My Kind of Town
The Honolulu Soap Co.:
Sunday digest>> Portlock
The paramedics wanted to take Rosalita Resurreccion to the ER - not so much for the cuts which were superficial, but because she had taken two blows to the head and had been knocked unconscious.And Lily Ah Sun didn't have her car - her cousin Quinn had driven her home because she'd gotten drunk - so Lily rode in the ambulance too. Quinn, who had saved Rosalita from being raped and took a .22 in the thigh in the process, his brown skin so pale, his lips that minutes before had been so warm on Lily's suddenly so cold.
Riding in the back of the ambulance, Lily was overwhelmed with guilt. If she hadn't called Quinn to drive her home, he wouldn't have gotten shot.
But then she thought about what that creep would have done if Quinn wasn't there. And she knew that, cousin or no cousin, she would spend the rest of her life showing her gratitude and love to Quinn.
>> Queen's Medical Center
The ER social worker was sure that the patient named Ah Sun was not Quinn, but Lily knew better. The paramedics said they were going to Queen's. But if it wasn't Quinn, then who was it? She was related to all of them.Holding the hand of her maid's six-year-old daughter in the keiki playroom, noticed a tall haole guy staring at her from across the ER waiting area, tears streaming down his cheeks. He quickly walked a few paces to the children's room.
"Lily, I'm Greg," he blurted.
It took a moment, but then Lily knew. Greg, her baby brother Lance's friend. Lance had told her about his first gay love affair, shown her Greg's photo. Just this morning Lance told her that going to the hate crimes rally with Greg was going to be his big coming out.
"It's so sad!" Greg sobbed.
"What is so sad?"
"You don't know?"
"Know what?"
"Then why are you here?"
Lily couldn't handle any more heartache in one day. And she sure wouldn't play 20 Questions. Something snapped and she shouted: "What happened to Lance, damnit? Tell me now!"
"At the capitol... the rally... he fell... we were attacked... hit his head..."
Lily felt her knees buckling.
"That's all I know - I'm not family," Greg said, wiping away another tear. "But your parents are here."
"You talked with them?!" Lily was aghast. Her parents didn't know about Lance being gay. Or they were in severe denial.
"No."
"Thank God for that at least."
"I'll let you know what I find out," Lily said, patted Greg's shoulder.
>> Maybe this wasn't the best time to bring it up, here in the Intensive Care Unit, but they had to discuss it sooner or later. Sooner, as far as Sheets Ah Sun was concerned, because the whole family was scheduled to leave in two days for his son Laird's graduation from Stanford Business. It was the biggest day in the family's history and, unfortunate as his youngest son's Lance's accident was, it could not be allowed to detract from Laird's great moment - and Sheets' great moment too.
And maybe, with his wife Grace sitting in a chair beside Lance's bed, her head bowed in silent tears and silent prayer for her baby who lay in a coma, Sheets could have found a better way to bring it up.
"So, Mama, did you start packing yet?"
It took a moment for his words to register. She slowly looked up, turned to face him, incredulous anger rising. "What did you say?!"
Uh-oh. He'd said the wrong thing. But he wasn't sure how, so Sheets plunged ahead. "For our trip. For the graduation."
Another glare. "How can you even think about that right now, with your other son near death right here in front you?!"
It wasn't that hard, actually. Sheets had never really understood Lance, ever since he was a little boy.
"There will be no 'our trip'! Not while Lance is lying here like this!"
>> "I was OK until Donovan like said the A-word," Serena Kawainui said from the hospital bed.
"The A-word?" HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes replied.
"Yeah, like, abortion."
"You're Catholic?"
"That's got nothing to do with it. I was like abandoned..."
Gomes recalled Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka saying Serena grew up in a series of foster homes.
"... and I always said, the one thing I'm gonna do if I ever like have my own kid is never turn my back on it. And Donovan was very clear - the birth of this baby inside me must never, ever happen.
"And the sun was starting to come up, and I had this brainstorm. Donovan's career is more important than me or my baby, so I'd fix his career."
That's how she ended up crashing off the Keeaumoku Overpass.
"I didn't want to get in a crash! All I wanted was to like get pulled over by a cop and see headlines about an ex stripper getting busted in the senator's car, drunk and loaded and totally nude!"
"Well, you got the headlines."
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com