“Somebody could get hurt listening to you. You can't just walk away from me, Aric and think there won't be consequences,” she said as she sucked her teeth and shook her head. “No sir! I've put up with too much of your shit to think you're just going to walk away from me!”
“Stephanie, what does any of that have to do with you shooting a woman? Why? Why would you do that knowing she's pregnant? Why would you continuously attack her when I repeatedly told you she has nothing to doâ”
“Lies,” she yelled as she left the wall and stormed up to me. “You put a damn ring on her finger and look at what you just did to me for her! I stood in that house and poured my heart out to you, and what did you do? You left our bed to go and sleep in hers,” she laughed sadistically, “Oh no, sir! You will not have your cake and eat it too!”
I'd rushed home just so I could know for sure if she had indeed committed the atrocity against Chyanne and now that she'd told me in so many words that she had, I felt sick; sick to my stomach at the thought of me being the cause of it all. A rush of emotions overtook me and I didn't know what to feel. Shame, guilt, anger, frustration, annoyance.... they all had a hold of me. My demons had finally caught up to me, I thought as I stood there and stared in the face of the woman whom I'd once loved. How had we gotten to this point? When did it all change?
Stephanie stood there with the injuries to her eyes looking like something out of the movie âThe Ring' and all I could do was stare back into the eyes of the monster that I'd created. I wasn't taking the blame for what she'd done to Chyanne, but I was taking responsibility for my part in the crime that had been committed.
“Why?” I asked her. “Did you want to hurt me so badly that you would take her life and my child's life?”
“Why would you hurt me like that Aric? Why would you let her keep that baby, knowing what we'd gone through? I love you and you just threw me away like it was nothing! Nothing!”
“Stephanie, I'm not about to stand out here and do this with you right now. I don't know how many times we have had to go through this. All you had to do was let go. You know it and I know it. There's nothing of this marriage left. You're holding on to a memory and I can't believe that you would.... go as far as toâ”
“I did what the fuck I had to do! Isn't that what you told me this morning when I told I would fight you tooth and nail to make sure it would take years to divorce me? So, I did what the fuck I had to do,” she yelled.
“Yeah, well now I'm going to do what I have to do, what I should have done a long time ago.”
“What does that mean Aric? Does that mean you're going to love me like you should have done? We could run away together. Nobody has to know where we are. We can start over,” she said as she tried to wrap her arms around me.
I shoved her away from me, not believing what I was hearing. It was clear that Stephanie had gone over the edge of sanity and I wasn't sure what was more disturbing. Was it the fact that I was blaming myself for not seeing the signs that she was a bit unstable or was it the fact that I may have indeed had a hand in pushing her over the edge? It was all confusing to me and the more I stood there and looked at her the more disgusted with the situation I became. She'd just stood there and all but confessed to gunning Chyanne down in her home and yet she was acting as if it was no big deal, like it was something that she'd just had to do.
“No, that means I'm leaving and you're going to turn yourself inâ”
She dropped her hands to her side like dead weight was attached to both arms. The look in her eyes turned as cold as the longest winter night.
“You're not leaving me and I'm not turning myself in,” she said in a matter of fact tone. “I meant what I said when I took my vows Aric. The only way you leave me is if DEATH do we part. We took vows that said for better or for worse and I think the worst is yet to come if you think you're just going to walk away from me and into that bitch's arms. You have another thing coming.”
I looked at her as if she had lost the rest of the mind she had left. I could kill this bitch! Anger was overriding my senses at the fact that she had just threatened my life. That's how I felt!
“Are you out of your damned mind? You need to be worried about the prison sentence you're facing and not about us being together. Us being together will never and I mean never happen again! Do you understand that Stephanie? You just shot a woman down while she's pregnant and do you honestly think I would stay with you, even if I'd wanted to in the first place, after what you've done?”
My words came out in a low monotone and I said them so the finality of what I was saying could sink in. It was time for me to do what I should have done a long time ago. I should have left her alone, packed my bags, and got the hell on! I should have never entertained the notion of us possibly working things out knowing that I could never really forgive her for all of the damage she'd done to our marriage. I should have known it was really over when I started using women to get back at her for the hurt she'd caused me. I'd used countless women in an effort to make her hurt when in reality I was never hurting her. She never even seemed to care that I had been sleeping with other women. Now that I thought back on all of the petty arguments we'd had about the times I'd cheated, none of them had hurt her as much as her cheating had hurt me. So, in the end, I'd always played myself because Stephanie, the woman I'd once loved with every fiber in me, really didn't give a damn.
Now I was forced to stand in my own home and deal with the fact that I'd put the life of another woman and my unborn child in jeopardy because I thought that I'd finally accomplished hurting my wife in return. You can call me what you want and say whatever you would like to about me, but I took no solace in what had happened, and if I could go back to day one and do some of the shit over, I would.
“Don't walk away from me Aric,” Stephanie growled out as my reality check set in and I turned to leave.
I could hear her moving around behind me, but I needed to leave. I needed to get away from her and clear my head. Being near her at that moment clouded my judgment so it would be best if I just left and let the chips fall where they may. If and when the police questioned me, I would tell them the truth as I knew it. Stephanie's voice kept ringing out behind me as she called my name repeatedly in an effort to keep me from leaving.
Then, pain ripped through my back near my right shoulder as a gun shot rang out. It crippled me, took me down to one knee as I felt the liquid rush of heated blood soak my skin and shirt. Slobber fell from my mouth and I watched as it slowly fell to the ground beneath me. The knuckles on my left hand scrubbed the ground as my arm went limp. I gritted my teeth through the pain, stood, and turned to see Stephanie pointing a gun in my direction.
“I said I love you Aric. That means I can't live without you. . . . and I refuse to let you live without me!”
Two things clicked for me in that moment: One, being that it was possible that I could die at that very moment. The second, was that she had really lost her motherfucking mind. In that moment the woman that I'd once loved meant nothing to me.
My mother had put a gun to my face when I was seventeen and told me to get out of her house. That was after a fight she and my dad had and after I'd told her that the slap she had given me across my face would be the last one. Me standing up to my mother meant her threatening my life. Me finally deciding to leave my wife, for good, meant Stephanie threatening my life. Why, out of all the women I could have been saddled with, did I end up with one who would rather see me dead than to see me happy without her?
“Stephanie . . . put the gun down so we can talk,” I said to her in an effort to calm her down.
I was a lot of things, but a fool I was not. It was clear that she was no longer playing with a full deck and I had to do all I could to keep her from killing me and herself.
She slowly shook her head like it was too heavy to continue to hold on her shoulders. “Thought you were done talking? You've never listened when I wanted to talk before. . . . If I can't have you . . . nobody can,” she stated. “It's just that simple Aric. What part of that don't you get?”
Tears mixed with the blood from the wounds around her eyes trickled like rain on a window pane down her face.
My shoulder felt as if it was being sawed in half and made my right side feel stiff. I had found myself in a life or death situation and at this point it was going to be either her or me left standing. You couldn't have paid me twenty-four hours ago to believe I would be in this situation. I never thought I would see the day I would have my life flash before me and see my wife aiming a gun at my head, ready to take my life because she felt like without me, hers would end. I never saw Stephanie doing anything like this. She'd shown me that no matter how long you knew a person you never really knew them until they showed you who they really were. I had my faults, but I was not about to shoot a motherfucker, or otherwise, because I was hell bent on having things my way or no way at all.
Without thinking about it, when I noticed a falter in her grip on the gun I lurched my body at her in an attempt to startle her enough to take the gun from her. My reward was a bullet that was so close to becoming a part of my brain matter that it grazed the side of head causing a blinding heat as it scorched my skin. I cursed out in blinded anger as my body hit the ground, glasses falling from my face and crashing to the ground near me.
“See, that's your fucking problem Aric. You don't damn listen!” she yelled as she walked over me with each one of her legs on either side of me, gun still aimed at my face.
With her standing over me and pain causing my head to feel as if it was about split in two, all I could think about was never being able to see my child if he or she was to survive. I was not going to allow her to take that away from me even if that meant I would have to do something that I would regret and possibly get me time behind bars. She would not take my life away before I got a chance to see the life I'd created.
While she squatted over me ranting and raving about how she now had my attention I brought my hand up and slapped her so hard she fell over, stumbling and twisting her ankle before hitting the ground.
She went one way and the gun went another.
My vision was cloudy, body heavy, and head felt as if it was about ready to explode as I slowly staggered up, but I was quick enough to catch her before she could reach the gun that had gone flying.
Sirens could be heard in the distance and for once I was glad to have nosey neighbors. We struggled as I tried to keep her in a hold to restrain her and even though the pain that shot through my body was mind numbing I grabbed a hold of her, shoving her across the vast expanse of the poolside. She went tumbling hard across the pavement hitting her head against one of the stone flower pots knocking her unconscious. My wounds got the best of my strength and by the time the police had come running through my house and jumping my fence to get to me I was laid out thanking God and cursing myself at the same time.
After all of the questioning by the police, the phone calls to Gabe, and me getting treated for my wounds, I sat beside Chyanne, stoic. They were able to save the baby, however; he was delivered at only two pounds and three ounces and although he was in stable condition, he was not out of the woods yet. His doctor had explained to me that because of the stress to him during the surgery and Chyanne's injuries, there were a lot of things that could go wrong with him in the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Even after seventy-two hours it was still possible that he would have complications.
I'd almost popped a vessel trying to stop the ache that I felt in my heart and soul, but my walls came crashing down again when I looked at my son through the glass incubator. He was so small that I could hold him in one hand. He was on just as many if not more machines as Chyanne was and there was only so much a man could take. They wouldn't let me hold him but there were two holes where I could stick my hands and touch him. That first touch was surreal and when he started to move around like he knew who I was, I smiled. Against all odds he and his mother had come out swinging. I didn't envision that the first time I would see my son would be looking at him through a glass container, but I was thankful none the less.
As I sat there beside Chyanne, I couldn't even open my mouth and say anything worth saying to her. I felt like shit for bringing this on her. I never meant for this to happen to her, never even knew that it was coming. Looking at her and knowing that I was the cause of all that had happened to her opened my eyes to a lot of things. I realized in that moment that she meant way more to me than I wanted to admit. That's why I kept her around. That's why I wouldn't let her go. In the end, she'd been the only one to give me what I was really looking for. She still loved me regardless of my faults, regardless of the things I'd done to her over the period of time she'd known me.
They only allowed me twenty minutes to sit with her and while there all I could do was hold her hand and apologize for the pain I'd caused in her life both physically and mentally. I talked to her, told her that she'd brought our son into the world and that like her, he was a fighter. I asked . . . begged for her forgiveness, hoping that she could hear me through all of the beeping of the machines that were used to help keep her alive.