Midnight Echoes (ONLY PREVIEW)

Chapter 34

"Because you never think that the last time is the last time. You think there will be more. You think you have forever, but you don't."
~Anonymous

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Azizah arrived at the teaching hospital before they conveyed Suraj's corpse. If you ask her, she had no idea how she made it to the hospital in such short a time frame. Everything had been hazy eversince she received Suraj's call, up until now, as she stood anxiously outside the Casuality Unit, waiting for the vehicle to arrive.

"The person wey get this phone just die for motor accident. We see say you are the last-dialled number so we..."

The words rang in Azizah's ears for the thousandth time. The caller was a man. His voice was dead, and orotund. It made Azizah mad, how the words rolled out of the caller's mouth easily, as though they had been rehearsed. How could he speak so easily about someone's death?

Azizah faintly remembered Laylah picking her phone off the kitchen floor, and picking up the conversation with the anonymous caller. She'd sat on that same low stool, dazed; wanting to hear more, yet dreading every more detail that came from  it.

The accident had occured a few metres before the check-point just preceding the University of Abuja main campus, the caller had told Laylah. They had pulled the body out of the vehicle.- They'd also called an ambulance.- Yes, yes, 'specialist' hospital, as the teaching hospital was commonly referred to- by its former name before it became a teaching hospital.

And that was the only thing Azizah needed to hear. She pulled off a hijab and ran outside, just in time when Laylah was telling the caller to please check for any emergency contact number on the phone and call immediately.

Now, Azizah sat on one of the metal waiting chairs, her palms clasped under her chin. Her legs wobbled inside the bathroom slippers she wore, against the terrazzo floor. She stared blankly at the open hospital premises, at people who went about their businesses.-

A shirtless young man with tons of bandage wound around his tummy casually walked into the unit, holding his shorts by the waist so it doesn't fall off. A security guard who was dozing off a chair. Far accross, young men played lawn tennis from an enclosed pitch.- Everything seemed normal. Or at least, as normal as it appeared to be in a hospital on a Saturday.

Azizah didn't shed a single tear, surprsingly. She was too dazed to feel anything. She felt numb. Everything felt like a movie that was being played on rewind.

Suraj was gone. A voice spoke within her. Gone. Azizah tasted the words in her mouth. No no no, she coughed out a chuckle as her heartbeat increased erratically. How was that even possible? Suraj couldn't be gone, right? Yes. That was why she was here. She'd wait. She stood up abruptly, and paced up and down. Waived at a colleague passing by. And they'd see. Suraj would walk in here himself!

I don't believe it! A voice within her bellowed. I'll never believe he's gone- I mean, there has to be a misunderstanding somewhere. He can't just leave!

Instinctively, she reached out for her phone. I need to stop this madness; I'm calling him right away! But she discovered her phone wasn't there. Then she remembered she'd left it at home with Laylah.

As if on cue, a grey Toyota 406 abruptly parked in front of the casuality unit. Dr. Isma'il. Azizah mused even before the door flung open. He walked briskly towards the ward's wide glass doors before his eyes registered Azizah's presence.

"You've heard." He stated when he was close enough. It wasn't a qiestion, and Azizah felt this in the thickness of his voice. But Azizah stared at him blankly, neither saying yes nor otherwise. She refused to believe Suraj was really dead. "We'll be fine," Dr. Isma'il spoke. Then as if he'd stepped on hot coals, he hurriedly walked into the unit, almost tripping as he did so. And Azizah could almost swear she saw his eyes water.