Hood by Noire Page A

running through the streets of Brownsville, rushing little Monroe toward the nearest city hospital.

Chapter 10
    Life just ain’t worth it at all without you…
    I don’t wanna do it at all without you…
    “IT DON’T MATTER how much this shit cost,” Hood bargained with the old white nurse at the desk. Moo was so sick they had put an oxygen mask over his face and taken him to intensive care where the doctors were now working on him. “I got plenty of cash so everybody gone get paid, cool? Just tell them doctors to do everything they gotta do ’cause I’m straight. Don’t worry ’bout how much it’s gone cost or none of that stupid shit ’cause I been stackin my shit. Just let my brother be okay, cool? Go in the back and tell all of them I said to take care of my little brother for me, aiight?”
    The nurse looked sympathetic and assured him the doctors would do their best.
    Hood and Dreko both walked the hall nervously. Hood kept his eyes on the checkered floor as he tried to remember how to pray. His mother had taught him a long time ago, but none of the words would come to him now and his heart was beating so fast it made his mouth dry. Panic had his mind going cloudy, and the only thing he could do was spit himself a mental rap to keep his thoughts sharp and his fear at bay.
    My lil brother in this ’spital,
    I feel like clutchin’ on my pistol
    Black Glock! The military issue!
    Chest full of stress, what better way to get it off
    One by one, I gotta pick these feelings off!
    Uncle Chop and Egypt had somehow managed to flag down a cab and were now waiting with them. Somebody musta called Sackie ’cause him and his sister Zena were there too. Every few seconds Hood came out of his zone and looked toward the door real quick, hoping that a miracle would transpire and his moms would come walking in. He wasn’t supposed to be doing no life-or-death shit like this by himself. Moo was his little brother, not his son. Something inside Marjay’s heart shoulda pulled her here straight off the streets. Her mother-instincts should have told her that her baby was real sick and needed her bad. They should have sent her running outta whatever crack house she was holed up in and straight into the emergency room.
    But in the end it didn’t matter where Marjay was getting high at, or what mental lyrics Hood spit, or how much bank he had stacked. Money didn’t fix everything, and it sure couldn’t save Monroe.
    “We tried,” the doctor said, shrugging as he came through the door. He was a turban-wearing Pakistani in an inner-city hospital besieged with gunshot victims, AIDS patients, and other casualties of the violent crime that encapsulated the cold Brooklyn streets. His eyes were tired but emotionless, and he looked straight through Hood as he spoke. “But the boy is dead. He should have been seen in the hospital weeks ago. The child had one of the worst cases of pneumonia I’ve ever seen. He did not survive.”
    Hood stood there in shock. The doctor walked right past him and approached Uncle Chop.
    “Are you the grandfather? You’ll need to select a funeral home so the nurse can tell the morgue who will be collecting the body.” And with that he walked off, sighing as he grabbed a chart off the wall so he could attend to his next patient.
    The nurses drew the privacy curtains in Moo’s room as Hood shed hot tears over the body of his little brother. Moo looked even smaller in death, especially with all them tubes going in him and the big machines he had been hooked up to. Hood cried. He might have been living a grown man’s life, but in reality he was still just a child. Sniffing, he climbed up on the hospital bed and joined Moo whose tiny body remained warm, and snuggled his little brother in his arms for the last time. He closed his eyes, his tears dampening his brother’s face as he pretended that Monroe was just sleeping and would wake up any minute with big trusting eyes and a long list of crazy