Bad Bad News

𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐈𝐐𝐔𝐄

                                         ♚

"Ms Jenkins. It is very critical. We are not sure he's going to come out of it." The doctor on the other end of the line said before my shaky hands end the call. 

Please come back home. 

His last words replayed in my head over and over again, the memory so clear and fresh, it could have been just yesterday that he'd just requested for me to come over. God, please do not let this happen to me. My relationship with God wasn't something to be considered good, but I could make a vow here, and now that if father came out of this, I would mend my relationship with Him. 

Father had gotten into an accident that put him in a coma, and it was possible he was never coming back. The doctor had advised me not to get my hopes up. 

He'd told me to come to England to see him. He'd told me, but I didn't take him seriously. 

Were we going to be referring to him as a thing of the past? I really hoped not. 

The last time we spoke on the phone was the week before. I knew that he'd been endeavoring to get to me through texts and all of that, but I supposed it was a habit for humans to ignore texts and calls from their parents. It was just the standard shit that went down in the dms. 

He had warned me to stop it so many times, but I was too naughty to listen. 

Clenching unto the handle of my coffee cup tightly, I drank what was left from it as though it was a remedy to what I felt. It hit like a bullet and stung like a bee. God, it hurt so bad. If mother was still here, maybe the pain would have been lesser, but knowing full well that if anything happened, I would be the only one to bear it sent all sorts of signals to my brain. Signals I couldn't comprehend. 

Clumsily lifting myself off of the chair, I kicked the legs aside and sauntered towards the glass walls, my legs having that feeling of soreness and my steps very unsteady. My limbs felt like they were going to melt in no time. 

I literally just turned thirty-six a few days ago--barely a week. The accident couldn't have happened. I had so many questions and I needed answers. I guessed I should start by asking why it happened, then how, and then what the next step to take was. 

I wasn't able to walk to whatever hospital he was, and demand for him to speak to me. He was literally on life support. 

My father wanted a lot of things. He was the type of father who demanded things regularly from his child. You know the type of parents that always bragged about how good their children were, and how they will flaunt everything their children got them? Yeah, my father was—is like that. He's still alive. He can still get back on his feet, isn't it? It isn't the end until it is. 

Where my mind now roamed to was England. Since he was the king, tongues will continue to wag about what happened. People who had nothing great doing with their lives were going to come up with different stories. It never really got old. 

Only a couple of minutes had gone by since I received the news, but the media today was very unforeseen.  The news was going to spread soon, and I was in no way prepared for anything like that. My anxiety would be triggered to the maximum, and I'd just had a mental breakdown a few days ago on my thirty-sixth birthday. Before I turned thirty-six, the thought of me crossing my mid-thirties had always scared me, but I had always been pushing it aside since it hadn't come. But here I am now, a thirty-six year old woman whose father is in the ICU. 

Moving my head side to side in a manner that showcased sadness and then breathing in, I reached for my phone which had dropped down to the floor only a few moments ago--my initial response to the shocking communication of my father's current situation. 

I sent a message to the one and only person that came to mind. Gina. It was safe to say that at this point, Gina was my younger sister. Just twenty­-three, but I knew that a lot of good things were in store for her. I wondered how she was going to respond to this one. 

Monique: Hello. 

Very weird way to chat up someone you spoke to like an hour ago, but it was the best word I could come up with. 

Gina could be grouped in the classification of people who always had their phones with them. She never missed a call, never missed a text, always responded on time. Too much time didn't pass before those three dancing dots came to visualization. 

Gina : We spoke a while ago. 

Monique : Yeah, because if you know how crazy things can happen in 'a while' 

Gina : You're scaring me, and I'm also getting excited. Did some happen *deep in thought emoji*

 Monique : Come to my fucking office, bitch. 

Gina : Yeah, right. *winking face emoji*

Now, I was going to wait for her. 

I could swear on my late mother's grave that she was chewing gum. Gina, that woman was never going to change. 

                              

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"Are you going to tell me the meaning of all of this now?" Gina asked me, getting rid of the old chewing gum, and replaced it with a new one from the pack. She did something very disgusting. She glued the old gum under the glass table in my office. It wasn't some wooden table we were talking about here. 

"Take that away." I told her, a very stern look on my face. 

Raising one of her hands up as a signal of submission, she put her hand under the table, and removed the gum. 

"Good, now have a seat." I ordered. My behavior must have been so shocking to her because her eyelids popped up. I didn't behave like this to her. Not even when she got on my nerves. 

"You know what?" I asked.

"I'm confused." She told me. If I were in her shoes, I'd be confused too. There was no denying of the fact that I wasn't acting like a sane person. I was in literal shock. 

"Call Solomon, and tell him to get the car ready. I wanna go home." I smiled at her before walking towards the window. 

"Shh!" In as much as Solomon had heard a lot of things I'd talked about with Gina and a ton of other people that he'd driven me in the car with in the past--my sexual partners included, I didn't want for him to hear what I was about to disclose to Gina. 

As far as Gina was concerned, I could confide in her about anything and everything. It'd been five years since I employed her and yet, it felt like I'd known her forever. She even knew things about me that neither of my parents knew–one late, and the other on the verge of kissing the earth goodbye. 

Solomon got out to open the door for Gina and I, and Gina cleared the way, making me take the lead as we walked. It was what she always did as a sign of respect even though I'd warned her times without number to cease from the act. All of that respect nonsense didn't matter to me as long as she was involved since I knew that she regarded me. I couldn't blame her for it, though.

Taking the lead once we got into the building, I made my way to the elevator. Many would ask, many have asked and many are going to ask what a single lady like me was doing with a skyscraper. I'd had short-term lovers in the past who asked me that question and a majority of them were the ones who wanted my money and nothing else. It wasn't shocking to me anyways, but the truth of the matter was that I valued my privacy. Having lived the type of life that I did while growing up, one would understand why I wanted a lot of things about myself private even though I had the mentality of an independent woman and I had never been and was never going to be the type to rely on men for a dime even though I'd dated men of my caliber.

We got to the entrance of my room, and my blood pressure rose up like never before. I didn't want to suffer things like that. I wasn't even up to forty. 

She shut my door once we got to my room. This girl read my mind like a fucking open book!

"My father is in the ICU." I told her, my voice cracked. 

"Excuse me?"

She knew that I wasn't repeating that statement. 

I didn't even know if I felt better by sharing the news. Whoever came up with the saying 'A problem shared is a problem half-solved has to be the biggest scumbag. Sorry, Mr Quoter, you're wrong! 

"What the fuck do you mean?" That was all Gina could say. Of course she wasn’t going to get the gist yet. I was going to have to say it to her in full. She'd never met Father, but I'd told her enough about him that if she was to take a test about the  King of England, I was expecting her to score nothing less than seventy percent. Of course, that was only going to happen if she'd been paying attention to all the things I'd told her in the past.

"Father was involved in a fatal accident today that damaged his spinal cord, and major parts of his body. " I used my belly to land on the bed and then I sniffed the scent of the sheets. It was something I was used to, but at this point, I could use anything. The reason we shouldn't blame the entirety of drug dealers. We never really knew the situation they were going through. 

"Oh my God! Lady Monique, I'm so sorry." Another thing I disagreed with her on. Everyone called me Lady Monique and Gina knew that I loathed it with so much passion, so she usually called me Monique-what I told her to call me. I guess she was doing the opposite of what I told her now because of sympathy and she knew it was the last thing I needed. All I craved was her support during this period because she of all people knew what was coming my way and I told her not once, not twice, not even three times that I never wanted anything to do with the English people. I guess I'd been quite terrible at playing the game of avoidance or maybe, just maybe luck wasn't on my side at all.

It just had to happen when things were flourishing so well in business. Do not get me wrong, no matter how much I hated my background and everything about it, I was never going to put my company and business before father, but... All of this was just so damn hard to explain without me sounding like a selfish bitch.

"It's fine, Gina." I managed to respond to her before sitting up. I didn't know if it was weird or if it was compulsory because it had been what? About an hour since I got the news and I'd been waiting so damn hard for the tears to roll down my cheeks, but it seemed quite difficult. Even after sharing it. 

I landed on the bed again, only that this time, it was with my back, and then I stared at the ceiling, thinking about what the next days, months, and years of my life held for me. I was about to make a promise that I wasn't going to think too much, but that was another difficult thing. This was coming exactly from the mouth of a prime-time overthinker.

                                ♚

The past week had been all the words and phrases to describe hell on earth. It comprised of stupid people sending me emails about how sorry they were, about how I should accept their thoughts and prayers. Telling me to accept whatever the universe declared was Father's fate. Talking about how we couldn't rewrite destiny. Men, fuck those people. Their thoughts and prayers weren't going to lift him up from that bed, and make him whole. I, for one, was trying so hard to think about what happened next, but I didn't want to lose hope. The last thing I needed was someone telling me to accept their prayers. They weren't God. 

We had come to the conclusion that I was going to have to travel to England to know the state he was in. I wouldn't be communicating with him since I knew I couldn't. I was going to have to stand by the glass wall, and watch him. The thought of it was overwhelming. 

"Are you ready?" Gina asked, and I nodded. She was confirming if I was ready to hop on the plane. Everything was happening too quickly. 

Soon we were on my private jet, about to fly when my phone began to ring. 

The doctor who called to deliver the news of Father's accident was calling again. 

I didn't wait for him to deliver it fully before my phone fell to the ground. The glass of water I was holding followed, glass shattering everywhere, and the floors of the plane wet.