IZIGORA

Chapter 1

Azubuike 'Zuby' Aku-Chidike sat on the white plastic chair watching his sister-in-law. She had been unconscious for three days. He shuddered to imagine what would have happened if he hadn't gone to Kainye's house. He had woken up with a terrible feeling and his first thought had been that Izigora was in trouble. After rescuing her from his elder brother's constant abuses more times than he could count, he always seemed to know when something was wrong.

The medical staff of Graceland Specialist Hospital had attended to Izigora once she was brought in. Kainye had made this his family hospital following his relocation to Port Harcourt and Izigora was a very familiar face there. Kainye made donations to the hospital on a yearly basis and so there was no request for an advance payment before treatment commenced.

Zuby had wrapped his white shirt around Izigora's bleeding head and the material was soaked with blood. The wound at the back of her head was quickly cleaned up and stitched up. And then she was wheeled to the x-ray room where the dislocated arm was confirmed. However, this wasn't a major challenge since the arm could easily be set and put in a cast. What called for concern was the wound on her left knee.

Zuby couldn't forget the sight of the bone sticking out from his sister-in-law's wound. She had an open wound combined with the fracture on her left knee. What he had seen were bone fragments sticking out through the skin. According to the doctor, open fractures were more serious because once skin was broken, the risk of infection was high in both the wound and the bone itself and therefore required immediate treatment unlike what was applicable when the fracture simply occurred beneath skin and there was no open wound. She was immediately booked for surgery and an orthopaedic surgeon was called in.

Although it did not show in the x-ray, the doctor suspected that she had a scaphoid fracture and recommended that she wear a wrist splint for two weeks before a follow-up x-ray.

Why Izigora continued to stay with Kainye didn't make any sense to Zuby. She said she loved him and he loved her too and so she had to be patient with him. What rubbish was that? Being an orphan didn't mean one had to let people walk over one like Izigora had been doing in the last seven years.

Kainye was abusive and Zuby felt really bad because his family chose to take sides with Kainye even when it was obvious that Kainye was in the wrong. And their mother, hadn't she promised to be a mother to the eighteen-year-old orphan Kainye had brought home as his fiancée? Zuby recalled his mother promising to ensure that Izigora never felt the absence of a family! But today, she was the one championing the 'Izigora isn't worthy of my son' campaign. Ask her what Izigora had done to her and she wouldn't have anything reasonable to say.

That's what you get when you marry a man that allows you control him! Their father never said anything. He didn't want problems with Zuby's mother. Besides, Kainye was the money bag of the family and his money ensured that they looked the other way.

Zuby's three sisters had all been married at the time Kainye at 40 decided to get married and they chose to face their family in return for the stipends they got on a monthly basis from Kainye.

What none of them seemed to remember was that the moment Izigora married Kainye, she became an Aku-Chidike and ought to have been protected by the family. Seven years, four miscarriages and no one saw reason to caution Kainye!

At first Zuby had minded his business as the youngest in the family but there was a limit to what he could take. The black eyes blamed on unnecessary falls because Izigora was 'clumsy'. The constant visits to the hospital even as Kainye played the doting husband concerned about his wife's welfare.

But the Izigora Zuby had met before the wedding wasn't clumsy at all. If anything, she was a teenager looking forward to a bright future and feeling secure in the love of the man whose benevolence had given her and a few others at the orphanage the promise of a good life.