My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center The strangest dream
After the miscarriage, they'd had to sedate Serena Kawainui. The baby wasn't just her eternal connection to Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka, it was her chance to for a normal life.
She'd been abandoned by her parents, bounced from foster home to foster home, and met the senator at Club Rock-Za, where she was stripping, and he'd gotten her out of that life, set her up in the Makiki Heights hillside hideaway that he paid for with campaign funds. His "unofficial campaign headquarters," he'd joked. And all she had to do was be there for him whenever he wanted her, and of course to supply the drugs. But even with his dark side, Donovan was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
But then last night when she told him she was pregnant, he was so cold, so adamant that she get an abortion. So she'd stayed up smoking all night, and a plan came to her. She'd go for a drive in his car and get pulled over by a cop, because she didn't know how to drive. She'd be drunk, loaded and stark naked, and it would make some headlines, and it would ruin Donovan's political career, and all he'd have left was her and the baby. Serena was driving over the Keeaumoku Overpass and trying to light the ice pipe when she lost control and went up and over the railing, landing upside on Cartwright Field, the impact driving her face into a bottle of Cuervo Gold.
So on top of the emotional scars, she would have physical ones too. It was the combination of the trauma and the drugs that led to the miscarriage, the doctor said, and she just started shrieking and shrieking, because when she lost the baby, she lost everything.
>> Eden Off Kuhio
Greg Connolly thought he was all cried out, but as he hugged Lance's pillow in the bed they had shared for the past month, the tears started again. The guilt was overwhelming. This was all his fault! If Greg hadn't insisted that sweet, apolitical Lance join him at the hate crimes rally, or else their relationship was over, Lance would be lying here in his arms, not unconscious at Queen's.
>> Queen's Medical Center
Lance Ah Sun was far from consciousness, but the tube that drained excess blood away from his brain was working, and his brain was functioning. But something had happened when he hit his head, and Lance would have been shocked at the images in his head if he was conscious. This wasn't the first time Lance had dreamed of naked girls. But it was the first he didn't dream that he was one of them.
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