Until Ava

Chapter 1

Eleven seconds. Again. It was good all the same. Tomorrow he'll do better, I told myself. I squatted to pat his head and rub his ears. He dropped the ball in my palm. He had taken eleven seconds to fetch the ball with a litre bottle of soda in his saddle bag every day for a whole week. I was eagerly waiting for an improvement. My watch beeped. It was time to go. I rose from the ground, standing upright.

The sky was lucid, not a cloud in sight. Ever so faithfully, the sun smiled down at us from all those 151.89 million kilometres away, her warm radiance dancing noiselessly with the cool morning air around us, eliciting our smiles- I turned to Xerxes to make sure he was smiling and chuckled – in return. He had his tongue out to the side, his eyes shut. That's good enough a smile. I stretched my arms out, feeling the healthy tugs in my muscles that indicated that I'd done enough exercise for the morning. Beep.

I headed back home, jogging, with my German shepherd by my side. The neighbourhood was quiet, as always, which is what we loved the most about it. Just a few people were out, each one on their way to add value to the world we lived in. Or maybe not.

I nodded at the kid throwing the trash out. Skipper or Kipper or something. He lived next door. Long brown dreadlocks, black pyjamas with skulls, a couple piercings and rings and leather boots with spikes. Pyjamas, and boots? It was six a.m. He nodded back and eyed me like I was the weird one. I smirked at his retreating back.

Jogging up to the front door, I opened it. Beep. We were right on time. Xerx trotted in first. I followed up, locking the door behind us and racing him up the stairs to the bedroom.
'Ah you always win!' I pouted, stripping and hopping into the bath tub in the adjoining bedroom. He lifted his head in pride and leapt up to run the water before he headed for the other side of the bathroom to do his business. I burst into laughter.
'I can hear it all, Xerx!'
He growled. I laughed all the more, wondering if he truly knew why he was running the water. Xerxes was one fascinating dog.

I rummaged through my messy hell of a mind, organising, putting together a to-do for the day. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, they say. And I was not going to work without a plan. I never did.
Go through previous day's cases, take updates, see my ladies, and see some more ladies. Order and pick up Xerxes' feed, get some groceries and other necessities and of course, some Marsharita toffees. I grinned.

Xerx flushed the toilet and disappeared into the bedroom, reappearing two seconds later with my bath robe. It was like this for us every morning. It had been like this for us every morning this year and the previous and the previous and the previous year.
He brought my pink fluffy bathroom slippers next. Pain sliced through me, slashing through my superior vena cava and bruising a few Purkinje fibers on the way. The sight of her slippers and all those little reminders were going to end my heart up in ruins. Fibre by fibre, muscle by muscle, they were tearing it apart. And maybe that was exactly what I needed. It's necessary for my healing, I think.
Towelling dry, I slipped on the robe and the slippers.
'Thanks, Xerxes,' I smiled, 'feels like a good day, doesn't it?'
He wagged his tail.
'Yeah. It had better be one.' Fingers crossed.
Beep.

I grabbed my briefcase and stepped out of the car, looking at my watch. On time, exactly. I looked up at the monumental building of Idris Mubarak Memorial Hospital, and smiled. This was my second home. I stepped in, ready to say hi to the sometimes-pleasant family people I was gonna encounter right away, professionally known as the receptionist and janitor on duty, and was met by the sweetest, funniest of them: Auntie Naa. Auntie Naa was just about the nicest fifty-something year-old janitor anyone was ever going to meet in their entire lifetime, and definitely how 'Black Don't Crack' would look like if it were a person. The only wrinkles in her lovely melanin coat were on her face, where her lips stretched to very often in a sweet, proud grandmotherly or a 'come and listen to "juice"' smile. She was currently sporting one of the latter.
'Auntie Naa, good morning,' I smiled.
'Fine, my gentleman.'
'How are you doing today?' I asked politely.
'You know I'm not dying anytime soon so don't worry,' she said, waving the formalities off. Her smile widened and I put up an eyebrow, pretending I hadn't realised her smile. She beckoned me closer with her finger. I laughed, drawing close.
'You know those two residents Dr. Amofa and Dr. Mohamed? It sounded to me like they had a serious quarrel yesterday, even almost fighting.'
'A quarrel?' I wondered aloud, 'what would they be- '
'Apparently, they're both falling deeply in love with this one senior physician. Um, what was his name again?' She put her hands to her hips, balancing the mop stick on her shoulder.