My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center The line of duty
"I'm proud of you," Sgt. Mits Ah Sun said when Quinn's story was pau. He touched his son's dark hair, lightly tousled it. "You may have been off duty, but that was definitely in the line of duty."
Mits would know. He'd been with HPD for 30 years. All those years he'd never been shot, and now his son who followed him into the department -- solo bike -- had taken a bullet in the right thigh. But as proud as he was, Mits was even more disturbed by Quinn and his cousin Lily's reunion. No good come of that. There was a reason Mits and his brother Sheets had quit speaking 21 years ago, and it was for everyone's own good. Yes, it had been hard on their families at first. They lived a block apart in Pearl City where Lily and Quinn, born just a month apart, were raised practically as siblings until they were six.
"Son, you're a grown man, but I'm still your father. And to me, you getting shot at her house, well, it seems like a bad omen. A very bad omen." Quinn frowned. To him, it seemed like a very good omen. Lily said she wanted him to come home with her to recuperate.
>> Lily Ah Sun stopped at the ICU nursing station and excitedly told the duty nurse about her brother Lance appearing to come out of his coma. The nurse in turn excitedly paged a doctor.
"Thanks," Lily said and headed for the elevators. The doors opened and she stepped in.
"Hello again," a very tall, very brown, very naked woman said. She was Ho'ola, goddess of life, rescuer, healer and preserver. "I forgot to mention one thing."
"Oh?" Goddesses have afterthoughts, too?
"Yes. You must make a decision. You can love Quinn. But ..."
"But what? ..."
"There will be no children."
Somewhere deep inside Lily ached to have Quinn's children. "But why?"
"You don't want to be turning into the Darwins, do you?"
"They inter-married?"
"Like mongoose, them and the Wedgewoods. And look what happened to them. Charlie Darwin did a lot of good work, but he missed that aspect of natural selection. A gene pool that turns inward is a gene pool on the way to webbed feet and three breasts -- on men." Lily made an "eeee-yoooo, gross" face.
"Exactly."
"There's no way at all?"
"If for some reason you and Quinn aren't really first cousins ..."
"Of course we are! Our fathers are brothers!"
"In that case ..." Ho'ola shrugged. "You must choose."
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