one told me, but I knew it was true. Everyone told me it wasn't like that, that Zale did what he felt like he needed to do.

I felt like, Fuck that. He had nothing to do with what happened with the boys. He was innocent in the whole thing. I felt the tears coming again as I sat in the waiting room where I had been this past couple of weeks, day in, day out. Everybody tried to get me to go home, even Zale's mama, who I couldn't even look at me without crying, but I didn't budge. The nurses were nice. They made sure I had food and kept bringing me hot chocolate. The gang came in spurts. Sometimes I think they came more for me than for Zale.

Every once in a while, his eyes would flutter. Or they would move beneath his eyelids. Those moments, I thought he would wake up. I thought he would give me that goofy grin and tell me to stop crying like a baby. But he didn't. Christian had felt it to his core. He was distant. I felt like he blamed me, if no one else did. Knowing him, he probably had more blood on his hands than he used to.

The guys who did it, the guys from that day, were both dead. Zale's sister had killed one and the other one was found a couple blocks over with two holes in his head. I didn't know, and I didn't ask. I was just glad they wouldn't come back for us. My next enemy, I wouldn't make the same mistake.