Nairobi Dreaming - Complete!

Chapter 3: New Friends

When I first met Kay she was moody, not manic-depressive and the ups and downs were somehow all a part of her charm. She was always in the moment, always feeling everything more intensely than the rest of us and pulling us along, out of our shells and comfort zones into the world with her.

Slowly but surely that changed. At first I thought she was just going through a rough patch – a particularly low low but then the mania started and with it came a break from reality. She began to think everyone who visited her was one of her exboyfriends and once she even grabbed me, fell to my feet and begged me to forgive her. She did not let me leave till I had and I still remember standing on the other side of her door, blinking back tears. Where had my friend gone? I wondered. And was this still her?

The road to recovery took about six months but it felt longer. She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder but then re-diagnosed as bipolar. She was given medication that stole some of electric charm but seemed to get her life back on track. She got a job at an elite private school and found a new boyfriend, John. There were lapses: moments here and there when I knew something was off but nothing as dramatic or as jarring as that first time.

But still, what had I been thinking?

I looked at myself in the mirror and shook my head at myself.

I formulated my plan. I would get Kay to take her medication. I knew it would not be easy. Kay had once told me that the onset of a manic episode felt like the best drug she had ever taken. Like cocaine, but better.

Like cocaine, but only if cocaine actually made you hallucinate at some point. I knew that after the initial high she would start to become extremely irritable and that the irritability might be followed by a break with reality. Visions of grandeur. Extreme self importance. Full on paranoid delusions.

I marched over to Kay's room, determined to stop her ascent to madness in its tracks.

I paused at her door. There was music blasting from inside and voices I didn't recognize. Male voices. More than one.

I knocked and a second later Kay threw it open, laughing. She was wearing a body skimming red dress and her hair was up. She flashed a brilliant, super model white smile.

"OMG LUISA!" She turned into her hotel room and I saw two men seated on her bed. "This, gentlemen, is Luisa, the hot friend I was telling you about."

The two men smiled pleasantly back at me and I momentarily lost my train of thought. Both of them were the kind of absurdly well-dressed-good-looking that I wasn't used to seeing in real life. One was white with tattoos and stylish, messy brown hair and the other was black with dreadlocks pulled up in a thick ponytail. Both looked like they had accidentally walked off the set of a music video and stumbled into Kay's room.

Kay grabbed my arm and pulled me over the threshold into her room.

"This is James," Kay pointed at the white boy, "And this is Kwame. He's from Ghana. God aren't they both just gorgeous?"

I looked down at myself. I was wearing jogging pants. For a moment this felt like it mattered but then I refocused.

"Kay, I need to talk to you," I said, very seriously.

"About what?" She looked me up and down. "Is it about what you're wearing? Because you should really be wearing that black dress you brought right now."

I looked over at the two men. It didn't feel like the kind of thing I should talk about in front of strangers. "In private?"

I opened the bathroom door and Kay followed me in.

"Kwame's mine, if that's what you want to talk about," Kay squealed, loud enough for him to have heard through the door.

I ignored her comment and lowered my voice. "You need to take your medication," I whispered. "I can tell you haven't."

Kay's face darkened. "Wow," She said. "It's like I can't be myself around you anymore. I get a little excited and you instantly think I'm having an episode. Do you have any idea how that feels?"

"There's excited and then there's this. It's different. I know you." To someone who didn't know her she probably seemed a little hyper but I could see the fracture lines. Her eyes didn't match her smile. They were filled with a crackling, restless darkness.

"Luisa, did you see those men out there?" Kay said, jabbing at the bathroom door.

I ignored her. "Where are your pills?" I started rifling through her toiletries but this was no easy task. She had brought enough make up to make over half of Nairobi.

"Luisa," Kay said softly. She put her hand on my arm. "Please. Can we just go back in time? Let loose a little? I really need it."

There was so much yearning in her voice and so much genuine sadness that I fumbled. Though I had been here more than once in the past, with Kay trying not to take her medication, it never got any easier. There was always a nagging doubt in the back of my mind: what if I was wrong? What if I was right but what if the medication hurt as much as it helped? She had often claimed that this was the case. That the price paid for a Kay we could all get along with was a Kay she no longer wanted to be.

If I had had a second more to react I would probably have kept insisting she take her medication but she was faster. She hugged me quickly, with warmth. "Thanks Luisa," She whispered before slipping out the door and back into the room.

"Everything all right?" Kwame asked, standing. Kay beamed at him. "Just girl stuff," She said, giggling.

He held out his hand to me and I took it, automatically. I knew I had a second or two to course correct but I let those precious seconds slips away.

He shook my hand and then pulled his hand away in a way that was different. He snapped his fingers at the end and laughed when I gave him a look of bewilderment.

"That's how we shake hands in Ghana. Let me show you." He took my hand again and right after the regular part of the handshake he pulled his hand away from mine and snapped his fingers. He made it look effortlessly cool but when I tried to copy it my fingers just slipped out of his hand and I couldn't snap. "Don't worry," He reassured me warmly, "By the end of the night you'll get the hang of it."

"What he's not saying is that in Ghana they often don't shake hands with women that way," James interjected. He was smiling impishly and he had a British accent, one of the posh ones.

"That's not exactly true," Kwame said. To me he said, "He's just giving me a hard time."

"That's what friends are for, isn't it?" James put a hand on his stomach. "You know I'm hungry. When and where are we going to eat?"

"What do you mean where?" Kwame frowned at him. "It's the ladies first night, we're definitely going to Carnivore."

"I don't love that place," James frowned. "It's a tourist attraction. I'd rather go to that Ethiopian place, the one in that huge hut. Or that Spanish tapas place."

"Don't listen to him, ladies. It's a bit of a tourist attraction but we're tourists, are we not? And Carnivore is great. You can get any meat you want there and I do mean anything. Crocodile, ostrich. It's fantastic. And after that we can go dancing. James and I know all the places."

"You're going to make us go to Skylux again, aren't you?" James rolled his eyes.

"It's a great club," Kwame protested. "And I think that's exactly why you don't like it. Because it's cool."

I laughed and told myself that the night had gotten away from me. That I couldn't derail it now by making a scene about Kay and her medication and that maybe, just maybe she would be fine.