I dont want to die
Lamp arrived and I saw a figure from my sick bed. A Two Hundred Pounds Weight was resting the whole of it in a chair, which a matron had used while suturing the slashed bridge of my nose and dressing surrounding bruises. He was a young man whose age was a bit ahead of mine or a bit behind it. I could not question any official document of his stating that he had completed thirty years on earth. From my lying position, I took note of his well-planned nose and instantly began to die for a mirror, so that I might just glance at my wounded, broader copy. The chap also owned an interesting body complexion: a fair skin that was hugely successful in its brightening of my dark ward. But unbearably he stuck to a silent inspection of me, never for a minute taking his eyes off me. So contagious was the act that I myself started staring at him, except that in the end I was rewarded for my effort with the harsh discovery that he was much handsomer than me and his abundant hair curly, never to plead for a shampooing!
“This guy wasn’t in this room, ten minutes ago” I muttered like a curse.
Ten minutes back was about the last time I shut my eyes in an attempted imaging of my torn upper lip and dented nose. Quite likely, The Guy had slid into the room some five minutes ago by easing its door open, creeping in, shutting it likewise and finally positioning himself, where he had since been and taking the keenest look at me. His gazes at me, as I remembered them, were those of a fancy of the oddest kind for their subject of interest.
“But Who’s This Staring-Like-A-Sheep Guy?” I worried for the first time no longer wanting to endure his seeming admiration of me he should have been pitying.
Let two or three more minutes burn out and without fail I shall let the stupidity in him understand that a survivor of a ghastly accident anywhere in the world expects from caller either ‘A Vocalized Sorry’ or ‘A Gestured One: not long gazes of curious admiration that belie the ghostliness of its ghastliness or challenge the definite pains from it…
Just then, The Guy’s much sought reaction came but in a manner so outlandish that I should keep mentally revisiting it.
“Do you know you’d hurled yourself at my car and shattered its wind shield?”
“Me!” I tried to shout but ended up obeying the rebellion of my swollen upper lip. Later, to him, I braved the question of whether we had really met before but from him heard not a half cough.
Clearly, an indignant neglect by this guy! Perhaps, indignantly conveying the point that our paths had, indeed, crossed. A bit painfully, my attempts to fix the very venue of that crossing proved a vain labour. More than thrice, I searched my mind to catch some connecting cord between us, all to no avail.
Happily, I was not left by this Maverick Caller in indefinite suspension.
“My name is Andy,” he opened up, and then touched on the aspect of his identity that counted most in relation to my immediate condition.
I was the person who brought you here after the accident.”
“Jeez!” I let out, “Also, the person who’d knocked me down but not out?”
Andy looked mightily embarrassed and I thought before me became by some ounce less than Two Hundred Pounds in weight.
“I’m sure the cyclist who had you on his bike was drunk,’ Andy remembered at last to say defensively, adding that we were also on his lane on a winding track.
And these two blunders by my rider just qualified us for an Emergency Meeting with God in Heaven.
I did not voice this sure-to-offend thought to Andy, owner of a-now-damaged-van, only yesterday spick and span? I rather chose to ask him about my cyclist’s whereabouts.
“The Cyclist?” Andy attempted to confirm from me.
“Yes,” I responded.
He is in another room of the hospital receiving treatment… Just like you”
“The Matron didn’t tell me,” I emptily mumbled.
“Perhaps, you hadn’t bothered to ask or had you?”
I starved Andy my answer. It was to me preferable showing concern that the man’s condition might be worse than mine. This misgiving I flung at Andy as a guessed truth.
“Not exactly,” I heard Andy say. However, he made me understand that The Cyclist had one leg that was not good to look at.
“Jeez!”
That much I could blurt out in lieu of whistling my shock. The solidarity sounds I later tried to make I lost to a torn upper lip. As an alternative I snapped my unhurt middle finger and thumb, whose sharp sound successfully registered the shock… I was bothered enough to ask Andy which leg of the cyclist was the Unlucky One.
“Does that matter now that more of his hospital bill and yours shall still come my way?” Andy threw back purposing the unfriendliness in his response.
“Oh! Really?” I muttered, my voice that of one who would have willingly shouldered the costs of my treatment and my rider’s. I should think this had embittered Andy for his sudden disclosure that he had already made A Fifty Thousand Naira Deposit that should enable our cases be entertained in the first place.
“And I didn’t know about it,” I said with the appropriate sigh.
“Cause you’d fainted then,” A Recollecting Andy revealed, on my mind forcing a picture of one, who had begun that Best Special Journey of Man that summons tears in rivulets and necessitates two or more reachable handkerchiefs.
Somehow, I found a reason to ask Andy whether my rider too had fainted or not and from him got the answer that I alone did.
“Oh? That’s interesting, I heard myself say but completely sure that I had meant the opposite.
A minute interval and Andy sought to know if I was at all getting better.
“In a manner,” I dropped for him.
“So? Not well enough to ask that you be discharged,” Andy tried like Luck.
Suddenly, I was stopped on my tracks? Sensibly I paused to get under the skin of this Andy of A Man: paused to catch with my ten fingers his now easily-reachable- soon-slippery like-an-eel-intentions in Precious Life Hospital, Delta.
At last, I made bold to ask him, if he would want me to be discharged by my doctor, that night?
“Er.r.r…. it depends on you,” scrambled The Crook.
“No… Rather more on you.” I assured Andy, very certain that I had offered that opinion, testily. Unwaveringly Andy stuck to his guns on the question of whom the decision for my discharge rested. Only I and I could deliver the Go-Ahead Order for it. However, he did not forget to lambast holders of the hurting opinion that he was singularly to blame for The Accident: which opinion, to his dismay, had also been expressed by the nurses that never saw the mishap nor neared its scene.
Silence of The Graveyard Quality got a chance to reign in The Ward. The Silence became an invitation to give Andy a good survey like an Unfamiliar Terrain. Andy I found out was undisguisedly surveying me likewise. Apparently, he was trying to find out what impression his words had made on me. Intriguingly, I discovered that the focus of his gaze at me was more on my eyes than on any other part of my face. I tried breaking free from its pressure by quickly assuring him that I had been listening to him and would want him to continue.
“No. clearly no need for that,” Andy pointed out, his voice the firmest and his disposition that of a “NO Retreat, No Surrender!”. But the next silence that intervened did not last, as Andy did not at all wish it.
“I believe that your discharge by the doctor, tomorrow won’t bad for both of us,” Andy said, more like A Prophet than less.
“No. On the contrary, my discharge should be this very night,” said I bluntly to Andy. “If really, I want to halt your paying a two-day hospital bill.”
Andy held back every form of reply. Simply, he looked on, now at me, next at nothing, gazing into our separating width. Then, I knew that if I had rid my last remark of its coarseness, I would have painlessly got from Andy one or two more shameful drama of The Displeased Rich who does not wish to spend on the Subject of Displeasure. In my taunting mood, I could not bring myself to do so, in the event closing off an outlet.
Successfully, I summarized what Andy had wanted. It was plain to some luminous clarity: just try to see what can be done to spend less money on a lousy Road Accident, which had already cost you a damaged automobile, a substantial initial deposit for the hospital’s non-negotiable bill for the treatment of Accident cases, the money for his drugs and certainly the one for his feeding.
My feeding?
No! Up till then, what one might consume had not met my gaze nor had my Nurse Matron mentioned such to me, wherefore I did not try to raise the subject. Then, I knew I could have mentioned it myself and from the nurse stimulated some response.
From where I was, I stole a glance at Andy on his seat and thought that I saw A Sack of Patience, indulgently waiting for the moment I would calmly revisit the issue of when I might want to be discharged from the hospital. But I said to experimentally forget him for a couple of minutes purposing to watch him smolder in his present helplessness.
“God, forgive me!”
Mischievously, I turned my attention to The Evening’s Harmattan-Cold Wind which had been flapping my blood-stained sleeves and vibrating Andy’s blood-untouched sleeveless. I could clearly pick, even in the poorly lit room, the wind’s quartering of defacing dusts on the walls of the ward as my nut-loose imagination had pictured it: its powdering of the faces of the walls like a shaver of beards would after a clean or lack- lustre effort. Then, immorally, I recalled that while the Nurse Matron gingerly sat in front of me and was wrestling with my cuts, the winds were mostly concluding their journeys under her skirt and sometimes raising it for Lower-Positioned Me to keep coolly consuming a free film. For the act I felt not the least guilt. I had not from The Matron solicited The Pornography and, cumulatively, The Scene had not exceeded some four or five minutes. Maybe, it had been my determination to keep absolving myself of this guilt, I literally forgot Andy and even dumped him and his worries at a corner But just then, I heard what had sounded like “Good Friend!” and it turned out, when I had looked up, to be how Andy had ingeniously chosen to address me. With a second glance at him, I saw that he had gone some length in unpacking a parcel of food, which he had brought along.
“I don’t know, really… perhaps, you’ve eaten something” stuttered Andy
“No, I haven’t,” I replied readily on behalf of the enzymes in my bowel that were about to be served something.
Then, Andy spoke with the fullest motive of eliciting a “Yes Response” from me.
“I know you get on well with Rice, Egg and Tea… Warm Water Tea!”
“I do,” I assured Andy. “ They’re Urban foods and I happen to be An Urbanite”
“Then, I have to thank God,” Andy said, celebrating my declared interest in the dishes, announcing that they were entirely mine.
In some measure, I was astonished by the act. I said to throw Andy a few excusable jibes about his nutritional magnanimity.
“I beg your pardon?” Andy sought lamely and I guessed: his careful pretence that he had not heard or had not grabbed the message in what he had heard.
“ I mean, Sir, you were just thanking God that you will soon become a plate of rice poorer”
“No, I don’t mind and I don’t count such” said Andy and it set me pondering whether he was being particular about my insinuation that his Rice Food Offer was a demonstration of his magnanimity or making general comment on his disposition. Then, when our eyes met once more, he smiled A Brief One or rather he smiled and found it Grotesque: A Mere Filler of An Interlude. Low voiced, Andy remarked that this kind of gesture would not perturb Modern Man and dutifully began to make me my tea, decanting it from the flask he had brought with him. The Rice with Egg and Salad and The Tea were nicely borne in separate flasks. The Eggs, I noticed, he or somebody else had already shelled after they were hard-boiled and these blended with The Rice. With a final grant of The Rice with Hard Boiled Eggs the company of A Leafy Stew, Andy transferred each to the plate it belonged and brought them to me, “New Crowned King!”
In a matter of minutes, after I had began to interact with the rice, I concluded that Andy deserved his sought consideration. He had been longing to hear that my stay in the hospital would not exceed the following day: that his cumulative bill on my account be for Two-Day Admission and Management of An Accident Victim In-Patient by The Hospital. I saw this longing of his in the brief scene he had created in less than a half-hour and also in his anxious enquiries about my responses to treatment leading of course to the question of when it would be convenient for him to ask that I be discharged from Precious Life Clinic. His superb dish of rice rather than quite symbolize his willingness to indulge me magnanimously portrayed his readiness to use goodwill gestures of Welfare Feeding to get one, who would not have become hospitalized but for his faults to start considering fast on his behalf money-saving earlier discharge by his or her doctor. In fact, my served mouth-salivating rice dish by Andy was he casually demonstrating that he could part with several plates of it – Perhaps many of it in lieu of a resented expense of an unpredictable amount as hospital bill. In this manner, Andy proved himself to be not a shred different from other Nigerians in general and my tribesmen in particular, who prefer to treat Unashamed Seekers of Financial Assistance from them to the finest expensive cuisines in Five Star Hotel to humoring them with a Single Dollar Bill or our Less Worthy Naira.
No doubt, Andy’s about-to-be-lost and sure-to-traumatize dollar bill was my hospital bill he would foot for more than a two-day’s admission! Andy would rather he breathed his last then parted with that much for a chap, whom he could not have scratched a hair of his but for his drunken rider decided switch to his own lane at an ill-advised moment. If Andy did not neatly resemble The New Affluent Southerners living in the country and elsewhere, he at least gave away their trait bordering on a preparedness to be wasted by an American Pistol with a Russian bullet rather than part with a sweated-out cash for A Less Affluent Friend. What Andy wanted I had already perfectly understood and could give him an extra or bonus: I mean, suddenly standing up, there and then, and sending for the Matron to tell her that I had fully recovered and thus, would want my hospital bill for the lone day I had spent in The Hospital brought to me so that I might settle it and leave. Andy should be happier under such a circumstance as to dismiss like Demons the forming creases and the hardening ones on his face…
He did claim – or did he not? – That I had smashed the windscreen of his van? “Shattered it” he had said…
An Asthma-Fought Breathless Bundle summoning the rugged strength to pulverize the more-brittle-than-a-bottle-front-glass of a moving vehicle!
It should make A Lousy Court Testimony worth replying with an adult dose of contemptible laughter. I was sure that it would not as a claim; survive the first few minutes of a close cross examination of its maker. Not with its Biblical Unconsumed Burning Bush Picture and appeal…
Something for Eternal Debate!
Andy, I feared, had begun to circulate the story that a young man, whom his car had collided with their bike had snatched that chance to waste its windscreen and glamour with a Marciano’s punch. I reckoned that he might not have restrained an urge to put it in that form, in which case there is a need for me to stop his spreading next time a first-rate lie to the uttermost fringes of Delta State.
“You see, Sir, I can’t quite work out how the shattering of your windscreen was my act,” I suddenly told Andy.
“What’s there to work out?” Andy asked in an impatient voice, his face lacking the modesty in mine, his intention my complete intimidation. But I tried to ignore him and this.
“I mean, Sir, how could I have in my condition smashed the windscreen of your van?”
Andy coldly echoed what I had just said, not looking like the man who had amiably offered me chocolaty tea.
“No…. you could clear the air,” I suggested to him, with a new zest and vigour enjoying my egg-festooned rice.
“Look, My friend,” began Andy, barely keeping his indiscretion under check,” At nearly the very moment of my bang, you’d jumped above the man in your front towards my car”
“What! Could such have been possible with you advancing at top speed?”
“But that was what you’d done, even adding Style and Acrobatics to it”
“Acrobatics!” I singularly repeated, longing to disbelieve Andy
“I’m not changing that word.” Andy swore, ignoring my stupefied; look. “You dared to jump well above Your Rider and above the bonnet of my car, where you thought death hung in the course landing on top of the same bonnet and hitting the car’s windscreen with your right hand.
“Hmmm!…,” I simply exclaimed and more like a rogue than less inspected the middle finger of my right hand and guessed what had shredded it flesh like paper. No doubt, the jagged splinters of the windscreen. More and more, I listened to what Andy had to say about The Incident by way of grumbles of The Hurt. While I did, my mind on its own continued to sharpen its faint images of what had unfolded at the scene: the supportive hands which later yanked me up from the ground where I had slumped after the bang, then the lone protective one which shepherded me to a waiting vehicle that was to take us to Precious Life Hospital, I endlessly pleading with the owner of the hand to first let me locate my missing Ventolin Inhaler before joining them. My mind could recall that one of my rescuers had restrained me from doing so for having picked it up for me… Or was it that he had shown me The Inhaler, wherefore, I relaxed bowed to his wish that I be driven in their car to Precious Life…? Perhaps, the fellow was a brother of Andy – also in The Mischievous Van - or can he have been his friend, his colleague, casual acquaintance or… Whatever! And then, in the next succeeding second, I simply blacked out!
Andy, I had no doubt anymore had come with one overriding motive and three incidental ones. To once more confirm that I am still alive, serve me his Appetizing Dish of Egg accompanied with Rice, recall certain very distinct memories of The Accident which had turned me into a patient and primarily get me to hasten my doctor’s approval of my discharge from The Hospital, at the very latest, tomorrow! In essence, he had breezed into my ward with peaked curiosity, Rice with Eggs memories and a cast-iron resolve to pay a maximum of A Two-Day Hospital Bill on my behalf. How I would make his bill become Two-Days’ was entirely my headache – my task – and one I should vigorously pursue, if I still owned some conscience.
For this reason, I made Andy a promise that I would be leaving The Hospital the following day, although I had yet to say a word about The Incident to Corps Liaison Officer at Isele Uku nor wired The Principal of My School of Posting… And because I could not think up how else to lend solemnity to a made promise apart from later fulfilling it, I intently saved in my mind the notion that I have a mission to bring to a true end. Later, sheer instinct told me to further touch Andy’s arm with my sutured middle finger and its nearest neighbor as a way of driving home my promise and I did. And Andy stood up to leave my presence, his lip describing a smile which possibly had the taste of honey for having licked the same lips like honey-stained ones.
“Your food flask?” I called out to Andy’s departing figure, “You are forgetting them”
“No… I’ll be picking them up tomorrow… Also the other ones”
The Now-Very-Happy Andy would want me to finish the rest of the food in the flasks even in his absence.
“Then, you are coming tomorrow,” I said to verify.
“Why not? Andy quipped. “It’s the day of your discharge…
And without me around, your doctor won’t grant you leave.
“Oh! I just forgot that,” I owned up. And before he could finally disappear from my presence sought to know if he honestly believed that my jumping above the bonnet of his van towards it was a mistake.
“You seem to be unhappy with that Acrobatics.”
“Something that destroyed my car’s windshield!”
“But you didn’t stop before I attempted it.”
“I’m sure I stopped at the moment you did.”
“Ah-h! A rhyming then between the two acts… I’m a lot surprised!”
“Yes, I stopped! I… I tried to stop at the moment.”
“Yet, consider it, Mr. Andy…. No anticipating victim of a crash puts the faintest trust in the driver of a car too close for comfort… or does he?
“No, Mister… Please, what’s your name?”
“Chinedum”
“No, Mr. Chinedum… But don’t give the impression that I was doing a hundred-and-forty kilos… Remember, you guys were on my own lane.”
“Yes. But, somehow, you could’ve veered into the nearby forest, if you’d wanted to. No trees. No trunks. No bumps around the venue that I was sure of. Just farm lands.”
“My friend, it would’ve destroyed my car: as an option wrecked it.”
“I still wrecked your car: its windscreen, when you decided otherwise;”
“Then you’re happy you did” Andy sounded passionately indicting.
“No only summing what you recounted,” I corrected later, insinuating that the story would have been different if he had swerved into the bush nearby”
“God! Why must I do so with you guys on my lane?” cried. Andy.
“Then, you’re making This Lane, thing An Inheritance Matter… Some Birth Right of Yours.”
“I’m sorry I can’t leave you to shift even half the blame of what had happened to me”
“And what of the fact that the rate at which you were moving was too good for that Glorified Footpath? You also had a right to that?
“I… I was late to A Church Service
I… I beg your pardon.”
“I said I was already late to a service. A Thanksgiving’s
“Your own Thanksgiving Ceremony?”
“Yep”
“Probably worried that Jesus mightn’t like to wait till some other Sunday for The Gifts.
“Mr. Chinedum, see you, tomorrow… And try to get better”
“No further questions, My Lord!
The whole thing was curious. Mightily Unbelievable! Andy at the time he hit me his car was going to The Lord’s House to make Him an offering… Delta State’s Elkanah!
On the said next day I had promised to quit The Hospital Premises of Precious Life, at above 9:00am, a man whom I would have only grudgingly linked with A Stethoscope came and tore off The Cloak making Big Mystery of my sudden enduring release from a heavy asthmatic attack immediately after I had the Accident!
God! It’s true then, that wonders shall never cease! How could I have guessed he was a doctor from his cheap polo top, trousers of unimportant colours and shameful refusal to inspect his hair in a mirror so as to make it less wild before leaving his apartment? Further throwing me off the scent had his irreconcilable jocular trapping of a chewing gum between two of his premolar teeth for an off-and-on and animated hitting with them. Under the circumstance, I could not but form and hold a poor impression of him and, in The Men’s Ward of the hospital I was preparing to leave, judge him My Last-Minute Intruder. Only Three Minutes after my meeting of him, with his unforced display of an unusual simplicity, I could not help some tear drops of sincere adoration. Soon, I was ready as well to present My Single Living Parent Father for a bet on his sure offer of A Medic’s Role and Position in any World-Rated Hospital between Egypt’s As-Salam and London’s Hammer-smith.
Doctorwas now close enough to examine me and did so in a manner I was sure he hadn’t tried his shaggy hair for some days.
“So, how’re you right now? asked his relaxed voice.
“Better…” I told the voice and then added “Much finer.”
“Good! You may expect a faster healing of the wounds on your nose, assured the voice with its owner physically asserting the point.
“And… And who’re you, sir?” I finally made bold to ask the giver of the comforting news.
“Oh! I work here… As one of those paid to take care of people in your present condition
“As what, Sir? A doctor?” I said to press.
The man’s forehead furrowed. Without a signaling. Not less three countable straight ridges. But it was followed by laughter boyish in both sound and delivery, DoctorSource wanting it that way!
“Sorry… it isn’t going to change anything… for I’m not discharging you today nor tomorrow.”
A Jolt of a thunderbolt’s!
I began to think fast, also fastening un-shifting eyes on the doctor’s
“How did you know I wanted to be discharged?” I asked him… “Cause I haven’t breathed a word of it to any of your nurses”
“You didn’t have to for my nurses to be certain of it,” Doctorsaid in a voice that seemed to celebrate the cleverness of his nurses and then wove in, “You know Appearance can talk.”
“Appearance?” I tried clarifying, wearing a Second-Degree Embarrassment. “My appearance spoke to your nurses?”
“Most likely it did, my nurses distilling the information from your face”
I did not believe the doctor. He was coolly and calmly telling me rubbish. “And you believed your nurses?” I asked testily.
“Well I do sometimes” he assured me.
“No Doc… You see-”
I was getting upset, Andy completely behind it.
“I grant that doctors sometimes believe their nurses or their opinions about a patient, if not for professional reasons for patronizing ones”
“For Patronizing What?” Doctorjust stopped me.
I was not too sure I was prepared for the new direction and twist my conversation with The Doc was about to take and in my next remark made the necessary amends.
“Well, Doc accepting that Appearance has both the Powers of Speech and their Effects, my mind tells me a bit strongly that the man who only last night, got me to make him a promise that I would request my discharge from your hospital today, to kindly save him a fresh day’s hospital bill expense, had gone ahead to tell your nurses with unquestionable certainty that my discharge from here is today.
Doctorcould only express his surprise that some man had propositioned me to accept The Unreasonable and Medically Unwise and I listened.
“Because his car had knocked us down and we were admitted here on his own account.”
A pause by Doc which lengthened or he allowed it to, before he found his voice.
“You’re saying that some man who’d discussed with you your discharge today from Precious Life spoke to my nurses about it?”
“Yes in anxiety… Perhaps after some sneaking mistrust that I might change my mind later over what we’d agreed to”
“Clearly, you don’t need any prompting from An Angel to believe that it was what happened”
“Well, if it wasn’t yesterday night that he mooted it to your nurses shortly after our conversation, then it was this morning, at some pre- arranged time intended to be convenient for the purpose.
“Such as…?”
The Doctor’s face was brandishing a scowl.
“Well, when I wouldn’t know of such a visit as to begin to fret over his hasty enforcement of our Gentleman’s Agreement”
“Oh! My nurses…” Doctorsighed. “I wish I knew where you’d placed their smartness. Already in your opinion, they can’t read a patient’s countenance to sift messages from it!”
“I haven’t yet said so,” I pointed out to Doc hoping that it had sounded like a correction but not satisfied remarked that I would have preferred that his nurses had displayed their smartness in their very profession and orientation not as Detectives nor Physiognomists.
“Whatever it is you have in mind, my nurses can comfortably guess when their patient is fed up with their ward or a simply patching with it or at the other extreme intent on overstaying in it.’
“I’m sorry, Doc… I’d rather your nurses showed the same intelligence, when a long breathless fellow wanted to find out why he should strangely regain his full breath after a terrible accident involving their motor-bike and a car.
“Oh! Was it the picture of things with you,” Doctorasked with genuine interest. “You were having an asthmatic attack before the accident?”
“A big one which my endurance could no longer handle!”
“Ah! My Sympathies,” Doctor said with a dose of concern, then stiffened to remark that I still mounted a bike in that condition. His look was wearing his demand for explanation. Mechanically, I replied that motorbikes were the exclusive mobility between the Isele Uku-Idumuje Ugboko Axis… Something he himself knew about.
“So you were galloping to Isele-Uku for treatment?”
“For Adrenalin Injection”
“What!” A Delicate Drug!”
“I know”
“I don’t think you do… Not everybody should administer it”
“Yes, you doctors, give it sub-cute to patients”
“Wonderful! Somebody told you?”
“Only too likely… My Mother Nurse”
“And where’s she now?”
“Six Feet below The Ground!”
Literally, I was canvassing for some emotion from Doctormy thumb pointing to the floor of The Ward, as though my late mother remains had in fact been interred right there. For all that Doctorwas visibly unperturbed somewhat preoccupied with the questions he would want me to deal with.
“So, somebody else at Isele-Uku replaced your Mother for your Adrenalin Injection?”
I laughed
“Doc… You know you’ve put it in a funny manner... Sarcastically”
“My friend, answer my question! Who was it you later chose for your Adrenalin Injections?”
Still laughing to contain what could have been a brewing tempest I replied that the fellow was some recommendation by The Landlady of The First House in The Village of My Primary Assignment
“And the fellow, sure is a dealer in Patent Drugs, you could connect me”
“No, you didn’t fail your summation…. He floats a drug store but is also a nurse.”
I remembered and added, not from any pressure, that the man had twice given me the injection expertly within the two weeks I knew him.
“Beautiful! And you were going for a third expert administration of The Injection.”
Pricked, I looked up, my eyes suddenly on the doctor’s. a feeling of shame!
“Christ! Sometimes, you or your remarks leave me in self-pity
“How?
The Doctor’s look was hard and his eyes dangled curiosity.
“You know there was an utmost necessity for the injection, Doc. Why would I play - and he? With a drug as potentially harmful as Adrenalin?”
“Sorry. I forgot that,” Entreated Doctorwith a singular straight bow of his head, which I could not interpret as his whole-hearted acceptance of my remark nor a genuine reflection of what he was thinking.
“Now, Doc how was I able to win back my breath after frightfully losing it?”
“Very Simple. The Accident gave you The Adrenalin Doses you were heading for Isele-Uku to receive from your Nurse Friend.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What’s there to pardon? Many forces are now competing with one another for who should be giving you The Adrenalin Stuff you very much love”
Many forces, Doc? You’re not helping me at all”
“But you’d said your late mother was giving you adrenalin shots?”
“I did”
And then A New-Found Friend in this Delta replaced her in the task”
“Well, one could put it that way”
“Good and Fine! Now, An Accident - and who knows what other phenomenon might later show the same interest – has volunteered to give you your Adrenalin.
“No, Doc... Accidents or an Accident doesn’t volunteer Adrenalin.”
“Amen! But you’ll have to thank the one which had already done so” Doctorsaid matter-of-factly.
Still, I looked confused… and in my verbal acceptance of his advice sounded flat.
“But what’s just your frustration?” Doctordemanded as he readjusted in the chair he had just occupied. “You were on a bike riding you to an important destination, then instantly saw what could make you taste death.”
“A speeding car!”
“Yes… Andy’s”
“You were mortally afraid of breathing your last - The Young Man that you still are! Probably Thirty or Thirty-One.”
“Twenty-eight years and five months… Doc”
“Beautiful! So, immediately your system understood the job it had to do, your Adrenal Gland secreting Adrenalin Hormones into your blood stream to help you grapple with The Emergency of The Moment…
“And I tried doing so with a wild jump above my pilot towards the advancing car - A Van…”
“Towards an Advancing Van!” exclaimed The Doctor, A Human Incarnation of Bafflement.
“Yes… but above The Killing Bonnet of the Van. The jump was supposed to be well-calculated”
“Wrong! That might have been quite courageous but as quite risky”
“I think, my watching of American Movies is to blame”
“Nonsense. A shameful admission… You know I wouldn’t ask you to stop watching them”
“Just as I helplessly know that I wouldn’t want to stop”
“Until you either kept on living or died, The American Movies which had been saving you, now dispatching you to the other divide”
“Already, I’m of the notion - ridiculous I imagine - that The Movies have been doing me one Heaven of Good.”
“So, summarily,” Doctortook up once again our not quite finished last subject. “You’d mounted a bike and then saw a van…”
“Purposelessly bounding towards our bike”
“No, I would accept speedily advancing toward it”
“And then my Adrenal Glands secreted their hormones to quench my Severe Asthma”
“No, first, you were seized by A Mortal Fear of Death”
“Yes. And this triggered a secretion of Adrenalin into my blood stream to help quench my asthmatic attack.”
“No, simply to handle The Emergency of The Moment, except that Adrenalin upon trigger could cushion a serve asthmatic attack…”
A long intervening silence. Doctorhad got me awe-struck, not only by his unforced display of Natural Medical Expertise but also with his refreshing patience with my inaccurate reportage of his just expressed medical opinion about a relieving incident. Fiercely, I could treasure this man: build him a shrine, violently love him… Alternatively, put him away in a bank or in some safe like some Now-Lucky-Once-Wretched Nigerians do to their First Million.
“Doctor!”
“Yes.”
“I love you”
“Please, watch it!”
“Why, Doctor?”
“You’d said it too passionately”
Doctorwas chuckling
“Did I?”
“God knows you did”
I meant what I had told The Doctor… And a stupendous more! Nothing was wrong any longer with his clothes and their unimportant colours, the bubble gum he had in his mouth and had subdued between his premolars; his disheveled hair as unseemly as ever!
Before 12:00pm my session with Doctor was over, he content to instruct that I be discharged from The Hospital. He had the psychological reason that I lusted for it, the medical reason that I was largely fit to go home, the financial reason that Andy had settled the outstanding bills he owed Precious Life on my account and the interactive consideration that a swell rapport had flowered between us from our casual revisit of the circumstances in which I recovered from an agonizing attack of asthma. A nurse was sent by him and the instruction delivered to her while she listened and squinted comprehending eyes. Then, she stepped back a little, adjusted her wig and smiled me in and arch one to wire across to me more of her comprehension of the necessity for my earlier discharge from their Precious Life Hospital in spite of the-still-unpleasant picture of things and the still-at-mid-course-stage of my nursing.
“Ah-h… from time to time you’ll becoming over to see us, won’t you?”
“Sure… sure,” I replied but the next moment withdrew the promise.
“I’m sorry, Matron, I don’t have more than Nineteen Official Days to stay in your Delta State.”
“Uh! Why? You’re leaving us” The Nurse droned.”
“Formally. Yes. In The Next Eighteen Days or when My Youth Service Programme shall come to a sure end…”
“Eiyah-h! So, you’re A Corper!”
Easily, I recognized the last exclamation: a popular gasping sound people made, when they were deeply moved by a message or gesture. No sooner had Matron manufactured it than I was all friendliness. I could not quite sum up whether she was truly touched by the disclosure or simply acting too well a part she knew off-hand in moments like the present one. If it wasn’t a genuine emotion of fellow feeling she had let out then was it some double dose of fiction or clever disguise of resentment against my own interest.
I didn’t really know what to think. Absentminded I waited for her to go to the file room and endorse the necessary papers, which would qualify me to walk out through the door of The Ward without being intercepted midpoint or hollered at.
This was soon done and I left The Hospital for a busy expanse where I was certain I would get a bike that would ride me back home. I didn’t forget the scanty ceremony of shaking hands with the people around and asking the nurses on duty to convey my regards to the one who had given me Xylocaine Pain Killer: whom I was sure would be at the hospital after 2:00pm for her afternoon shift at The Hospital. My mind started picturing details of the sequel to another mounted motor bike: my balancing on its back seat and clutching of its metal handhold but this did not make me go ahead to court the breath-taking details of The Accident I had. Not a half chance given to a weighing of the relative safety of being taxied him. What of the guys who still boarded planes shortly after one had exploded mid-flight? Travelers who still obstinately joined A Ready Flight after reading up a recent Air Disaster. And not that the read page had only editorially covered the crash but also splashed pictures of the charred bodies of the casualties!
“Why must it again happen to me,” I mentally battled, physically indignant, in defense of my action remembering a wide circle of people I had relevantly touched their lives and World as A Teacher.
In the distance a motor bike materialized, its rider making straight for me. With his achievement of this he stopped, so that I might contract him. This I did first trying a little haggling of the fare with him and getting him to fasten it on N70.00. Then, I scrambled atop his bike and off we went at a level-headed speed. The Cyclist might have been whispered what he was doing speed-wise by my grossly torn shirt. I did not know when I told him that he should not let my tattered looks influence what he really intended to be doing with this bike’s gear and clutch.
“Ehn?” sought the cyclist a seeker of clarification.
I repeated myself by urging him to follow his heart desire while riding me home. Still The Cyclist felt confused or pretended it.
“Yes… You must’ve understood me” my voice intensified “Please, keep, moving at the speed that makes you happy.”
“Oh! Was that what you meant?” he asked but almost as soon burst into laughter.
On my part, I remained quiet; A Study in Silence.
“No…No…, I’m A Child of God,” he said with emphasis.
“Elijah, too, was A Child of God.”
“Yes… Yes.”
“Yet, A Speed which would’ve broken anybody’s neck took him up to Heaven:
“Not of Men. You knew that… God Speed.”
“Man can produce the same speed and one wouldn’t guess the difference.”
“How?” The cyclist probed, quickly turning his head and inclining his right ear towards me for a better capture of my rejoinder. At once, I was sure he had seen my cynical face at the time I spoke.
“But do you really have to do that to ensure I’m not misheard.”
“The Wind! It’s tossing some of your words away.”
“Alright! Here’s the point….” I began, full of compromise, “If I can get to my destination after courting Super-Sonic Speed or The Close-to-It, I’ve done it like God… Are you okay, now?”
“Jeez! I could swear you’re not A Born-Again, only A Christian!”
“Ahead! Ahead! You can make your tyres faster” I was hopelessly ready to jump again in the event of An Emergency. Ready to lunge at any barrier, Even, if the barrier should be The Devil posting himself at the centre of the road to unleash The Worst Catastrophe on the hapless traveler. I would though, while hurling myself at him aim much lower so as to avoid his Two Deadly Horns and A Goring!
All too soon, The Cyclist Child of God stepped up his speed from a previous 35 Kph to nearly 80 kph, in short doing what was more than double his original speed. I couldn’t help laughing. However, I did it in such a way that only God and Jesus picked it. This man now racing like a rat had not received any further pressure from me to do so. Just that I had kept quiet, smothering every urge to still make him my conversational partner and he suddenly retired his Christian Game Plan on Speed.
I guess I should pass some comments on this. Many A Born-Again would genially begin to relate with members of The Devil’s Family they found to be Taciturn while conversely remaining unbearable to the ones they judged Talkative. Experimentally, I decided that I was not going to utter another syllable to my Rider on what I wanted form him speed - wise and, unsolicited, he began to do my precise wish, literally compelling the tyres of his two-wheeled racer to flee The Hospital Town like Lot from Sodom.
I had gone with nothing to Precious Life and so was leaving with none, Andy’s food flask dropped for him in The Ward to be collected afterwards by him as wished. The ease of not trailing along some piece of burden from the hospital further relieved me from the problems of a skewed balance on the bike of the cyclist, as it tore through the rugged narrow track at a sinful speed. I merely clutched the iron hand hold separating my Rider’s seat from mine, only infrequently digging apprehensive fingers into the leathery finish of either seat. This might have created the condition for My Adrenal Gland to start secreting anew its hormone, thumping my heart widely and forcing same to turn a toy in the hands of Arrhythmias and with that fresh flickers of the moment preceding our bike’s collision with Andy’s van came into view. It dawned on me that I had seen the car several seconds before The Cyclist did. Now, I was sure of it and could swear on it. I had in the sub conscious glimpsed the machine before my drunk pilot negotiated the ill-fated sharp bend that had masked it from our view. Not that my ears did snatch the whirs of the engine of the car before my pilot got past it. No. in capitals. Uniquely, I have been a sort of Psychic, never playing down the odds of any potentially injurious theatre and nearly always sensing a lurking future tragedy. More than once, I remembered Snake while treading a forest path and the next couple of seconds a venomous one slipped past, rather two or three rulers away from my feet. Also, on one occasion, while gravely suspecting that my fiancée had begun to sleep with another guy, adventurous and more colorful, I ran into another chap with his hands immorally entwined round the waist of a woman draped in my fiancée’s favorite gown. On The More Unnerving, some gun-toting cultists wanting a last-hour squaring up to me after reducing the thirty-two teeth of-one of them to thirty, paid me an unannounced visit just after some indefinable spirit long pestering me to quickly quit my apartment won the battle of getting me moving! Four days later, with my repair to my apartment, I was greeted with intriguing reports from reached neighbors of some sad-faced young men in dirty jeans, who had made three consecutive nightly stop-over at my door to ask a handful question about my whereabouts without vouchsafing any reply to the ones they were asked about their identity and purpose of visit. No doubt, my motor bike accident saw this said indefinable spirit reassert its concern for my safety demonstrating its preparedness to come to my aid, whenever it mattered most. I mean a bit inconceivable is a picture of a man with a contracting trachea and inflamed lungs guessing rightly at a ruinous bend, spiritually unassisted, that there was an on-coming vehicle on the same lane as their bike and it turned out to be so after a negotiation of the bend. And The Van, less than fifty yards away was menacingly bounding towards them, forcing him to start nursing the doomed hope that its driver would swerve into the nearby bush, then discarded it in the next couple of seconds to ready himself for a jump above the bonnet of the van.
Still sitting on the back seat of my rider’s bike I continued to think of all these and more: about the possible time My Drunken Pilot had sighted The Van: whether it was shortly before The Collision loud and harsh or after; what his previous condition was in The Hospital and his current’s; what Andy might have arranged with him?
Most certainly, he won’t be leaving Precious Life today. Andy might try all his Andy’s tricks but he won’t be getting any Cheap Pardon from him like he had from me… And definitely not getting any Cheap Hospital Bill either.
“Not with his Destroyed Left Leg”
Quite alright, I didn’t meet the leg as to truly access the damage done to it but strong had seemed the possibility that it was one Hell of a Wreck, unendurable enough to have made The Cyclist rebuff any Rice with Egg and Stew Persuasion by Andy to shorten a longer stay in The Hospital and accept to be nursed at home. Andy shall have to lean on Liquor to make him start entertaining the bizarre idea of an earlier discharge from precious life….
Yes, Big Jugs of The Fresh One or many tankards of The Fermented assuming by inclination he often declared for the latter… The main thing, Andy modifying his Lodged-In-His-Chromosome Andyish Tricks.
Perhaps, my lack-lustre interest in Christ’s Protection Services was entirely the handiwork of The Indefinable Spirit and or its successful handling of My Security Headaches. Hadn’t there also been moments an inner voice from This Spirit would be urging me while traversing a street to veer to another or take some by-way and I would not understand, until in disobedience I comforted an old creditor or ran into a woman I had promised some costly gift without meaning it? Arguably, it was not an Inner Voice under Christ’s Auspices which had tried to steer me clear of the unplanned expense, as the unheeded forewarning directive as a gesture lacked Basic Purity.
Right now, I would rather God and Christ left My Survival Challenges to this Indefinable Spirit already doing remarkably well in that area. Even, I wouldn’t want Christ to choose me a wife believed by many to be the foremost thing I need now, considering my failing health and gathering years.
No. Not for Christ’s Abiding Respect for Marriage and Wonderful Patronage of The One Solemnized at Cana of Galilee. Specifically I want his ample presence in My Monetary life: his dramatic stationing of four tyres in front of my house with its key, license papers and other documents already taken care of and bearing my names. It should not matter the automobile is Spain’s or Brazil’s although my Vehicular Mindset often pointed to American Jeeps and her Fast Ferraris...
Not until then, people shouldn’t be summing up that Jesus Christ had long begun to fight my battles. Let him simply go to this war. Just This War!
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