How neatly you tucked yourself between my arms; how delicate you appeared, like the pieces of art you admired; how fragile you felt, like glass. You could break, you could break in there.
By Chimezie Okoro
When you suggested we take shelter under the awning, the sky was missing a sun. “The first rain will be heavy,” you announced.
By now, the roars from the looming clouds had grown relentlessly loud. You shivered from the chill wind rustling through the trees in front of the faculty building. Their branches swayed, as if celebrating the first rain that would depose the dust the harmattan had blown onto them.
“I can’t wait for the trees to be green again”, you cooed, still shivering.
That moment, I remembered how well you loved all shades of green. How you’d categorised the surgeon’s scrub during our first clinicals at the teaching hospital as “something between chlorophyll and malachite”, instead of saying “green” like every other intern at the theatre.
Outside, I called you, “Colour connoisseur!” You frowned, childlike, and I laughed even more. In mock defense, you said I spoke English like a modernised Shakespeare teleported through countless quantum leaps to the present.
“Shakie”, you sang. Your giggle reminded me of littler children, their ease to invest themselves in the joy of the moment. Over the months, Shakie and Connoisseur became our little endearments.
Whenever I chanced upon an Oresegun Olumide, I’d text you on WhatsApp: Hey, Connoisseur, check this out. Anticipating your reply, I’d imagine you gushing over the hyperrealistic painting, fingers pinching at the screen, eyes searching intently for small details. Lord, its imitation of wetness is—wow, you’d text back, followed by a string of emojis.
Now, I offered you my jacket. If anyone should be nipped by this terrible breeze, it should be me. It was oversized, but you slipped into it anyway, wrapping yourself in my arms. Your Afro brushed against my beardless chin. No one was watching—at least I thought so.
As the rain poured in sheets, we saw a horde of students plowing through it incessantly. Few clutching umbrellas the colour of rainbow; many with none improvising with bags and notebooks lifted above their faces, skirting around puddles.
They seemed foolishly defiant of the storm. Your gaze lingered on them, a desire to be a participator in, not a mere spectator of, this mundane thing.
We remained huddled together, until the storm thawed into quick drizzles riddled with silent lightning. You broke free from my arms and dashed onto the slick asphalt. I raced after you. With you in front and me trailing behind, we glided past the students, all like a dauntless wind.
What could two medical students possibly lose from running around campus, exploring the distant faculties connected by long walkways nestled between tall trees? To anyone watching us racing each other, we would look like two love birds tasting freedom. We were no birds. Lovers.
We wound up in front of the female hostel.
It was Sign-out Day. The roads on campus teemed with students in white T-shirts scrawled in inky cursives: First Degree Bagged! And with the first rain drenching on them, the letterings appeared smudged.
Cars, with people screaming out their windows, veered to and fro with a momentum surpassing light’s velocity. Above all those tire screeches was the jubilant ruckus of students who had concluded their undergrad days.
You were winning the race. Occasionally, you would look back to catch me pausing and panting. It was in one of those brief moments in which you looked back at me that you couldn’t see the car hurtling towards you.
It swept your feet off Mother Earth, propelled you through the humid air like you were a feather, and by the time you made contact with Mother Earth again, you splattered open on the asphalt. The red was everywhere, already flowing in spurts, your wounded body shuddering.
My knees buckled. I fell, screaming your name voicelessly. The idiot didn’t pull over; he ran over you again, mangling your body more so. Later, I would wonder, with horror squeezing my breath, if he wanted to make a paste out of your remains. Such recklessness, such a rascal!
***
At the university infirmary, the afternoon doctor had signed off; the evening doctor was yet to report to work. The bigger nurse informed us so. “We have to wait”, the smaller nurse said. “But until then we’ll try our possible best”, the bigger nurse added.
If professional experience were a measure of size, I thought, then the smaller nurse would be the head. She was more paunchy than round. Perhaps, the BMI charts tacked into the bone-white walls served just one purpose: decoration. I resented myself for noting this with such urgency.
Even though the hospital was sterile and peaceful, inside me was a naked fear. A rage. This long wait would usher you to the other side, and I’d be worse than a widower. I shook my head to collect myself. You’re a fighter, I cried. A fighter!
I chanted all this with the fervour of a prophet under a bout of glossolalia. Until the bigger nurse said in a rush, “Who’s this vagabond screaming here?”
Silence—of course not from me—ensued.
Turning to the smaller nurse, she ordered, “Take this man out of this emergency room immediately”.
Of course, I was reluctant to leave. I couldn’t just leave you there, hapless on the stretcher.
So she yelled at the smaller nurse again, even though she hadn’t been hesitant about asking me to step outside. They bundled me outside. I tugged at the uniform of some student nurse, who would later pacify me in the lobby.
She was a small woman who spoke as though she picked her words like grains. Careful not to chaff. As the hospital generator droned severely entangling her words, I was awakened to your frailness.
How neatly you tucked yourself between my arms; how delicate you appeared, like the pieces of art you admired; how fragile you felt, like glass. You could break, you could break in there.
***
It’s another Sign-out Day. I’m signing out after five years in medical school without you. It’s raining today, but I’m not under the awning. It’s not the first rain either, because it’s mid-rainy season, October.
I’m in my car, driving towards Elelenwo Town from campus. Ours was an unofficial relationship. And so, your grave is resting in your father’s house in Elelenwo Town of Port Harcourt.
I have the same jacket donned on. It’s still tinged with your blood. The bigger nurse had handed it to me in the lobby. “Sey, you’re the one who rushed that hit-and-run victim here?” she asked.
I nodded profusely.
“You must be a nice guy. Relative or friend?”
I took the jacket. “B-boyfriend…sorry…close friend”.
She arched her eyebrow, fixing me with an irritating look. Then she rolled her eyes dismissively, snorted. “Nkwa, you know what to do?” she said, making a telephone gesture over her ear. “Ring. Parents”.
“Why?” I asked, only immediately recognizing the cue. Was it grief stripping me of complete reasoning?
“Just follow my instructions”. She frowned. With that, she disappeared into the emergency room again.
Hours dragged past, still no sight of the bigger nurse. The sun fell dim; night manifested thick, flooding my heart with questions and dread.
When your parents arrived, the balding evening doctor, gilded with staidness despite his tardiness, said something that made your mother jerk up from her chair and yank her clothes asunder, as if it had caught fire in spite of the AC working on full blast.
Your father sat still, shoulders quaking from the weight of the sorrowful news; I crouched by the hallway leading to the office, bawling. And as I walked back to the male hostel, my vision imploded, my gait swavered. Vertigo kicked in. I could fall, I could fall.
Now, I’m driving past the female hostel. I’m not speeding; neither is anyone. The University Management has erected signposts after the accident. Drive Safely, Slow Down, they read.
I have a wreath of hibiscus on the back seat. I’d purchased it from the florist down Stadium Road this morning. The florist looked nothing like her gaudy counterparts in Disney animations, whose dresses combust into petals. Yet, her smile was magical, and I marveled at the thoughtfulness of God to make our lips elastic. Just like yours: soft, knowing, tender.
“I envy the beautiful damsel who’d get those”, the florist said, indulging me as she eyed the bouquet I was considering.
If only she knew you, she would guess differently.
She waited for a word from me. I remained noncommittal. “You’ve been getting those same green chrysanthemums for a while now. Why not try something different?”
If only she knew how much you loved green, she wouldn’t suggest this at all.
“Here”, she said, passing me the wreath of hibiscus with a smile. “Try this. It’s quite the catch”.
I stared at its red whorls, contemplating if you’d love them, too. Finally, I forced a smile, said nothing, paid for the wreath, and left.
I have turned onto Shell Gate Road, but I’m caught up in traffic. To beat traffic, you often advised, one has to drive close by a military van. Because it unzips the gridlock effortlessly. Fortunately, a military van is on the road today, but a tanker has blocked it.
The traffic is halted. Angry honks heighten, yet the tanker doesn’t bulge. Hawkers have descended, hopping from one car window to another, brandishing assortments of drinks and chin-chin. Agberos have also descended, and impudent conductors are venting their bitterness between disgruntled passengers alighting halfway and idling buses smoking in front of theirs.
The Agberos will soon fleece some unsuspecting passengers-turned-pedestrians. I roll up my tinted panel, discreetly observing. Somewhere along the line, my thoughts blur into the imminent future:
By the time the tanker lumbers away, the military van will barrel off, and my car will follow suit, but I won’t speed. Slow but sure wins the day, you once said. Pulling up under the fruiting tree in the front yard of your father’s house, your mother will not scream: “Our son.”
She hasn’t since you died.
Though compelled by your father’s vehement insistence, she will answer my greetings but under her breath.
He will touch my shoulders gently, his tone apologetic and genial: “Don’t mind her, Ifeanyi. You know how women linger with grief. Arinze would always want you where he’s sleeping. You’re his friend. This is your home, too”.
For a slight moment, I’ll wonder if he’d still say all this if he knew we were more than what he could accept. Then turning to face your mother, he’ll say, fatalistic in his demeanour, “We can’t change the past. But, if you must, you should rather dig it out with that foolish graduate who was speeding as though the entire road belonged to his parents.”
But still, your mother will prove recalcitrant. “If this stupid chase never happened,” she’ll begin, her voice seething with anger, “we would not be mourning in the first place.” She will wag her finger at my face. “‘We were only playing, I was simply chasing him’, you told us four days later, as if that would revive my Arinze. As if that would make him a Lazarus called forth from the grave.”
Then she will look me squarely in the eyes, and, overwhelmed by a twinge of guilt, I will look, as I have learned by now, at anywhere except her welling eyes. “As for the Court.” Her breath will catch. “The Court has refused to conclude this case and throw that murderer in prison! No justice for my only child!”
She will undo her headtie, crying as though the news of your passing had just been broken to her afresh, an insufferable loss. “Arinze! Arinze Ejiofor! Why have you left us?!” But as I reach to break her fall, she will straighten up, her countenance hostile.
She still blames me for your death.
With the wreath in my hands, I’ll walk down to the backyard, where your grave lies solemnly, save for the birds pecking at the chrysanthemums I’d previously laid on the headstone. I won’t shoo them away like before. Instead, I’ll let them watch. Maybe they would sing today.
But the tanker has not moved, the sun is setting, the street lights flickering on, and I’m still stranded in traffic.
Chimezie Okoro, a medical laboratory scientist in training, is a Nigerian writer whose works have appeared in African Writer Magazine, Kalahari Review (forthcoming), and elsewhere. Connect with him via Facebook
Cover photo credit: Humanatra