Tuesday. May 5th, 2020.
6:15 AM
Tires whisper over asphalt. The whoosh duets with the static from the night guard’s radio. A leaky faucet sings from the bathroom down the hall. The melodic plopping reminds me of where I am (sometimes I forget). I lift my head from the Mackintosh. My neck hurts and I massage there with my fingertips. I glance at the saline bag. It’s empty. More money to be spent today.
Minutes pass and I remain in that hazy early morning domain of nothingness. I’m sure I look like someone who’s losing to a hangover. I rub my eyes and allow them to rove over the features of this room: The jagged tiling, the windows and transoms that never open, the buzzy flicker of the fluorescent lamps, the woman in a shawl.
She is awake too. Her arms are folded, her lips are upturned and her face challenges the wall opposite. She only acknowledges my existence when I greet her. Her eyes are shell casings, hollow testaments of a life she wants to escape. The life she wants to escape lies next to her. He is asleep (everyone else is too). The room is less riotous when he is not groaning and clutching his gut.
I’m like her; I want to escape this hell too. I don’t know how to pray but I bend and ask for something.
7:05 AM
I am scrolling through a movie review website. I have a renewed desire to write stuff like that. Reviews and listicles like the ones on Rotten Tomatoes or Screen Rant. It’s a fresh fantasy that’s seduced me recently. I think it has something to do with the listlessness that comes with the lockdown, the quiet that pulls many into la-la land.
A smart lady in white walks in. By now most people are awake. The woman goes around, checking on everyone, sometimes with a stethoscope, most times with a sad gaze. People eye her as she shuffles between the beds, between the palpable expectations of ailing patients and the confident hope of the convalescent. They greet her with a smile and tell her about the night.
I check on the man before me–with a sad gaze. He is middle-aged but looks seventy. His eyes are glassy and distant. Each breath he pulls is a guttural sound, his lungs a pair of rusty bellows. His chest is bare and his ribs are proud; they stand out like slender rungs on a ladder. I examine the sores on his body again. Bed sores from lying down constantly.
“Boy. Good morning. How is he?” the nurse asks, suddenly appearing by my side.
“He’s okay.” It’s a hopeful lie–or faith; I read somewhere that you can speak things into existence. Truth is, my reply is just a detour from a long depressing talk about the severity of his affliction.
“Sir. Good morning. Can you hear me?” she asks while waving in his face.
The man responds with a groan.
“Boy. You have to get drugs for your father.”
8:08 AM
I am stirring some custard. Soft yellow beams seep through the windows, routing the ward into activity. Restrained chatter fills the room. See, I don’t like any of this. I miss the night guard’s radio. I miss the comfort of silence. The nights give me the liberty to think my thoughts, not the gnarled echoes of fear that ambush me during the day.
“Blow on it. It shouldn’t be too hot.” My mother is here. My aunt too. They watch as I prop his head up on a pillow. The movement makes him wince, putting his decaying dentition up for display.
I remember when it became this way. It was a Saturday evening. Dad ambled to the parlour that evening and sat on one of the threadbare chairs; the one I had sliced open with a razor when I was younger. He sat there and hummed some songs. When it was time to retire to the bedroom his legs refused. He sat until morning.
“Daddy, eat.” I whisper because it’s a general ward and quiet is the default setting. He doesn’t respond and I sink back into the chair. I cover the custard bowl with a plate and look out the window. I see some nurses walking on the concrete pathway that cuts across the overgrown field between this ward and the next. I think about the day before when I saw a snake crawling through there. The nurses didn’t believe me. They cackled and asked: “So why didn’t you kill it? Are you not a man?” I think about it now and decide to hate hospitals.
The nurse comes around again. She tells them about the drugs and the need to start dialysis. I don’t know the specifics of dialysis, but I know one thing: It will be expensive.
12:00 PM
I have changed the bedsheet already. Another nurse saunters in. I call her “the evil twin.” She wears the same white as the first nurse and even sports a similar hairstyle but her face is forever masked in a grimace. She walks in and everything I dread about this place becomes more vivid. The haunting smell of disinfectant is now tear gas, the crackled mackintosh beds make my skin crawl, and the stained ceilings make me develop OCD. I watch her now as she moves to greet the nice nurse, a food flask dangling from her skeletal fist.
I believe the evil twin is disgusted with her job and the people she needs to care for. Anyone could blame her attitude on the fetus in her womb—anyone but me. I know her distasteful character is intrinsic and will continue to show up even after her baby’s cry is heard. She moves to a desk in a corner and begins to talk about the patients. Her lips curve at the sides and her ramblings are punctuated with deep sighs reminiscent of gossip.
My aunt returns from the pharmacy with some drugs and another aunt. They talk about the situation, about transferring Dad to another hospital, about dialysis, about so many things that I eventually stop attending to. I fish for my phone and start scrolling. It’s not a very effective distraction (my battery barely lasts an hour) but I manage. I start going through open tabs. “Avengers Infinity War, SARS, COVID-19-Punch News, UNIUYO Portal, Solo Learn, Stroke: Caring for a Loved One”. That last tab has been open for three months. Going through content like that has turned me into a deft changer of bedsheets. I know all the antihypertensive drugs. I know how to clean a defiled room and make it brand new. I know how to lose my sanity through it all.
I look at my father. I have become familiar with his brown eyes, his smooth, greying hair, and the constant twitch of his left foot. I cry this time. I want to tell him that I am sorry. I want to tell him that I never hated him, that I was the problem for a long time. I don’t do any of that though. I just hold his hand. I rest my head on the bed and try to pray again.
1:30 PM
I am at home. I have come to change my clothes and eat. My siblings ask how Dad is, and I just say, “Fine”. There is power but our box T.V. is off. The house is quiet. Fearful thoughts swivel in my head and my tinnitus becomes louder.
I scan the walls and I see Dad’s pictures all over. I see him in the cupboard, in the store, on the bedside table, everywhere. There’s the old camera he used during his photofinishing days, his photo album that features pictures of his grandparents, his big boots that I have always wanted to wear, and the wrinkled blister packs in the trash bin. Right now, everything reminds me of him.
I try to nap the pain away but sleep doesn’t come. I go to Dad’s room and flip through the photo album. I see my two-year-old self in his arms, my little palm resting on his hairy chest, his smile white and infectious, coaxing another out of my face. We’re in front of our old house, the one we stayed in when box T.Vs were darlings and flat screens remained a fantasy. That yellow house Dad could pay for before photo finishing crashed, before he opened the wine shop, before he lost the wine shop, before he started to worry; before worry turned to a stroke.
I close my eyes and I try to turn my mind into a time machine. I try to imagine myself in his arms and somewhere in my head, I think I remember the feeling. I remember feeling secure. I know I’ll never experience that again. All I feel now is the salty tug behind my eyelids. I continue flipping.
I see him at his nephew’s wedding in Abuja. He looks the same except for the obvious wrinkles on his forehead. That trip was memorable; he came back home with toys. Oh, I loved that Lego set. The mini Suzuki too. He’s wearing one of his expensive Oxfords that he can’t afford now.
I leave the room. I have to be back at the hospital soon.
3:51 PM
“Eduek,” my mother calls, “come let’s change him.”
I walk to the end of the hall and get the divider for privacy. The metal frames are rusty and I can spot a few faded blood stains. Again, I reaffirm my hatred for hospitals. I roll it to the bed and make sure it covers him. Together we move him around. He doesn’t wince and I sigh.
We remove the diaper. There’s blood.
4:30 PM
The queue isn’t long but I want it to be. My limbs are stiff. When someone asks me if the ATM is paying, I smile and nod. I allow everything around me to exist like a still frame from a movie. The sunset isn’t soothing right now. Not because it’s murky. It’s beautiful in fact. It only reminds me of Dad. I remember waiting for him under a sunset like this some eight or nine years back. He stayed at work too long so I sat outside and waited for the honk of his Peugeot 505. I watched as the sun changed from a fiery circle to a soft streak of orange light behind the horizon. I was young. I loved him and I knew how to show it. I love him still, but mostly through the lens of regret.
A gruff man cuts in front of me. I don’t bother. I am too weak to fight with him, too numb to be hurt by his foolishness. He doesn’t say anything and I don’t bother. I allow the people behind me to groan and curse and threaten to kick me out of the line. Eventually, they quiet down when they see I don’t care. It’s my turn. I withdraw 30,000 naira, 10,000 naira at a time. It is what the man at the hospital said he’ll collect.
“Boy, hurry up! Time dey go. No dey sleep for that place,” a voice says.
I take things slower and turn to the man. He is a short, dark one with full hair and a sack bag. I want to tell him why I am slow. I want to yell. I want to cry. I want someone to know–and care–that my father died 15 minutes ago.
I was the first to see it. I was sitting beside him. His breaths became shallow. He turned his head and looked at me. He couldn’t talk, but I knew that if he could, he would have said something like “I trust you” or “I love you, son.” The same things he said before I went to Lagos seven years ago. He looked me in the eye and swallowed. He couldn’t say a word so he cried. It was a gentle stream that connected with the overgrown grey bush that had sprouted from his face over the past days. He cried and then he died. His eyes stayed open and the tears remained. I didn’t react. I didn’t know what to do. I sat there for a while and then I moved to the window. Mum went to check up on him, and she noticed, too. A wail cut through the room. She called for me and I came over.
“Oh, Eduek,” she cried. The poor woman called for me because she wanted to comfort me despite her pain. I went to her and she held me. I was stiff. I didn’t know what to do.
Nnedi Okorafor wrote, “Who Fears Death“. Not me. I had become familiar with death. The shrouded man had finally come to my doorstep. I looked around the ward and I saw it in everyone’s face: The fear of death. The woman I greeted in the morning shook her head and turned to her husband. He was sitting up and clutching his abdomen still. For once, he wasn’t the loudest in the room.
“Brother, we’ll meet at the feet of Jesus,” my senior aunt said to my father, who had now become a body, a lifeless, soon-to-be-forgotten thing. She called me and wiped my face.
“Be strong,” she said. The thing is, I didn’t want to be strong. I didn’t want anyone to tell me to be strong. I didn’t care about whatever society had declared to be the standard behavioural conduct for men who are faced with a soul-crushing loss. I knew I wasn’t going to be strong for a long time.
The sweet nurse returned with another nurse who wasn’t the evil twin. He squeezed my shoulder and offered his condolences. He brought a roll of bandages and began to dress my father. Soon, the hospital contacted a mortuary attendant. The gangly driver said it would cost 30,000 naira. That’s why I am here, to withdraw the money, in batches of 10,000.
I want to tell this short man the whole thing but I don’t think he has time for that. I leave the bank and return to the hospital. I see that Dad is under a white cloth and riding on a gurney. I help to roll him to the van. He is loaded on and we head for the mortuary.
7:14 PM
“When we get home, don’t tell your sisters until I ask you to,” my senior aunt says as we ride in a tricycle back home. I nod. All I want to forget is the mortuary. I want to erase the smell from my head. I want to forget the eerie feeling of being close to many bodies. Above all, I want to forget seeing my father wheeled into that place. The squeaks of the gurney ring in my head and reinforce the impossibility of hearing him again.
We arrive at our street. As we walk, Mum muffles her cries with a handkerchief. There’s no power and everyone is a shadow. We pass by a shop and the unrelatable sound of laughter clangs against my ears. I swallow. I feel naked, afraid. It is the never-before-felt feeling of sadness and irretrievable loss.
Home is quiet. It’s dark inside. A small lantern flickers in the corridor. My sisters are sitting on the couch–the one I lay on hours ago. I see their faces in the half-light. I know that they know that something is wrong. The youngest asks, “Where is Daddy?” I can’t hold it back. I tell them. Soon, the house is filled with muffled tears (we don’t want the neighbours to hear). My aunt comes in.
“Is this what we agreed on?” She pulls the girls together and comforts them. “It’ll be fine. It’ll be okay.”
7:50 PM
I am outside the house. The moon is out. It’s full. It’s bright.
“Why did you let him die?”
Of course, there’s no immediate answer. I cry hard for the first time. My shoulders shake and the tears roll onto my shirt. In between those tears, I pause and replay the moment in my head. It becomes a drug for the meantime; I remember Dad, cry some more, push myself into more memories and cry again. It’s a downward spiral of emotional masochism that I refuse to escape.
I go back in. I saunter through the dark corridor and take a detour to check on my mother. I lift the lantern towards her face. I am relieved when I see her chest heave up and down. It’s something I’ll keep doing because I have tasted death.
I reach Dad’s room and climb into his bed. There are three pillows but I sweep them off. The moon taunts me through the window. I start to doze off. Everything is not okay.
…..
Image: Dall-E remixed