Fifty-Two

The huge Waiting Lounge of Ira's Consultancy is filled with anxious people.

The glass doors slide open for the umpteenth time. Steve and Jonathan Afful enter, and Elaine is behind them. Steve pauses with mild surprise.

Effe is present, together with her parents.

Some of their friends are present as well, and a few more people Steve does not recognize. Chris is standing at the far end near a window, his back turned, staring out through the tinted glass pane. Besides him is a diminutive white-haired elderly man.

Effe is sitting anxiously on a seat near Chris, and she is staring at his turned back with a look that is both tender and worried, and it sears through Steve's heart like hot daggers. The doors slide open again and Diana, Chris' sister, enters.

Steve walks to Effe's side and sits beside her. He reaches for her hand, and for a very brief moment she almost snatches her hand away, but she relaxes slowly as he puts an arm around her shoulders.

Elaine sits at the other side of the long seat, and Afful stands, casting furtive glances at Chris and Darlett.

"So sorry, love. We heard the news on radio and rushed straight here," Steve says.

"How's he, honey?" Elaine asks solemnly.

"Ira is attending to him. We just have to wait and find out if he's gonna be okay," Effe responds sadly.

And at that very moment Ira emerges from the wards and pauses, and then she surveys the room. Effe gets to her feet, but Ira quickly walks forward, and for a moment it appears as if she is going to walk pass Effe and go straight to Chris, but Effe holds her sister's arm suddenly with a severe questioning look on her face.

"He's going to be fine. Just a mild concussion. His wound has been treated, and did not even require stitches," Ira says, obviously greatly flustered.

Chris turns away from the window... and his face is death. His eyes are slits, and his jaw is working. Those who know him well know that he is in destructive mode, and has reached the utmost limits of his fury where he cannot be reasoned with.

"You were walking pass me, Rammy? Why? What's wrong with you nowadays?" Effe asked with pain.

"Sorry, Ef. Junior is asking for his father. I just wanted to tell Chris that," Ira says nervously.

Chris walks forward and stands looking deeply into the eyes of Ira.

"He's fine? You're absolutely sure about that?"

"He's very fine. He can go home now. He wants to see you."

Without another word Chris moves on, but he does not go towards the ward.

He walks to the entrance.

Steve is speaking, and Effe is listening as she heads for the ward, and it takes her sometime before she sees that Chris is walking towards the entrance.

She whirls round, and even though Steve tries to catch her arm, she side-steps him and races after Chris, and a look of terrible pain crosses Steve's face. Effe sees Chris in the corridor, walking rapidly towards the lifts.

He is leaving.

And she knows by his gait, by the angle of his head, by the tautness of his body, that the reckless Chris is back ...the Chris she hates, the Chris that does not listen, the Chris that reacts only to the wrath within him. When she calls his name it is with a heavy heart of doom, because she has a deep inkling that everything good that has happened to them in the past few weeks is rapidly spiraling out of control.

"Chris! Chris, wait!" she cries desperately.

He stops, and turns. She runs to him, and stops in front of him. His face is dark and taut, and even though he is looking at her she knows he does not really see her because at that particular moment love is not his prime focus. Tears come to her eyes, and then as it spills down her cheeks she reaches out with her right hand and lays it on his hard broad chest.

"Ever since I fell in love with you, Chris, it has always been like this. At the point where we just have a chance to be happy, you stop listening to your heart, and you only let that temper control you," she says heartbreakingly. "We have been denied happiness for so long, Chris, because you can't control that fire in your belly. At this moment, my love, I want to tell you that I'm willing to sit down with you. I'm willing to listen to you. I know I never did that before. I know deep down in your soul there's a wound there that never healed, and that is what caused you to do all those horrible things. I was young, and I also thought of a whole lot of things, and I listened to a whole lot of people. I'm a woman now, and I've come to realize that I love you, and I'll always love you. I've come to realize that I need to help you get that pain in you out. This moment is going to define our love, Chris-Love. When you walk out that door, you're going to start all the bad karma that destroyed us. This moment I need you, your son needs you. We can turn around and go for our son. You don't need to go out there, Chris, I'm begging you. Breathe, my love, please! Breathe!"

She finally looks into his eyes, and she sees the little-boy Chris in there for a moment, crying out for love, desperately needing the raging inside his soul to end, but then he raises his hands to touch her, to hold her, and he sees the dried blood of his son still in his palm, and in a second the rampaging Chris is back, and Effe's heart quails, because she knows she has just lost him.

"Bastard hurt my boy," he utters softly, but the rage, the sheer wrath, is sizzling right there in his voice. "I'm gonna put him down."

Effe punches him in the chest with her closed fist, and even though it hurt her knuckles more than it did him, she continues to punch him as her tears of desperation fall.

"You promised your son, Chris!" she cries, unable to stop her tears. "You promised him you won't fight!"

"That was before that bastard hurt my son!" he says coldly, quite unmoved by her tears. "Nobody hurts my son, Ef. Nobody!"

"Damn you, Chris! Have you forgotten Junior's dream? He saw you lying on the canvas dead! Is that what you want, to step in there and die? If I don't matter to you think of what that can do to your son, and stop that fire and come with me right now. Chris, please, oh Chris... please!"

He turns away from her, his wrath roiling and out of control now.

"You go in there and take care of my son. That bastard can't kill me. I'm gonna beat the crap outta him!"

Effe cannot speak, and she cannot move because her tears are choking her, and the pain in her heart is considerable. She watches lamely as he enters the elevator, and the door closes.

She looks up and sees the strange white-haired man who had been with Chris at the restaurant, and who had carried Junior to her car and come to the hospital with them.

He has been leaning against the wall watching them with sad eyes. Effe walks up to him, and she looks very traumatized indeed.

"I never caught your name, sir," she says quaveringly.

He smiles kindly at her and put gentle hands on her shoulders.

"That's because in the heat of the moment I didn't introduce myself. My name is Darlett Thompson," he says with a kind smile. "I was in James Fort Prison for twenty years before Chris came in there. I served twenty-five years. Chris is my friend. We became very good friends. I was released a week ago, and I came to see him."

"If you're his friend, please, go after him, and promise me you'll keep him out of trouble. His son needs him alive and around, not locked up in a coffin or prison," she says numbly.

Darlett gives her a brief hug.

"And I can see you need him more. His Effe. He never stopped talking about you. You didn't visit him in prison. It killed his soul."

Effe bursts into tears then, holding unto Darlett tightly as she cries.

"I did him wrong. I behaved childishly. Oh, how I regret that act more than anything now! Oh, Chris, Chris, Chris!"

"That's okay now. I'm happy you two have found each other again. Go on, take care of my grandson for me. I'll bring Chris back to you, I promise. And I never break a promise."

When Chris steps out of the main entrance of the hospital he is not surprised to see the great number of journalists who have assembled. From radio, newspaper and television, they flash their cameras and thrust microphones in his face. Rapid machine-gun questions are fired at him.

He does not hear them, and barely sees them. He pauses and speaks softly.

"I'm going to fight Mike Crankson. In a week. Tell him."

He pushes his way through, refusing to answer the barrage of questions fired at him. He is sweating. He can't think straight. He just wants to be alone... with Mike Crankson. He is trembling as he walks, and still they follow him with cameras and microphones and questions and noise, noise, NOISE...

He is losing it. He wants to hit somebody!

Just then a car screeches to a stop beside him.

It is a Nissan Pathfinder.

The driver's door opens, and a well-built man in dark shades gets out. He is Wailer Vroom, Director of THE IRON GOJU CLAN.

He has trained Mike Crankson, and Mike had left him for Afful's FINE GOJU DOJO, a company originally founded by Chris. Wailer Vroom, who had lost most of his fighters as a result of Crankson's defection, had challenged Crankson, and lost.

Wailer Vroom and Chris Bawa had been rivals in the past because they belonged to opposing companies. They had both been fighters, and Chris had defeated Wailer Vroom in a Grandmaster tournament that had gone the full ten-round distance.

The cameras go into overdrive as Wailer rounds the car and stands facing Chris.

"You going to take him out?" Wailer asks.

"He doesn't deserve to be there," Chris answers.

Wailer nods once, and then he slowly removes his shades.

"We were enemies," Wailer says calmly.

"Opponents. Never enemies," Chris replies.

Again, Wailer nods.

"You'll need a registered Goju Company to promote you. Without a Goju Company's backing –"

"I know the rules, Wailer," Chris breaks in irritably. "I drafted the first set, in case you've forgotten. Will you let me fight on the IRON GOJU ticket?"

Wailer turns away from him.

"Get in the car, bro. You need to train."

Questions are asked, but neither of the men speaks as Chris gets in Wailer's car, and it speeds off.