Contemplations

Blurb

What is the meaning of life and all its complexity for the common person trapped in a failing society? What is the reward for living? Contemplate after reading this reflective tale.

Story

The old man in agbada was winking at me. I tried to ignore him since scowling at him was yielding no result. He probably thought I was another one of those young girls he could deceive. I wondered about those girls and how they managed to see past his pot belly, but at that moment, I was uncomfortable with the unwanted attention. I stirred in my seat, already picturing the sort of appalling imagery going through his head.

He looked to be in his fifties, old enough to father seven or maybe less. The watch on his hand gleamed burnished gold and his crisp Italian shoes reflected the dull lighting in the room.

Someone’s father, I thought to myself.

Next to me, my mother took a sharp breath and my chest tightened. I shot a glare at the negligent nurse chewing gum loudly at her station. She was rotund, with her hair braided in cornrows and packed up in a band. She busied herself with eyeing new patients maliciously and barking, “Have you bought a card? 500 oh! No card, no attention! Wait there.” Then she would rattle on in the Ibibio dialect with her other colleague.

I wrapped my arm around my mother and brought her head to rest on my shoulder. “Mummy, maybe it’s just the cold. Once we see the doctor, everything will be fine,” the words were heavy in my mouth, bland and doubtful. The images of the day my father died were still vivid in my head. I hadn’t been there, but I had been told how it all happened, and in my mind, I had imagined everything.

“Why won’t this woman attend to us?” my mother sighed. “I didn’t want to come here but I’m glad that other nurse is not here.” She said, gesturing to one of the vacant seats in the nurse’s station.

“What other nurse?”

“The nurse that was on duty the day we brought your father here. That bench there, that’s where your father took his last breath, and the nurse just sat there staring at us.” Her body trembled and I squeezed her tight. I tried to speak but I choked on emotions: there was mostly anger, and an overwhelming sadness.

That man was still winking at me, but now with a lecherous smile on his face. I squirmed and glared but my countenance did no good. In a parallel world, I would have walked over to slap him back to factory reset. But this was not a parallel world, and this place was an excuse for a hospital. I tried to take my mind off him by letting myself absorb my surroundings. The place stank of disinfectant, yet you could still see dried drops of blood on the floor. The nurses prattled at their station, their voices loud and irritating, whereas a frail woman moaned from a corner nearby, all but abandoned on a stretcher. 

I didn’t know what the woman was suffering from, and it took me a moment to understand that she wasn’t moaning—she was breathing. Each breath she took was a drawn-out gasp, and when she exhaled, it would sound like a cry.

While she suffered, deserted in a corner, her caretakers were close by, carefree and full of mirth. I could not look away from her, especially once I realized she was in pain. This woman was advanced in age, shrivelled, and worn. She was turned away from me, but her age was pronounced in her white tufts of hair and the sinewy skin. Her small body was curled like a ball, and except her ribcage, she was still. 

A languid fear gripped me. Was this the reward for long life? Where were her grandchildren? Why was no one tending to her? Did I really want to live this long? To be abandoned in the corner of a glorified morgue, fighting for each breath? All alone?

Unfortunately, in my country, there are no government-facilitated institutions for the elderly. In other words, no elderly homes so the old are at the mercy of their loved ones. 

I managed to collect myself and avert my gaze from that old woman. In the blink of an eye, the room had gone blurry, because of the tears in my eyes.

It took the whisk of an arm to wipe the tears away and bring everything into focus again. I noticed that the walls needed a paint job: its old paint was peeling away. The window louvres were black with dirt; I had to remind myself that this was a hospital. Also, an odour hung in the air, a revolting concoction of disinfectant and other smells I did not want to think about.

We should have gone to a private hospital. I screamed it in my head three times, but my opinion paled when I remembered the hospital charge we would have had to pay; there was no way we could foot such a bill.

A woman’s crying drew my attention—she was carrying a small boy. The boy was pale, his eyes shut tight, and his small body was limp in his mother’s arms. The woman kept screaming gibberish, like someone far-gone in the mind. The nurses seemed unbothered, and one sighed, “I don’t know why mothers don’t know how to take care of their children.”

An alarmed doctor rushed out of a room. She tossed a grimace about and pinpointed the disturbance. “Isn’t this the boy we’ve already run tests for? Did you not tell Dr. Uka to attend to him?”

Another man answered from somewhere, “If it’s a child, I am not seeing.”

“Me, I am taking a break now, I am not on call,” said another man who had a stethoscope hanging from his neck.

“Please? His HB count is low?” The former woman stood akimbo, eyeing the other two doctors.

They squabbled for a minute before one of the men reluctantly accepted to attend to the child. I was lost for words. Blank with contempt. Until idly, my gaze fell on that fat man, and he winked again. I glared at him, calling him colourful names with my eyes until a fair nurse emerged from one of the rooms and told him a doctor would see him. I was relieved to see him disappear behind that door.

My mother trembled and I hugged her tight again. Why wasn’t it our turn yet?

Finally, a tall young man walked in; I recalled him immediately from school. He had been a medical student once at the University of Uyo. He paused when he saw me, and familiarity registered. Then he looked at my mum.

“She seems ill. I will see her now.”

The rest was a blur of hours waiting on that bench. When my mother returned, she had undergone tests and bought prescribed drugs. When we left, my mother was feeling confident, but I was upset.

A day later, she had taken those drugs and she felt much better, but she never stopped gushing about how impressed she was with the way that young man examined her. She remarked that the experience was better than the attention she had received at a private hospital and another general hospital at Enugu. She also added that he went on to help other neglected patients.

For a moment, I was proud that the young man came from my institution, and that we may still have young and passionate professionals in the health sector.

But I still remain appalled by everything I saw at that general hospital—a federal hospital. And in my quiet moments, I contemplate the workings of my country and wonder about the lives lost in slaughterhouses guised as hospitals.

A hospital is supposed to be a resort for solace, where lives are saved or at least maintained. What I saw that day was far from solace.

But what choice does the common person have? The less privileged. The impoverished. Especially when they cannot afford the stupendous bills of private hospitals. What choice other than to hope that the fateful day they visit a general hospital will not be their last?

You will also enjoy:

• Innocents Unheard
• Regret: The Things you should have known
• Trapped In My Body

Author’s note on ‘Contemplations’

Drawn from a personal recount, I aimed to paint life in Nigeria as it is for a commoner. The gross mismanagement of leadership and resources has landed the common man in a dire place. If this read resounded in your heart, I implore you to leave your thoughts and share this book.

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