Page 174 of The Coldest: Stay Dangerous Part 2

After a long moment, I acquiesce. “Fine,” I snap. “Whatever. Just… stay yo ass here. I’ll call with an update.”

I catch the beginning of her satisfied smile as I turn and stomp out of the room.

“Stay dangerous, Ricky,” she sings at my back, pissing me off even more.

My mood hasn’t improved by the time I get back to the hospital. And seeing Haze in the room they direct me to has me curling my lip in disgust. She glances at me, tearmarks staining her cheeks, but I pay her no mind as I walk inside and stop at Patience.

She already knows what I need, so she stands, handing a sleeping Rue to Haze to stand and lead me over to the computer in the corner of the room.

Snow’s chest rises and falls rhythmically as Patience logs into the system. She looks like she always does when she’s asleep, not anything like how she looked earlier tonight.

“Why she don’t have an IV?”

Patience glances at Snow before going back to the screen. “She took a sedative to sleep, but she’s not dehydrated or anything. She just… needed to calm down.”

She clicks a few more times, magnifying Snow’s chart, and then steps aside for me to read.

Her voice is low as she explains what I’m reading in lay man’s terms in her best professional doctor voice. But I tune her out immediately. I catch enough words on her chart to get the gist of what’s wrong with my baby, and slowly, all of my senses begin to shut down.

She calls my name, but I don’t respond. My feet just drag me out of the room, to the wall beside it, and let me sink only the floor.

I keep doing that tonight. I keep losing my footing. Pressure keeps building behind my eyes. My world keeps threatening to dissipate right from under me.

God keeps trying to take people from me. Like He hasn’t taken enough from me.

“I know you listening, Fred,” I start. My head leans onto the wall, and tears fall, this time from both eyes.

When I blink, Fred is sitting across from me. His head tilts, his usual smirk absent for once.

“Please, Fred. Please keep her here with me. Don’t let her ass go up there. I need one of y’all with me.”

I close my eyes, praying that for once it’s really Fred and not just my mind playing tricks on me. That he heard me and is gonna move mountains. That for this time, just once, shit will work out in my favor, and I’ll get to keep someone instead of lose them.

Wyn

So, I’ve never been like… overtly suicidal.

Like, I’ve never taken a bunch of pills and washed them down with alcohol. I’ve never held a gun in my mouth, or to my temple. And even during my accident, though I’ve blocked the whole thing out, based on how my arms were littered in hundreds of tiny cuts and scars, I thought enough to cover my face when I flew through the windshield. But even when I was plastered, I wasn’t like I should end this horrible life of mine.

I guess when faced with the real possibility of my life ending, I realize that I don’t want it to end. I want the pain to end. The suffering, the loneliness… but not the life itself.

Even the memories of pain. Chunks of my life, gone. I try not to think about it, because then I’ll get a headache, or migraine, but it does make me sad. Not remembering or knowing the little moments that make or break me. And now, knowing the reasoning behind it is not just depression or trauma…

It makes me really want to smoke a premo. But I guess that would go against my pre-op instructions.

A month ago, I woke up in the hospital, and was told they found something in my brain. More tests, more scans, and my lovely team of doctors have diagnosed me with a grade one meningioma. Most likely benign, so I don’t have cancer. Small wins.

But it’s on my temporal lobe. Which is why I can’t remember shit. Grade one means great borders. Side effects of the surgery may include complete memory loss, personality changes, and I may have to learn English again. Because the size of my tumor, now named Sheila, is about the size of a golf ball.

My craniotomy is next week. Big word for a big day. I get to shave my head and have awake surgery so my doctor, the best in the country, can know if I’ll be disabled for the rest of my life. Auty’s been researching since we got the news, and she and my doctor go at it about whether Sheila is a grade one or grade two. The scans show good margins, but he won’t actually know until my head is cut open.

I just sit there and daydream about the margarita I wish I could have.

They know it, too. Auty and Rico. I’m never, ever alone anymore. It seems like everyone takes turns watching me. Hell, even Tyree has popped up at my apartment to check my garbage disposal.

Everyone has put all their differences aside for YT and Reem’s housewarming. Only YT would find one of the few mansions in the historic Highland Ridge neighborhood that was never converted into apartments, buy it, and make it hers. We’re all in the formal dining room, eating a seven course meal Reem’s mom Katrina prepared with Tyree’s family.

The tension is so thick. Set and Rico keep glaring at each other, while Auty glares at the side of Rico’s head. Dallas keeps trying and failing to calm Peanut down. YT has me sitting next to her, taking shrimp out of my gumbo as she devours her own personal bowl.