A tall, strikingly handsome man approached the circulation desk at Jackson North Memorial Hospital, resplendent in an all-black tailor made suit and suede gator loafers.

RN Bridgett Norwood could barely find the words. Flashing a smile, and running her hands over her unkempt reddish hair, she finally said, "May I help you, sir?"

"I'm here to see my brother, Jonathan."

Immediately she was saddened. "He's in Intensive care. He's not allowed to have visitors yet."

His magnetically gorgeous eyes made her squirm in her seat.

He took his wallet from his back pocket, looking around. Taking a few bills from the leather, he slid two crisp one hundred dollar bills towards her. He scribbled his phone number on an extra Benjamin Franklin.

"You can see your brother for fifteen minutes. Please, keep this to yourself. Please give your family my best."

She stuffed the money in her bra.

"I'll escort you." She stood up. "Follow me."

Kissing her cheek, he followed closely behind her, grinning.

Fake money never failed.

And he wasn't worried about expecting a phone call from her. If she called, he hoped she had an appetite for pizza.

He scribbled the number to Papa John's...

Once the RN chick, whatever her name was, left Jonathan's room, his alleged brother bit back tears. After years of being denied being in his life, he cupped his hand, kissing it.

He sat in a chair on the side of his bed, praying for his recovery.

"I'm here, baby. Your father is right by your side. You have my blood in your veins. You're a fighter. Fight, my boy. So you can finally meet your biological father."

Francisco James leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

"What are you doing in here?" some lady asked, startling him.

Opening his eyes, he stared the Other Woman, his ex-mistress Lynn deep in her accusing eyes.

Standing up, he rushed up to her, grabbing her around the neck, squeezing.

"Bitch I'll kill you if I lose my son!"

Pushing her on the marble floor, he walked past her. Grabbing him by the right pants leg, she said, "Wait, please. Just wait."

Sucking in air he paused...

His hands now tight fists...

For years Lynn thought she got out of hot water.

But steaming crabs came pinching her lies away with claws of chaos and catastrophe.

Her past came in flashes before Jonathan's biological father's face, her credibility in serious jeopardy.

Francisco said, "Not only did you savagely strip me from my son, but you've made a fortune using my idea as Officer Becky, the masked lesbian escort and took it as your own. I was the one that got you into the business. I was the only one that knew your real identity. You were my wife's best friend, the one she sent to seduce me and we wound up making a son I was forbidden from seeing.

"She paid you thousands to deceive me. Being a state prosecutor is all she ever cared about. Being with you during your escort days behind her back, after her ultimatum, when you wasn't in your squad car arresting people, was our sweet escape. She never suspected a thing, but you still wouldn't let me see my son and Norma's threat kept me from pressing the issue."

"Why is that important now, man? You were the unfaithful one. You were the one that cheated on her," Lynn said, numb inside.

He ignored her. "I met you over seafood. As a street baser you got my attention, Lynn, by the hunger on your face staring at my food that faithful night, two years before you would give birth to our only son, the one fighting for his life right as we speak.

"You were a crackhead coke addict, and I put you through rehab, with Norma's help (that's how you both became best friends). You were dressed in rags and worn heels when I noticed you at the restaurant window, begging for rations.

"Strung out. I invited you inside one of the finest establishments to pay for you to enjoy a three hundred dollar a plate lean cuisine seafood dinner. As a man I felt that was the right thing to do. I didn't do that for charity. I did that because if that was me strung out, I would want somebody to feed me, too."

Lynn shivered. "Please. That's in the past. Now is not the time."

"I can remember your stale make up and your horrendous stench. But I looked passed that and saw the fading beauty in your eyes. My mother taught me to never turn away someone dying of hunger. That that could be Christ in disguise, testing your humanity."

Lynn drifted back.

Two years before she became a cop.

Years before he talked her into something outside of herself.

She was nineteen years old and cast out of her family after a tragic and traumatic chain of mind-blowing events and disgraced after her father, Wilt, walked in on her being tongue serviced by one of her girlfriends. In a fit of rage he snatched his daughter Lynn out of her bed by her hair, throwing her body on the floor. Thank God for the carpet. It protected her limbs from breaking.

Lynn was on her feet in an instant, putting on her shorts and shirt with quickened haste.

In seven seconds flat she was fully clothed, just in time to catch her father's hand before he could knock the wind out of the girl she was in love with.

"Dad! I love her!" she said desperately. "I'm sorry you had to find out like this, that I'm a lesbian and always have been!"

Her tearful, desperate plea fell on deaf ears. Wilt gripped her face and pushed her on the bed.

"No daughter of mine is going to sleep with another woman! I'll gut you like last Sunday's snapper, do you hear me, Lynn? And this trick influenced you!"

She screamed, racing towards her father with all the strength she could muster and jumped on his back, biting him on the back of his neck before his fist connected with her girlfriend's jaw.

"I'm going to stomp you to sleep!" Wilt promised. "For years both of you..." Angrily, he ran backward, slamming Lynn into the wall.

All of the framed photos of her family fell from metal hooks and shattered on the marble tile, the only place in her room without a carpet.

Photos she cherished because she was in every last one of them, staring at her father's face were ruined.