Hell In A Cell- A Tall Tale

Pain Builds Strength

        “Doctor so what’s the hope on her recovery from this?” Mr. Akinwunmi asked the doctor as we sat in the doctor’s office. We sat opposite the doctor with a wooden table at the middle filled with medical books and records and a set of thermometers,   sphygmomanometer, a kidney shaped tray and so on.
The doctor was a female and she had a white lab coat-on over her white shirt and black pant trousers, her hair was plaited all backwards.
“Well, as she has refused to take in blood and I seem to understand why, she is a witness right?” she asked looking at me in the eyes. I gave a nod.
“Yes she is and that’s why we are here. She mustn’t take in blood.” Bro Ocholo said persuasively.
“We have five women in that ward who are going to pass trough dialysis also. They have similar health conditions. We have done the second dialysis for them all and as at the blood level test we got earlier, she had the lowest. There is going to be another one and she has three more to go. If she refuses to take in blood, I am sure you know she wouldn’t possibly survive it. No one has.”
The doctor said as she opened a record folder with a writing only someone in the medical line could understand.
“Okay doctor,” Bro Ocholo said.
“Can we check on her again before going?” Bro Akinwunmi asked as we stood up, having nothing else to say.
“Sure, you can. Just be careful with the words you say to her if you don’t want something terrible to happen in time,” the doctor said as she led the way out of her office.
                                                     ***
         Night fell and I was left alone with grandma (my mummy’s mum) and some women from the congregation who had dedicated their time to sleep over to serve as human strength to my mom as she would soon be moved in for a third dialysis tonight. I was getting terribly hungry and when I informed grandma, she gave me some cash to go get some food down the other end of the express road outside the main gate. The whole hospital building was illuminated by yellow light bulbs. Patients were rushed in and out almost every second from all angles of the hospital.

       My grandma and the women were discussing outside the dialysis building with family members of other patients surrounding them. I walked away and headed for the gate.
I walked past a small DJ’s shop and watched him as he mixed some songs I knew and scratched some disc while everyone on the street were nodding their heads or humming the song and some street boys were busy showing their dancing skills and jumping happily in dirty and tattered clothes. I moved across the other side of the road and saw the tractors and bulldozers and other construction machines left at the middle of the road under construction. I finally got to the food vendor’s shop as described by grandma and ordered for some rice, dodo and egg. After it was dished, the food stood like a hill.
Appetite was something I didn’t have but I just had to eat to fill up my stomach.
        Afterwards, I finished my meal and walked my way back to the hospital back to where grandma and those women were. They still had the discussion I left them with on their lips.
“My uncle go through am, e no reach six months after Na hin he change address,” a woman who seemed to be from the south-east region of the country said.
“Ewo! I am not sure someone can survive this thing o, when my mama did am, na so she start to dey complain of leg o, before we know stomach begin dey pain am. I go work come back na so I see am dey rest for parlour chair, she done go.” A black woman dressed in purple lace material with four long tribal marks on each side if her cheeks. She would have been a medium of comedy to me but I was engrossed deeply in fear than laughter.
At 9p.m the dialysis building door was shut after all the patients were moved in and ready. We had to lay mats or wrappers to sleep on the bare floor and ground outside the building. I couldn’t withstand the voracious mosquitoes which seemed to have sharpened their proboscis with a knife file.
I walked into the ward hall were a TV was on with the DSTV stationed on Select Sports. I kept watching sports highlights until I dozed off.
                                                           ***
            I woke up the next morning by a tap from my grandma.
“You need to get your mom some drugs from the pharmacy down that road, around where the food vendor sells food. You would see a tall blue painted storey building with the name M and G pharmaceuticals. Buy this drugs on this paper. Take this money.” She said as she loosened a knot in her wrapper, brought out some ruffled notes of money, and gave me two thousand five hundred Naira.
“I would be going to the lab to collect the test result of your mom’s blood level since she is done with the third dialysis. All thanks to Allah, she survived!” Grandma who is a Muslim by religion exclaimed as we both walked out if the ward hall. I could see the happiness on her face. I greeted the women who were now dusting their wrappers and rolling the mats that they used to sleep on the bare floor while Grandma and I turned separate directions.
         The road construction had resumed had resumed and the heavy machines crawled on the transforming road which was filled with bitumen and granites. I walked down until I got to the pharmacy, which was exactly where she described. It had an aluminum sliding door and had a sky blue exterior painting and a pure white interior filled with white coated shelves having bottles and packs of drugs arranged in them.
“Antihistamines and Erythropoietin, I would love to purchase them,” I said at the counter where a dark man with a shinny dark box-shaved beards and smooth head, which reflected the fluorescent light, stood.  He strolled around the shelves, brought some drugs in his hands, and put them in a polytene bad. I didn’t bother checking if it were the ones I came for because I wondered, ‘how would I know?’

                                                                   ***
         Examination was starting in a week time so I was compelled to return to the school to focus and chase after academic excellence. I wondered.
How was I supposed to do well with all this flies perching on the sores on my skin! But then I encouraged myself, I knew no one can talk better than how I talk to myself. But Big Bro’s words were still soothing.
“You would return, excel and make Mama proud. Either she survives or not.” I said to myself  as I approached Singer bus stop in a public bus. A rowdy and noisy park filled with bike men and Marwa drivers. Market women laid their wares by the roadside and inside the garage stood a woman turning and removing yummy looking Puff-Puff into an aluminum sifter.
I dropped and paid and several bike men rushed towards me asking,
“where you dey go, make I carry ?” one said with a smiled. He talked as though it was free.
“Boss! Oya come make I carry you na?” another said, trying to pull my hands.
“Leave am! Leave am! Na my person” another ran towards me as though I knew him before of which I don’t . I followed just one of them and as we walked towards his bike, he asked,
“Shey make I carry only you dey go?” he asked, obviously I knew privacy meant increased cost and I wasn’t ready to pay not even an extra five Naira at all.
“Baba find persin join body” I said and in less than five minutes, after roving and searching for someone, he finally got one and when I looked behind him to see who  he got I exclaimed in my mind.
        An enormously fat woman looking almost like a Ghana-Must-Go bag was walking behind, breathing heavily as she tried catching up with him with sweat stuck to her face like boiled okra. Her clothes were having sweat made lines and she was walking like someone rolling an empty drum. Before I could call Jack Robinson, we were already on the back of the bike and I was so squashed in between her and the bike man.
I had only one prayer on my mind. I prayed that either of us should reach our destinations in time.
          We got to the first bus-stop and passed, she didn’t say anything like she wanted to drop. No perfect word could describe the river of anger that was steaming in me as I tried freeing my choked self at any free opportunity. If it was only the tightness I was to face, it would have been a little bit better, but the bike man knowingly or unknowingly entered gallops and potholes that made me feel I was being given a smack down.
After about 20 minutes, the bike man raced down my school street, the magnificent sky-blue building stood gallantly with a silver roof covering its head. I got down from the bike and paid him and I also thank God for sparing my life both on the bus and on the bike.
             I knocked on the black coated gate and Mr. Raymond, a Hausa man in his early thirties opened the gate. He is a dark skinned man, You could barely separate him from total darkness at night. Probably Kiwi shoe polish was fairer than he was. He had a C scar on his cheek and had a broad chest which puffed out of his white singlet anytime he wore it around the school.
“Kala( that’s how he calls Kola) how are you doing?” he asked as he opened the gate, letting me in.
“I am doing fine o, uncle Ray” I said smiling with my cheeks swelling like someone eating doughnut.
“How is ya mom? Hope she recovers now?” he asked, though his grammar was incorrect but I understood him. I told him she was getting better and walked away. I walked away, struggling with a bag on a hand and a sack on the other and a school bag at my bag. The passage in between the classes were dark and one could see the other end of the passage were reflection of the hostel fluorescent lights could be seen.
    
         The hostel seemed so quiet; you could barely believe anyone lived in it. I gazed intensely and saw them all sitting around tables. Then I understood that it was prep time.