Writings / Creative Non-Fiction: Oludayo Olorunfemi

He was rushed in to the hospital at about 3.40pm on that slow Wednesday morning in June 1999. It was her last rotation in surgery and she was moving to a new posting the next day. She was thankful for the quite day that it had been until Emeka happened to them all. She was busy filling in her notes and completing charts when they heard the multiple voices screaming and wailing in pain and calling out for help. She grabbed her white coat and rushed in the direction of the commotion. Emeka had been shot by armed robbers on his way from the bank. He was due to fly out to China that night to bring in his next shipment of sub standard motor car spare parts and God knows what else; was the story his aide told the doctor. One would think Ike was the victim going by the amount of blood that was on his white shirt and his loud wailing. There were about seven other young men in the waiting room. They all wanted to know if Emeka who they all referred to as Igwe was going to live or die. After 3 hours of surgery Emeka was wheeled into the recovery room and the many aides were banished from coming anywhere near the wards. Ike would refuse to go and wait outside like a woman whose husband was on the brink of death. Betty took pity on him and admired his devotion to his Oga, a character she would grow to despise with all of her strenght. She gave him her number and promised to update him if there was any change to Emeka’s condition. For now she told him reassuringly to wait, that the worst was over, the operation to remove the bullets logged in his ribs was a success.

Emeka made a full recovery, went to China and brought back five containers of spare parts and decided he was going to marry the kind doctor his boys told him saved his life. He bought a brand new car and registered the plate number as Dr Betty 01. The car was blood red in colour. After months of constant badgering Dr Betty was pregnant with her first daughter and the Igbo community in Lagos was selling the red George asoebi for the wedding. Betty moved into the house where Emeka and Ike lived. Betty after 10 years plus of marriage is still praying for a male child and the only reminder that she ever went to medical school is her car plate number. It was now Dr Betty 13 meaning the 13^th brand new jeep she would be riding, the color was still blood red.

Betty soon got tired of talking and asked that we go out for a quick bite. I wanted to have a meal at Segilola’s Buka I insisted. It would be my last meal for a long time to come in the city I have come to call home for the past decade. I ate the house special, Ofada rice with offal pepper sauce. I ate slowly savouring every bite while Betty kept talking about how she knew once she had a male child all her troubles with Emeka would be over and she could finally ask him to tell Ike to move out or go and marry. She was now taking some herbal remedy, which he brought from China that was guaranteed to seal the deal. She was already planning the naming ceremony even though she wasn’t even pregnant yet. She had to check with Ike when Emeka would be back from his trip and if he will be in the mood to copulate. Such was the love-hate triangle among Betty, Emeka and Ike.

I will miss this place. I remember the confusion and the noise when I arrived new in town straight from school armed with my diploma and my I’m invincible spirit. Nothing was going to stop me I thought till I met Baba and the whole clan. I took in everything in small measures but soon enough I learnt there was not so much substance or depth in most things flamboyant. It was a city bursting at her seams and feeding daily on her young while carrying on as if all w well. I became a part of the statistics, the uncaring ones, those who walk away fast instead of stopping to help, the silent voice cursing loudly yet without a word as you watch man’s cruelty to man; just like in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, life here was short and brutish. Yet in all of the madness there is order, for as many who care to, find a rhythm to the beats of the Bata drums and the many songs of the city wishing you well, as long as you worked hard – for indeed there is dignity in labour. I will miss this place.

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