Delayed Diagnosis {Book 1 of the Rex Obasi Trilogy}

Chapter 60

I woke up to the spill of sunlight in the room. The curtain was drawn back and I shielded my eyes from the sun, struggling to come fully awake. But then I thought: the sun was out already...what was the time?

I was alone in the room. I looked around for Olivia but she wasn't in. I checked my phone and was shocked to see the time was 8:53am.

I had over slept. I must have been really tired the night before.

I gaggled the mouth wash and splashed water on my face in the bathroom and looked at the mirror.

I had travelling bags under my eyes. I was still owing my body sleep. But I felt better now.
I left the room feeling a bit refreshed and energized.
On my way down the steps, I met doctor Rasheed aka Carmichael.

"Good thing I was just coming to wake you" he sounded grumpy.

"Good morning" I said to him.

"Morning, your girlfriend said you shouldn't be disturbed so I let you sleep but the whole place is a mad house!"

I frowned, "what do you mean?"

"Come and see for yourself" he tugged my hand and led me down the stairs.

"I thought you said you would see the hotel management about the hall yesterday?" He asked

I winced. "I totally forgot about it. I was planning to rent it for some hours today"

"Well too late. They said the hall has already been booked since last week for a wedding"

"On a Thursday?"

He shrugged "I think it’s traditional"

"So where are the women?"

"See for yourself" we had reached downstairs and he pointed to the entrance door.

I could already see the crowd of people and I must have blinked about a hundred times. When Olivia said she had some contacts of her late husband, I had pictured a handful of men and women wielding tape recorders and microphones and maybe a video camera.

Instead what I saw left my mouth open in surprise. I was utterly shocked. There had to be about a fifty news men in the car park. I could see various news station vans with the station/channel inscription on them, countless state of the art video cameras handled by veteran and seasoned videographers.

I stepped outside, taking it all in. they were all at work and they were divided in different smaller groups scattered here and there.

The widows were talking, some of them into the camera, some of them into the voice recorders while the journalists all looked astonished at the atrocities they were hearing and scribbled furiously in notepads.

I strolled over to the nearest group of women. The young widow was currently talking looking into the camera while an elderly looking journalist held the video microphone to her mouth.

"........The lawyer and socials. The excos are all part of it and organise the selection process..."

Another widow: ".....name is Chief Amunike, a well known billionaire but the source of his riches is not his businesses, he makes money from human trafficking. When we were captured I overheard one of the kidnappers say he gets as much as a million dollars for each shipment!"

The car park was full. There was no space that wasn't occupied. In between cars there was always a journalist with a group of widows.

I looked around for Olivia, pride and love swelling within me. She was just too much, I couldn't believe she had turned up something like this. Someone tapped my shoulder impatiently and I turned expectantly, hoping to see Olivia, but I saw an angry looking man instead.