She hit a button on the wall and the double doors to the rehab center in the west wing of the hospital opened. She wheeled him up to a set of walking bars.

“Okay, here we go. God, do you believe all that energy? You are so draining, Mr. Smith, I mean really,” she said as she unbuckled him, raised the foot bars, and gently set his feet on the floor.

She set the brakes on the wheelchair, unbuckled Quadir, and pulled him out of the chair. Quadir gripped the bars tightly, holding on for dear life. Amelia made her way behind him, and placed her hands on his waist.

“How many times are you going to bring me down here to do this?” Quadir said, gritting his teeth. “I can’t do it yet!”

“You can do anything you put your mind to. You can do this, Quadir. You’re stronger than you even know. I watched a soldier who refused to give in, who stared death in the face and told it to go to hell. You can do this. One step, Quadir, it just takes one step.”

Quadir closed his eyes and gritted his teeth again. He wanted this pesky, silly bitch gone and out of his life. He wanted to be alone and if he had to be around someone, he wanted it to be someone who would understand what he was going through. He wanted Gena.

“Don’t look at me like that. Only a coward gives up, Quadir.”

A coward? Is she calling me a fucking coward?

“What? You heard me; you’re not even trying. A fucking coward, I can’t believe this shit,” she huffed under her breath, loud enough for him to hear.

Bitch, please. He couldn’t help it. She must be crazy to offer such an analysis. Quadir had been through more than Amelia Hopkins could ever dream about. He was a soldier, a warrior, and a gangster to the fullest. He ate niggas for breakfast, and bitches like her were nothing but a midmorning snack.

“You going to let a bar beat you?” Amelia asked.

“Shut up!” Quadir exploded. “Will you just shut the fuck up!”

“That’s right! Get angry! But what are you going to do with all that anger? Are you going to yell at me and sit back down and quit? Or are you going to get angry at the people who tried to take life away from you, the people who put you in this wheelchair? Are you going to let them win? Are you going to let them beat you, Quadir?”

Quadir breathed in heavily and gripped the bars tightly. He lifted himself up as much as he could, while staring at his right foot.

Move, dammit, move, he commanded.

And it did.

The left foot slowly followed, and then the right one. He walked to the end of the track and turned around gasping for air. He was exhausted.

“Oh, my God. No, no, stay there. Oh, my God. Quadir, oh, my God. That’s good for one day; just stay right there. I’ll bring the chair to you,” said Amelia in amazement and disbelief.

“No, leave the chair where it’s at,” Quadir told her. He stared at his feet again and willed them to move.

Amelia cupped her hands over her mouth, as tears begin to stream down her face. These were the moments she lived and breathed for. These were the moments that made every sacrifice in her life worthwhile. She watched as Quadir took four tiny steps and collapsed into her arms.

“Yes! Yes! I knew that you could do it!” She hugged him as if he were her child, taking his first baby steps in life.

Quadir held on to her, hugging her back and fighting back his own tears. He wanted to cry, he wanted to cry so bad, but Baby Jane wouldn’t have that on him. He had shown her; he had walked. He couldn’t believe he had walked. He hugged Amelia tightly, kissing her cheek, and he felt her kiss his cheek back. And out of all the hugging and kissing, their lips met, and she kissed him back, a long and passionate kiss. Amelia completely forgot her position and role as a doctor; she didn’t even realize the road that they had started down in that one kiss.

The next day, after her rounds, Amelia entered Quadir’s room with her trusty wheelchair and was met with a happy face.

“I take it you’re ready.”

“Might as well be; I don’t have no choice.”

“Well, today, I have a surprise for you,” she said, helping him into the chair, as she placed his feet on the foot holders. She pushed him down the hall and onto the elevator as usual, but this time when the doors opened she made a left instead of a right.

“Where we going?”

“I told you I had a surprise for you today.”

Amelia took her patient for a stroll through the hospital’s gardens, hoping that some fresh air would do him good. He had accomplished so much in such a short period of time. His recovery bordered on miraculous.

She stopped his wheelchair next to a bench in front of a statue commemorating the hospital’s founder. She took a seat on the bench close to him.

“Are we about to have the conversation?” Quadir asked.

“And which conversation is that? We have a couple of them that we need to have.”

Quadir laughed. “I guess you’re right. But I figured you were strolling me out here so that we could talk about why I’m here and why someone would try to kill me. You know, that conversation.”

“Those things have crossed my mind a few times.”

“Well, you know my name, and I’m pretty sure you know my date of birth.” Quadir peered off into the distance. “It’s pretty hard to know where to start. I mean, you already know all my personal information. Not to mention, you operated on me; you saved my life.”

Amelia nodded and laughed. “Yeah, I guess I know a few things. I’ll admit that.”

Quadir shrugged. “I don’t know. I really don’t know where to start.”

“Would you rather I ask you?”

“I don’t know. I guess that probably would be better.”

“Do you have a nickname?

“Yeah, sort of, Qua, sometimes Q.”

“Is that what all of your friends called you? Qua?”

Quadir nodded.

“Are you originally from Philly?”

“Yeah, I was born at Pennsylvania Hospital downtown. I grew up in North Philly my entire life. Where are you from?”

Amelia exhaled and peered off into the distance.

“I’m a country girl, straight off the farm in Alabama.”

“How did you wind up in Philly?”

“I wanted more, I guess. I just couldn’t see myself working on my parents’ farm for the rest of my life, or marrying some drugstore clerk in the nearest town and cranking out babies for the next twenty years of my life. Not much out there in the country. So, after high school I got accepted to Temple University and then took up my residence at Temple University Hospital. After completing my residency, I got offered a job here at Hahnemann, so I decided to stay in Philadelphia and see how things worked out. I’ve been here at Hahnemann now for five years.”

“That’s good; that’s really good. You stayed focused. Sometimes, I wish I had stuck it out and stayed in school.”

“Why, you dropped out of high school?” Amelia questioned.

“No, I graduated with honors from high school. And I went on to college at the University of Delaware.”

“Did you graduate?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?” asked Amelia. She had never thought for one second that Quadir had a formal education.

“I got my bachelor’s and after that I wanted to go to grad school to become a dentist. But, I guess I got sidetracked.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, I struggled to get through school. It wasn’t like I came from money. My pops hustled in the streets. He did the number game and had speakeasies in the city, and while we wasn’t poor, we wasn’t rich neither. I guess after I graduated and I came back home to Philly, I saw everybody hustling, getting fast money, you know, and I wanted a piece of it. I always said I’d go back to school and become a dentist and open my own office someday. I just got sidetracked and one thing led to another.”

“I see it led you right here to my operating table.”

“Yeah, I always thought I was invincible. I never saw myself shot up and in a wheelchair. I have a friend, Christopher Cole, who we all called Forty, and he was kidnapped last year and held for a million-dollar ransom. Even though I paid his ransom, his kidnappers still shot him up and left him for dead. I remember going to visit him in the hospital. His body looked weak and frail and he was all beat up and bandaged up and the doctors said he’d never walk again, and to this day, he’s still in a wheelchair. But I’ll never forget the day I went to see him after he had been shot up and I knew then that I didn’t want this life. I knew then that I didn’t want to end up like that.”