Saundra Adams sits in bed, finishing a fried bologna sandwich on wheat bread. It is a little after 1 a.m. on Nov. 16, 1999.
Her house smells of bologna, but also of onions and vanilla. While frying onions for her sandwich, some sizzling butter had popped out of the pan, burning the back of her hand.
Her mother always told her to put vanilla on a burn, so she had grabbed some from the pantry and applied a little.
She wishes her daughter could join in the late-night snack. Both Saundra and Cherica Adams love fried bologna, although for Cherica it's a guilty pleasure she doesn't advertise.
Cherica Adams also has long teased her mother about the "vanilla always heals a burn" theory, passed down through generations. So the vanilla on her hand makes Saundra Adams laugh. She thinks if her daughter was here she would smell the vanilla and say, "What are you getting ready to do? Make a pie?"
The phone rings. And Adams' mood changes quickly when the caller identifies himself as a staff member at an uptown Charlotte, N.C., hospital.
Certain she knows what the call is about, Adams stands up in anger.
Her insurance hasn't finished paying the bill from when she fell and broke her ankle, and the hospital had been calling about it.
They must be calling about wanting money again, she thinks _ and after midnight!
Then the man asks, "Do you have a daughter _ Cherica Adams?"
Saundra, still upset, answers: "Yes I do!"
The man talks calmly but urgently, telling Adams her daughter is at the hospital and has been shot.
"Oh no, don't play with me!" Adams replies. "She was on a date. She was at the movies. She's not at no hospital."
Saundra is told to come to the hospital immediately and that Cherica is headed into surgery for an emergency Caesarean section to deliver her baby.
Saundra Adams falls to her knees, wailing.
"God _ just please don't let my baby die!" she screams.
