(7/11) “Every morning G and I played ‘Time after Time’ while she...

(7/11) “Every morning G and I played ‘Time after Time’ while she cooked us breakfast. That was our song. I have the lyrics tattooed on my arm. Because that’s what G and I did, we caught each other, time after time. She did the cooking and laundry. I drove uber ten hours a day. Sometimes we’d fall behind on rent, but I’d always get it paid. Whenever the Knicks had a road game I’d organize these viewing parties. We’d get prizes from the team and sell raffle tickets. G was the queen of raffle tickets. I’d tell her, G, we gotta make $400 tonight or we’re gonna lose the apartment. And she’d always hit it. We always made it work. It looked simple but it wasn’t simple: G and Ant. Ant and G. We just kept livin.’ Of course we were living on borrowed time, but we had no way of knowing that. One night in 2019 we were watching a Yankees playoff game on TV. G was sitting in my Knicks chair. And I was dead-ass tired, so I knocked out on the couch. At some point G must have gone to bed. Because two hours later I wake up to my cell phone ringing. It’s G calling me from her bedroom. It’s completely dark. I’m confused as fuck, but I get up and run to her room. G’s lying there in bed. She’s saying: ‘Ant, Ant, I can’t get up!’ She’s slurring her words. She looks just like my grandmother when she was having a stroke. But G’s twenty years old, so that can’t be it. I’m like: ‘G, get up, get up.’ But she just keeps saying: ‘I can’t, I can’t.’ I call 911 and an ambulance comes to bring her to the hospital. As soon as we arrive like 100 doctors swarm around her. They’re telling me it’s a massive stroke. They’re saying she needs emergency brain surgery. I’m like ‘next week?’ And they’re like: ‘Now.’ At this point I start to lose it. This older Hispanic lady comes out of nowhere and just wraps her arms around me. She’s holding me like a baby. She’s saying: ‘It’s going to be OK, it’s going to be OK.’ It was like the worst dream ever. Three hours earlier G and I had been watching TV. Now the nurses are handing me these papers to sign. They want me to sign a DNR. I don’t want to sign a fucking DNR. I’m like: ‘Do whatever it takes. Whatever the fuck you have to do. Just keep her alive.’”