Page 15 of To Hades & Back
Hera, Hestia, Hades, and I sat in the waiting area. My knee jumped as I sat there in anticipation. “Hey,” Hades said softly. When I gazed at him, he gave me the smile that I loved. “It’s going to be alright. No matter what happens, it’s going to be okay. We got you.”
“Jin’jer Elle Copeland,” a female voice called out.
My head shot up to the mention of my name. There she was, nurse Janice Scales. She looked amazing. I stood to my feet to move in her direction. “Um, hi, Janice. You remember me?”
“I could never forget you, sweetie. I wondered if you would ever come back,” she said somberly. “You all can come with me.”
Hades grabbed my hand. We walked side by side down the hallway behind Janice. Hera and Hestia were on our heels. Janice took us to a conference room that was inside of her office suite. She offered us beverages, which I accepted a water. Once we were all settled, she smiled then asked, “How are you doing, Jin’jer?”
“I’m doing well. I live in Charlotte now. I’m a registered nurse, and I work in the intensive neonatal unit.” I would always be proud of my accomplishments. They didn’t come easy for me. Yes, my parents did pay for my schooling, but that didn’t negate how they treated me. They always thought money bought respect.
Janice’s face lit up. “Oh, that is so great. I always knew you would make something out of yourself regardless of what yourparents said.” She shifted in her seat. “So, how can I help you today?”
Like word vomit, I told her about my encounter with Dorian. She sat there and listened attentively. The sadness on her face couldn’t be missed. Once I was done with my spiel, I took a deep breath. “I guess, I came here to ask you, um, did my son die?”
Janice sat there with her forearms on the table and her hands clasped together. “No, your son did not die.” A tear fell from her eye as my heart stopped.
“I know you fuckin’ lying,” Hades mumbled. “Is that the type of shit that this place is on? How do you lie and tell someone their baby died?”
Hestia and Hera both had tears streaming down their faces. I was too shocked to cry. I found my voice after a few beats. “I… I don’t understand. Y’all told me my baby died. Why would you do that?”
Janice dropped her head for a moment then lifted it with more tears in her eyes. “This secret has haunted me for years. It was part of the reason I worked hard to become an administrator so nothing like that ever happened again. After we had your baby, you had a spike in your heartrate and blood pressure which caused you to pass out. We got your baby boy together and put him in the nursery. Shortly after, the administrator at the time called us into a meeting. That meeting changed the course of many lives.
“We were told that your parents had chosen to put your son up for adoption. That wasn’t something that was necessarily foreign to us. We’d seen that before. What we hadn’t seen was us being told that you would be told the child died. When we pushed back, we were told that if we didn’t comply that we would be reported to the board for some kind of malpractice that would end our careers.”
Hestia shook her head. “This doesn’t make sense. Why would an administrator do that shit? What the fuck?”
“For the oldest reason in the book, money. The Copelands gave an endowment of eight hundred thousand dollars to the program. It was also rumored that the administrator got a payoff as well. I’m not sure if that was true, but based on her agreeing to do what your parents wanted, it’s not hard to believe,” Janice said.
I zoned in and out as Janice told us that two of the nurses quit immediately. Dr. Sutton quit about a year later. The hospital administrator eventually retired and went on about her life. I heard Janice talking about her journey and why she decided to become a hospital administrator. I didn’t give a fuck about that shit. “What happened to my fuckin’ son?”
“He was relinquished to the state. By the time we left the meeting, he was no longer in the nursery. The next day, your parents showed up, and they were as nasty and evil as they came. They didn’t care to know anything about the baby.” Janice cried freely. She apologized profusely.
My heart hurt. It felt like I couldn’t breathe. I pushed back my chair then leaned forward.
“I got you, baby, I got you,” Hades whispered in my ear. “We are going to figure this out. I swear to you, we will.”
The amountof fucked up that Jin’jer’s people got me on behalf of her was astronomical. I’d heard of some fuck ass shit that parents could do, but this shit here was diabolical. Compared to my baby’s parents, Aaron, Dindi’s dad was a damn saint. These bitches really put Jin’jer’s son up for adoption and told her that he was dead. No, they didn’t put him up for adoption; they relinquished him to the fucking state of Colorado.
How did a person reconcile in their minds and hearts that it was alright to lie about a baby dying? Heartless, that was what they were and are. Janice was very apologetic, but fuck that shit. I would have been out of a job. She acted like there weren’t cellphones back then. We weren’t talking about fifty years ago.She could have taken a picture of the baby or some shit to prove the baby existed.
We all came back to Charlotte after we spoke to Janice. Jin’jer didn’t say a word on the way to the airport, on the plane, and when we got back to the compound. Instead of going to my house, I took her to my parents’ house. Hera called them from the airport to tell them what happened. My mother demanded that I bring her there.
We got to my parents’ house, and all Jin’jer wanted to do was lie down. I went to my house to get her hygiene stuff and clothes to sleep in. The entire time that I had her in the shower, she was in a daze, but I saw the tears streaming down her face. My mother came into the guest room that we were in after she got dressed.
I sat on the edge of the bed after Jin’jer lay down. My heart swelled when my mother climbed into the bed and pulled my baby into her arms. It didn’t take a full minute before Jin’jer broke down. I decided to leave the room so that she could get what she needed from my mother. I took a seat in the den with my brothers and sisters.
“You good, Bro?” Zeus asked me.
Am I good?“What the fuck am I supposed to do with this shit? I told y’all how the fuck her people were reckless at the party already. If I have to go in front of those folks again, I’m going to fuck both of them up.”
“I think once she’s ready, she should reach out to Dorian to establish maternity. We still don’t know if that is truly her son,” Hera pointed out. “Hades, only do this if she wants to. Don’t force her to if she doesn’t want to.”
I knew eventually she would want to at least reach out to Dorian. There wasn’t any telling of whether she would want to take it any further as far as confronting her parents. Time would be the determining factor of that.
A SHORT TIME LATER…
Shortly after we got back from Colorado, Hestia suggested that Jin’jer start therapy. I thought she would push back, but she didn’t. She reached out to the EAP (Employee Assistance Program) at the hospital and got into therapy. After a couple weeks of sessions, it was suggested that she take a mental health leave from work. She was given a twelve-week paid leave of absence as long as she continued with her therapy. Since she didn’t have to work, she packed up a lot of her stuff and temporarily moved in with me. The move was permanent, but she just didn’t know it yet.
