HEAL

Chapter Six

(unedited)

She was in her apartment and scanning through a textbook when a note fell down from it. She recognized it immediately she saw it, it was a note about her life plans she wrote a year ago before she found Islam.
1. Graduate from medical school and make parent proud.
2.Build own hospital in Nigeria after working in a hospital abroad for a few years.
3.Get married to a God-fearing and handsome man and have two kids (.
D.G
   She grazed her fingers over the spot she had written her initials and smiled at how ironic everything had become, so much has changed in less than seven months; she changed her name, her status as a beloved daughter who was her parents pride and who could never go a day without hearing glorifications from her mother had changed to a rebellious daughter who her family hated.
   She thought that the cold wall her mother had built against her would wane with time but she was wrong. Her mother had shunned all her attempt to reconcile with her, she never picks her call or reply to her messages. She still stands by her words of having nothing to do with a Muslim daughter.
   Although her relationship with her Father had been severed too but he unlike her mother had been managing to receive her calls once in a while and never forgetting to mention that he is always praying to God to win her soul her back because she is lost.
   When Aaisha asks about her mother from him or tell him to speak to her on her behalf, His reply was always, "You disappointed your mother...you've really disappointed her."
   Sometimes she couldn't help but to feel lonely and sad at the kind of life she was living, her family had deserted her and she had nobody to call her own and she felt she was not living up to her dreams.
She missed her mother, she wished she was there to hear all her complaints and her misery, she wished to tell her all about Bala, of how her workplace wasn't challenging her enough, about all the people she had met there and their strange traditions and how she fell sick after she drank contaminated a week after she got there. Most of all, she wished for her to share in her joy of knowing Islam.
***
"How was your day in the hospital?"
"Worse than expected "He said as he sat shirtless on the fluffy mattress as he gulped down a cold drink, he can never get enough of the luxury of having to come to Tee Tee and Sambo's apartment every weekend.
    Deliberately, he went to the hospital late and it was already bustling with activities.          Everything about the hospital was gloomy, from the scream coming out from a woman presumably in labor and to the multitude of frail looking sick people who were being dragged or wheeled either by their relative or nurses in uniforms.
   He was attended to by an overly lively lady in a uniform who everyone; staffs and patients alike called Sisi Lamba; she was the one who shouldered all the boring documentation works.
   He was to share a small office which unsurprisingly housed junks of paper arranged in dusty shelves, a table at the center containing a computer with a chair at each sides with Sisi Lamba.
   He was told to acquaint himself with the hospital, so he went to his cranky office and stared at his phone all day, enduring how frustrating he finds Sisi Lamba walking in every minute to pick something in the office and asking him if he was comfortable before banging the door on her way out.
   The four hours he spent in the office was uninteresting and he kept straining his ears for the voice of Dr. Aaisha, apart from the fact that he longed to see her face again, seeing someone he knows would at least lift the gloom air that surrounds him.
"Very soon, you will get used to the place." Tee Tee said.
"I doubt it". he replied back and lied face down on his bed.
"Get your lazy butt up, or are you not going to the market anymore."
"what market?", He didn't remember saying anything about wanting to go to a market.
"Guy, you told me you were low on foodstuffs and you needed to go to the market the moment you got here remember?"
  VAlthough he was still doubting whether he told him he was needed to go the market or not, he said; "Oh yeah I remember, I am still going."
   He had been having a few memory losses recently, just three days ago, he found himself wandering through the district at night without knowing how he got there or why he left the apartment.
   And much to his dismay, the nightmares have been coming back, sometimes he will dream about a creature either chasing or attacking him, sometimes he would dream of being attacked by some people he knows, sometimes he dreamt of being pushed down from a tall building and he always wakes up panting and shivering after each nightmare.
  His mother was aware of all these and he wasn't keeping anything away from her anymore, he was scared of the voice he heard coming from his mouth back home when the Cleric was performing exorcism on him, he was scared of the same voice he keeps hearing even now at Bala which whispers to him rip off papers, to break something or hurt someone, he was scared of the Jinn.
   "What's that on your back?" Tee Tee asked in an alarmed tone.
   He towed over him and was pointing at his back with bulging  eyes.
   His hand went instinctively to his back and he grazed his hand over his back and he felt nothing.
    "What's there? "He stood up with his hand still rubbing his back.
   "Go and check the mirror".
   He stood sideways in front of the mirror hung up on the wall and the reflection coming from the mirror did not actually look like a part of him.
  It looked like an amateur tattooist drew a tattoo on his back while he was asleep, two rows of short blackish marks grazed down from the middle of his back shoulder to the line of his hips.
   He turned to Tee Tee who was mystified as much as he was.
After some minute of silence, he finally said.
   "Maybe you are probably allergic to something here".
   "Yeah sure." He said absentmindedly.
    They both knew that an allergy was the farthest thing that could be the cause of those marks that surrounds his back because if he had been allergic to something, it should be in the form of rashes and not marks and even if in a way, the allergic reaction has manifested in the form of marks, it should have spread to his entire body and not limited to his back alone.
    He knew he had to seek for help...immediately