The phone was on speaker and so I heard what she said to him and the tone with which she spoke, sounding as though she was reaching out on the phone to hold his hands. “Baby,” she cried. “Junior is very sick now and I can no longer manage him at home. We need to get him to a hospital.” She was crying and it muffled her words. I could perceive how much distress she must have been in, considering that the last time she visited, she was already talking about the family being at a breaking point.
Obinna held the phone but did not speak. His mouth was open and I was sure he really wanted to say something but he couldn’t. I could see his hands shaking, his face telling a story of utter despondence.
I reached out to hold him. “Take it easy bro, we will definitely find a solution,” I consoled, desperately, wishing that my words would make an impact. Only that I knew they didn’t because I knew my friend. He was a man who believed in the things he could see and touch and not in hope because, as he often put it, “hope is uncertain. To believe in it, is at best dangerous.”
His wife was still speaking, narrating how the illness had a taken a turn for the worse, how junior had convulsed a few minutes ago, how she’s finding it increasingly difficult to find his veins, how she couldn’t even afford to buy food and drugs anymore because all the money at home had finished. She was still crying. Until Obinna stopped her.
“I heard you, Nkem,” he pleaded. “I heard what you said. My only problem is that I can’t really secure a new loan now because everyone is complaining that there is no money.” He seemed to rush through his words. Because soon after he finished asking her to give him a few minutes to think things over, he broke down and cried, his whole body shaking, tears and mucus flowing without control.
That was what he didn’t want her to know, to hear. His sad moans. The last time I saw him cry that way was when his father died in UNTH when he was in final year and his father needed a big sum of money for a surgery, a sum which Obi and his little ones could not afford until the man died. A death that struck so much blow on him that he vowed never to be in a situation where lack money would mean the death of a loved one. It spurred him on to work so hard for his final exams, to graduate despite having to work a night job in a hotel in order to feed himself. And now that such a situation was about to come up again, I was really worried for him because I knew him and how he functioned. He once told me that if anything happened to any of those children, he was definitely not going to take it breathing.
I sat in the car watching him, listening to the phone conversation, my mind narrowing in on his mind and the things he was capable of doing at times like this until he looked at me and then at the sky, and then at the pictures of the twins, “why is God always punishing me” he asked, not really focusing on me. “Why am I always standing on the edge of doom, Emmy?”
I pulled him by the shoulder to face me.“And who told you that God is so idle as to wake up every day, looking for you to punish unnecessarily?” I tried to hold his face, even though my fingers were stained with grease. His eyes were squinting as if he was peering into a dangerous alley way. The same way he looked at the doctor on the night he was told that his father was dead. A dead cold stare. I knew his mind had wondered into the dark sides of things. And so, I screamed at him, “Why do you always assume the worst, Obi?” I tried to jerk his shoulders. But, he was not moved. He merely looked at me with surprise in his eyes. “But, he is going to die, Nna, you know he is going to leave me. Do not try to make it better for me,” he sighed.
“Even though you are the doctor here who should know more than me, who should encourage?” I tried to make him understand that he had a duty to hold himself together. Even though I knew that the events of a few weeks ago had already broken him into tiny bits.
“But I am human before I am a doctor and doctors are the most broken at times.” He wiped his eyes using his elbow. And then shook his head, “If only they have paid me for the job I have done. If only.” His tears seemed to have gotten a renewed vigor. I felt so much for him. I wished I could have been able to solve the problem right there and then but, for some issues beyond my control, I couldn’t. I reached for his hands. “But, it is not your fault, bro. it is not your own doing that you are too broke, it is not our fault that our country takes everything away from us.” I consoled.
Thing is that since he started working as a resident doctor in the federal teaching hospital, he had not been paid a kobo, and it had been almost eight months. According to him, they were only going to be paid after three months when they must have been captured by IPPIS; the CMD told them so when they were given orientation. They had taken it as one of those things that happened in chaotic country like Nigeria. Until four months flew by and nothing came in the form of salaries.
They started asking questions. From the finance office, to the office of the Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee, to the Director of Administration and finally, the office of the Chief Medical Director. They were told the same thing: “Go home if you are tired of surviving without pay, and stop disturbing.”
They tried every other avenue possible to get an audience but, were completely shut down with threats of sack and then, the final energy sapping news that they were only going to be considered for payment at the end pandemic, even if it lasted for ten years. And all through the time, we the friends, have been trying to help him solve issues. We got his car repaired and he started using it for evening taxi services until, it broke down again just as the lockdown was coming and everything stopped abruptly. Add that to the fact that his mother’s recent stroke had taken away whatever reserves I had to help him now.
I got a call from a customer and I wanted to run but a look at my friend convinced me to stay back. He was still holding the phone and his wife was still crying on the other side of the line. He was crying too. I moved to him and took the phone from him. I asked his wife to stop crying, to take the baby to the hospital and let the doctor speak with me, that everything was going to be alright. I told her not to be ashamed to beg, that there’s no shame in begging because it’s not her husband’s fault that the government was wicked and inconsiderate. I made her understand that the begging would buy us time, until Obi and I were able to smuggle ourselves through the lockdown to come take care of the baby. “Speed is vital,” I consoled.
“Thanks, Emmy. I’ll go immediately,” she assured. I could hear her sniffing and breathing better. And that made me happy. I was happy that she was beginning to pull herself together. Now, I had to get Obinna together for our trip.
“Guy, get up,” I pulled him up. “Let’s go and get things together.” It was late afternoon and the sky was clear blue. The sun blazed over from the sky as if in a duel with the living things down below, as if it was on a mission to burn down the earth. I had been longing for rain but now, I loved the sunshine. It gave me hope that before night fall we could drive through the dirt roads and forests that would take us to Enugu. I loved the daylight; I believed it would help take away the depression that had started clouding Obi’s eyes.
We were going to leave by 3pm and so, I had to get my car ready since Obi’s own was no longer good and since he couldn’t afford to repair it. I was checking the hydraulics when he came down from the lodge. It hadn’t taken him time at all to get ready. Or so I thought until I looked up from the open bonnet to see him carrying his smaller back pack, his water bottle and food flask, a bag of Garri and his bottle of sugar and milk. I was as shocked as I was amused. I even began laughing and pointing at him asked, “Why are you carrying Garri and sugar eh? Do you think we’re traveling to Sambisa forest?” I expected him to start laughing but he didn’t.
I desperately wanted him to laugh and reduce his soaring worry and anxiety about Junior but I was disappointed because, when I tried to move closer to him, to relieve him of some of the bags that were looking like they were going to overwhelm him, he moved back, motioning me to move away from him. It was so strange. Just like the clouds that had suddenly stopped shinning blue and now having the color of an old exhaust fumes, and the wind which had just started blowing furiously. “Stay away,” he commanded through his nose mask. Stay away because I think I have been exposed to the virus.”
I quickly moved back. Back into my car and closed the door. My hands trembled. My heart beat so fast. My spirit flew away from my body and within a few minutes, my life flashed before me. From birth until now, now that I was finally seeing a little success in my business, now that I was finally about getting married to my fiancée, Ada. I began to pray. To call on the gods, on Amokoshua, on Jesus and mother marry.
I watched the sky through the rear view. I saw Obinna making motions, asking me to give him his phone. He wanted to call his wife. But, I refused. I didn’t want him to call her and add to her misery and anxiety. I waved at him to go away, to the waiting ambulance from the teaching hospital. I would join him soon because I had become one of them. A contact. The hazmats suits of the health officers scared me.
***
We got to the isolation center, a hastily built temporal structure at the outskirts of the city, to know about the index case. We saw him. A fat politician who was being said now, to have recently returned from Italy. Happened that he had been attended to by Obinna and his unit a few hours ago, before he received the first call from his wife and took permission to go home. When I asked Obinna why he and his colleagues weren’t protected before seeing the patient he told me that they didn’t have any protective equipment, that they only used homemade nose masks and gloves, that the hospital management had forced them to attend to the man because he was a politician and you know the politicians and their powers which could make or mar the CMD’s career. He said that the patient had lied to everyone about his travel history. He was emotional as he spoke and spoke and even crying, cursing, tears and spit pouring freely from his head until his senior colleague, a lady consultant, held him in a tight embrace and asked him to stop crying. Yet, he cried until the heavy rain started falling.
***
When in the middle of the night I finally called his wife, surprised that she hadn’t dialed him since the late afternoon when we last spoke, she sounded totally blank and indifferent. She calmly told me that Junior was dead and that she would soon bury him in the backyard; that I should tell her husband to stop worrying, that all their pains would soon go away.
***
It’s now mid night and most of us in the isolation center are asleep. Except for Obinna and I. He is writing something in his diary. I look at him and even though I feel the urge to break the news to him, I somehow know that he already knows. He has a connection with his child that is beyond imagination. I walk up to him and hold his shoulder. He is writing in a very fanciful hand writing, unlike the intelligible things he often wrote for me in the name of prescription. He is calm too. So calm that I begin to worry for I know my friend. Especially when I read what he is writing in his journal.
You have to know about Dr Obinna. You need to know about the doctor who has just taken his own life. At least, let us remember him; that at least, he tried. That his country killed him.....
