Broken | ✓

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR: FLIGHT

                                 Jide

Blink, white ceilings, blink, white walls. A familiar pungent smell filled my nose. Hospital, it smelled like hospital.
I jerked up but was pushed back by a hostile pain in my head.

“Bro Jide, you are awake” Dunnie rushed to my side.

“Urghh” I grunted.

“Should I call the doctor|?” she asked.
“No” I replied in a faint voice.

“How did I end up here?”

“Mummy went to see you last night; she was going to quarrel you for not visiting but when she entered, she found you passed out on the floor”

Ireti!  Instantly I remembered. She claimed I raped her. I had been unconscious for a day leaving Ireti with negative thoughts of me. I couldn’t even defend myself if I wanted to and I so badly wanted to. I had to speak to her

I struggled with the drip, trying to get it off.

“What are you doing?” Dunnie peered at me.

“I need to go” I told her.

“Stop that, you can’t go anywhere” she held my hands captive.

I tried to wriggle my hands out with the little strength left in me but Dunnie surprisingly had a good grip.

“You don’t understand, I need to see Ireti now” I continued my fight to freedom.

Just then Aunty Taiye walked in “What is going on here?”

“He wants to leave the hospital. He said he needs to see Ireti” Dunnie answered.

“I think she is the one who needs to see you. Lie down and rest, I will call her and tell her about this” Aunty Taiye assured me.

I didn’t want assurance, I just needed to talk to Ireti. Maybe she could walk me through that night and I would remember or she would notice a plot hole in her story that freed me of all charges.

“No, no, I need to see he now” I shook my head.

“No, you need to rest” Aunty Taiye fired back.

“Let me go!” I roared.

I managed to push Dunnie off me but I couldn’t get past Aunty Taiye who blocked my pathway calling for the nurses. They came running in, in their white apparels.

“Let me go, let me go” I yelled and twisted but they were more in number and strength. They pinned me to the bed and silenced me with a shot of an injection. All my shooting body parts came dropping by my side, one by one and dizziness overpowered me, dragging my eyes along with it.

By the third day in the hospital, I had already tried to escape a million times but the nurses were alert, too alert.

The doctor said, I strained my brain and that was why I collapsed. He also advised to stop thinking hard as it could lead to brain damage but it didn’t matter to me because when I wasn’t planning an escape or unconscious, I was trying to conjure up memories from that night but I got nothing except the red dress which I kept seeing and from all the facts laid down, the dress belonged to Ireti.

“Dunnie” I called. Aunty Taiye and Dunnie took turns in watching me, sometimes together, her husband dropped by every now and then. I had begged Dunnie to let me go a lot but she was as adamant as her mother. If my mother was just a little bit adamant like her sister, she would still be alive. But in some way, she was quite adamant, adamant on not leaving the man who kept hurting her.