IZIGORA

Chapter 3

'She's conscious. Call the doctor,' Izigora heard a voice say. It sounded as though it had come from a distance.

Where was she? Her left eye adjusted to the light in the room. She was on a bed, a slim but elevated bed. She took notice of the IV tube attached to my left hand as well as the green and white side cabinet with provisions on top of it. There was another bed adjacent to hers but unoccupied.

After spending years in and out of this kind of place, she easily recognised it for what it was: a hospital. Where was her Kainye? With that question, the incident leading to her being here in the first place came rushing in like magma down a volcano mountain. The push and tumbling down the staircase and ending up on the hard marble floor. Her head ached beneath the bandage wrapped around it and she didn't even have to touch her head to know that her long hair had been cut short, probably so as to stitch the gash at the back of her head.

Her left wrist was in a wrist splint and her left leg was in a cast and slightly elevated with a soft pillow placed under it. Izigora tried to turn her body, biting back a scream as pain shot through me. The tears threatened to flow but knew better. How long was it since she had shed a tear? Five years. Already!

'Tears are a sign of weakness and so unattractive in an Aku-Chidike,' Kainye would say.

Izigora ignored the headache and looked at the door with her left eye. Wait a minute, what was wrong with my right eye? Why couldn't she see with her right eye?

'I'm so glad you're awake,' she heard Zuby say.

Darling Zuby. Currently her closest and perhaps only friend.

'My eye,' she complained, reaching out to him.

He held her right hand in his. 'Dr Kobi will be here soon. Nnenna has gone to get him.'

The door opened and a man in his mid-thirties came into the room. He was about an inch shorter than Kainye's 6"3 with chocolate skin and dressed in a t-shirt and a pair of black jean.

'Good to have you back with us in the land of the living,' Dr Kobi said with a smile that revealed larger incisors at the top, more like cute little fangs. He had a kind smile.

He checked her pulse with his stethoscope and then took out a pen light which he held over each eye, checking the dilation of her pupils.

'I can't see with my right eye,' Izigora croaked, miserably.

'Close your left eye,' he told her and her did as she was told, instantly seeing nothing and she panicked.

Kobi shone the pencil light into her right eye and got no reaction whatsoever. He made a mental note to get an optician involved. He made quick notes on the paper in her file.

'Can you tell me what happened?' he asked.

Izigora hesitated. She couldn't tell on Kainye.

'I fell down the stairs,' she responded.

'You fell down the stairs,' he repeated.

She nodded and winced in reaction.

'I was chatting on my phone and didn't realise I was at the edge of the top step.'

If he had a naira for every time an abused woman denied the abuse, he would have tens of millions of naira sitting in his bank accounts. Her case was clearly one of abuse. She wasn't a stranger here. And like thousands of women out there, she was also covering for her husband.

Izigora watched him with her good eyes. Dr Kobi clearly didn't believe her but he didn't argue with her. She remembered him now. He had tended to her three years ago during one of Kainye's attacks. The day she had caught Kainye in bed with his very good friend's wife. Dr Kobi had also asked her back then what had happened and she hadn't told him the truth. She had told him that she had slipped in the bathroom and hit her head, knowing how ridiculous that was considering the bruises on her face and body.

Presently, he looked at her, not bothering to hide the fact that he knew she was lying to him, but that was his problem. Kainye was her husband and their problem was personal to them. It was said that there were three people you can't lie to: your priest, your lawyer and your doctor. But Dr Kobi didn't need to know that Kainye had pushed her in order to be able to treat her.

'My eye,' she said, returning his attention to that fact.

'The ophthalmologist will look at your eye once I'm done with you.'

A nurse checked her blood pressure and announced that it was 168/134.

'You need to relax,' Kobi told Izigora. 'Your blood pressure is high.'

'I can't help it. I'm in a lot of pain and I seem to be blind in my right eye.'

'We will do what we can to fix you, Mrs Aku-Chidike,' he assured her. 'For the time being, I'll give you something for the pain.'

He told her that she had undergone surgery for a patella fracture. Her wrist was presently in a splint because the orthopaedic surgeon suspected she had a scaphoid fracture. However, a follow-up x-ray after two weeks would confirm if this prognosis was right. Until then the cast would remain. There was clearly no damage to her head beyond the cut that required stitches. She hadn't suffered an internal bleeding and she was lucid and completely aware of her surroundings save for the blindness complained about. He figured it was as a result of the fall but the ophthalmologist would be in a better position to give the verdict.

He assured her that she would be okay. The stitch on the back of her head would be taken out in a few days' time.

'I need you to relax because of your blood pressure so you don't suffer any complications,' Kobi told her.

A high blood pressure was the least of her problems. Where was Kainye?