RED LINES

Present Day

If there was one art Bekere had gained mastery of, it was the art of waiting. She could wait for a stone to boil if it suited her purpose.

It was thus not unusual that she sat unfazed at the large and overcrowded waiting room of the state's teaching hospital, while nurses floated in and out.

She watched a frenzied man rush in with a semi-conscious child; shirt soaked in blood, with half a dozen people in his wake, all screaming at the top of their voices for the nurse, doctor, or whoever was in charge to take the injured child off their desperate arms. Their ruckus roused the interest of everyone seated at the reception, but none did anything other than stare.

A nurse walked in then to call out appointments, she noticed the rumpus with disinterest, pointed them to a vacant seat, asked them to wait, and then she began calling out names of patients whose turn it was to see the doctor.

"We can't wait too long, nurse!" A small-statured portly man bellowed, then swallowed his frustration when she glared at him.

"Please, she needs to see the doctor now, we're half afraid she's already... He exhaled. "Already dead."

"Jesus oooooh!" The woman amongst them screamed.

"God forbid!" Yelled the man bearing the injured child.

The portly man pressed his suit further.

"Please, she's... she has lost a lot of blood."

"Sir, someone will attend to you soon," The nurse retorted, "In the interim, press on the point of bleeding, so she doesn't bleed out."

"Nurse, please, just look."

The nurse ignored his plea, returned her attention to her notepad, and continued her roll call.

The man blinked rapidly, swallowed his frustration, and returned to the wounded child to carry out the nurse's suggestion.

Bekere squirmed on her seat; she could tell he was on the verge of tears.

"Nurse..., Please!" The pleading man reiterated when he noticed the nurse had concluded her roll call.

"Oga, I've told you what to do, please sit down and be calm, she'll be attended to."

With that, she walked away, leaving him gaping after her.

Bekere observed the scene with an iota of pity. It was standard practice in Nigeria, she thought. It wasn't unusual to see patients moaning in pain at hospital receptions, wholly ignored by those who were supposedly trained to help, until their scheduled appointment.

As far as medical practice went, Bekere mused, having patients rushed into the hospital with a dozen nurses and doctors hurrying to save their lives, were fictitious scenes reserved for the movies.

Here you wait, even if you were wheeled in with a gaping skull and your brain hanging loose. If you want a quick and efficient response, then check into a private-owned hospital, not one set up by the government, and serviced by salary starved doctors and underpaid nurses.

Bekere turned to peer closely at the bemoaning group when she heard the child's whimper. She was a small-statured girl of about four or five years old. Her frail form laid supine in the arms of the man carrying her, her eyes fluttering in pain, her light-skinned young face drained of color.

The powdered blue dress she wore was soaked in blood, gushing out of a gaping wound on her leg. Bekere noticed pitifully how the injured leg hung loosely and askew, suggestive of a fractured bone.

Desperate for a response, some of the men in the group beckoned on every uniformed individual that passed by, imploring them just to look, have mercy, save the child from a catastrophic end. She's only a child they lamented; couldn't they at least do something?