LITTLE BOY

This one is for Timah, who wept at Maintenance gate because we saw a boy fall off a bike with his mother. This one is for that boy. Wherever he is. I hope he made it.

You had never seen a thing like that. You had never felt a thing like that. This was all new to your sensibilities. It all happened so fast. You heard the sound of pain and then the thud of destruction. A life and a thing all wiped out in a moment.

You would want to forget this moment forever, but it would never leave you. You would learn that about memories; the ones you want to protect, you need to keep reminders for, and the ones you want to let go of will always come back uninvited.

You imagined what his life could have been, that little boy whose screams now force you in and out of sleep. Sometimes, you play a game with your mind because you have to keep it in check. It keeps going to places you never want to visit. Whenever you saw the little boy and heard his screams as he called out for his mother, who had died saving him, you would imagine his life if he had not been on that road that day. 

You would imagine he had beaten his mother at the “go and bring your slippers game” and triumphantly followed her wherever she was headed that day. In your favourite version of events, Little Boy had a good life sprinkled with disappointments here and there. He had not died looking into your eyes, crying for his mother as you watched helplessly, unsure what to do. In another version, he had a life of disappointments sprinkled with goodness here and there, and there was the version where he had a good life, but he would go ahead to make life miserable for the rest of the world.

You liked the third version the most because it was the version that allowed you some sleep. The version that took the burden of guilt off you for a moment. It justified his death. It justified his pain. It justified the ripping of his tiny legs into two by a ginormous body of steel. But there was a different version, the one that was true. Little boy had died because of you. 

You had been out at the pharmacy to get some antibiotic tablets for a patient at the clinic. You cannot remember what they presented with, but Dr Adewale administered antibiotics for everything, so you did, too. You had just stepped out of the pharmacy in your well-starched blue uniform and white Nightingale cap that told the rest of the world that you knew something about saving others, that you could save others if the situation demanded it when it happened.  You bought Superyogo and were waiting for your change when you heard the crash and then the scream, or was it the scream and then the crash? You had looked up to see what was left of the Okada and the truck that was carrying planks, most likely stolen off some construction site seeing that most of it had nails jutting out of them. There were screams and confusion. Frozen yoghurt in hand; you had stayed affixed to a spot, immobilised by shock. 

And suddenly, everyone was calling out to you. Noosi! Nurse, Ewa! Come Egbawa! Help us!

You were never good at physics in school, although you enjoyed biology and wanted to become a doctor. Your dreams of becoming a doctor would die with your father insisting that female doctors never had happy homes. That scared you out of your dream faster than your inability to grasp the speed of light and quantum physics. You would not gain admission to study nursing science at Obafemi Awolowo University in your first year of trying. You would spend that year sulking at the ill luck of being at a JAMB CBT centre where the computers did not work perfectly. You would also spend that year cutting off ties with friends who already got into school because they now looked down on you. You would stop talking to Bolu after she said you could not spend the night in her hostel because the porters would revoke her bed space if you were caught. You would stop talking to Gift because she did not wish you a happy birthday until 5 pm on your last birthday. You would stop talking to James after he implied that you were overreacting in the first two situations. You would divert all that anger into preparing for JAMB again. Unfortunately, you were JAMBed the second time over. Your mum would suggest you join the nursing training program that a doctor ran just down the road, so you are not just sitting at home all day, watching K-dramas and generally getting on her nerves. 

And so it was that you, a seventeen-year-old admission seeker, left your house every day in a nurse’s uniform, prescribed medications whose names you had to memorise, and administered anti-malaria injections. 

Little Boy surprised you, not in dying, but in staying alive for so long. How can such a small body carry so much strength? You had fussed around him, cleaned his injuries, and tried to stop his bleeding. You did not know what to do, but you could not say so to all the people waiting outside. In retrospect, you realise how foolish it was to lead them here instead of to the teaching hospital. The boy was broken. What did you know about broken bodies?

You had hoped that Doctor Adewale would be back from lunch by the time you arrived at the clinic with the entourage of sympathisers. You had imagined that his relatives would pay a lot after he had administered the needed first aid and then written a referral note. You had merely wanted to make Doctor proud. His words when you first resumed echoed in your head. “Just direct them here, whether we can do it or not —-abortion o, surgery o, sha tell them to come. We’ll try first, and if God says it should work out fine, and if it doesn’t, we will tell them to go to the teaching hospital.” 

Doctor Adewale would come thirty minutes after you arrived at the hospital. He would take one look at the little boy, the blood-soaked bed, and cotton balls, and he would say to you, “Common, stop crying.” You would stop crying. He would fuss around for another thirty minutes, doing nothing but killing time, enlisting the help of the other staff to create a bustle to make it seem like a lot was being done. Get me the stet. Get me the sphig. One roll of bandage. He would tell the little boy’s father, who had been sent to get some drip and medications from the pharmacy, to make a quick transfer before he left so they could prepare Little Boy for surgery. Little Boy did not need IV artesunate, but Dr. Adewale did. Little Boy’s father would return to the news that his son was gone and that Dr Adewale did all he could. He didn’t. You didn’t. 

You would never return to work with Mr. Adewale. But you will proceed to study nursing at the university of your dreams. You would never speak of Little Boy, even though he remained the boy of your dreams and Nightmares. 

How did your life become this way? This constant struggle with insomnia, guilt, and emotional pain so deep you felt it in the pit of your stomach. Every day at the teaching hospital felt like war. Every day was war. You watched, like an outsider, your painful transition from the girl who would take out of her pocket money to pay for patient needs  —- gloves, syringes, needles, food to the nurse who would snap at women in labour. You would remember learning about obstetric violence and feeling appalled that any healthcare professional could be violent towards their pregnant patient. But you would never see that you were now what you once despised. 

You did not die all at once. There was a time when you went home and cried because your patients were suffering. On your first day of clinical training in OAUTH, your enthusiasm was an antidote to the elderly matron’s incomprehensible instructions and jagged insults. You would remember, in your fifth year as a nursing student, your anger at Moses’s mother, whose negligence would mark the beginning of the silent unravelling of your soul. You would watch Moses suffer for days before finally giving up. You would watch in disgust as the consultant in charge refused to report Moses’ parents to the police because “who will take care of the remaining children at home?”. You would watch his mother scream and roll on the floor even though she killed him. You would watch the prophet who had started it all offer empty words of comfort and then leave twenty minutes later before they could retrieve Moses’s body from the morgue because he had to pick up his kids from school. 

Moses was six years old and some months old when he got ringworm in his dreadlocked hair. Moses’s mother refused the simple solution of cutting all of Moses’s hair because the prophet had said that it could only be cut on his seventh birthday. Not knowing what else to do after all ointments and home remedies for ringworm failed, she washed his hair with Sniper. After all, if it could kill snakes, it could kill ringworms. Moses would suffer brain injuries and eventually die from the sniper wash. Moses’s mother would go home, still a mother to her other three children.  

It would take a while for you to realise it, but once you did, the days became more bearable. Sorrow, tears, and blood are regular parts of your day. A day without any of those was not a typical day in your life. It would take a while to stop blaming yourself when things went wrong; the system was actively working against you. It was not your fault that patients could not afford to pay for treatment. You gave when you could, but it would never be enough. After you have paid for cotton wool and gloves and drawn blood, they still could not pay for an X-ray. And when doctors and nurses have raised funds for an X-ray, they would need a CT scan. This was usually the point where the Santa in you died. The point where elimination became the treatment plan. The doctors eliminated what couldn’t be and made guesses, and you administered treatment, hoping the universe agreed. Most times, Asclepius refused to be amused, but sometimes, he let the joke slide. 

It was not your fault that the mother of that sickle cell warrior that plagued your dreams for months thought all she needed was a deliverance. It was not your fault that almost anything was available over the counter, and most of your patients presented with antibiotic-resistant infections. It was not your fault that light sometimes goes off in the theatre. It was not your fault that people could not grieve their loved ones who had just died because they had to look for money to reclaim what was left of them. It was not your fault that mothers could not go home with their babies because they owed money. It was not your fault that babies were sometimes born damaged or that children got cancer. It was not your fault that good health was a luxury that most could not afford. 

Eventually, you learned to forget. To stay desensitised to the pain. There is only so much suffering a person can stomach. As you sat next to your pile of clothes and books, you remembered all the faces of your pain. You remembered the broken little boy. And you remembered Moses, Heritage, Ademide, Folarin, Precious, Mariam, Joseph, Mr. Dauda, and Alfa. 

Your therapist had told you to let them go. It only made sense to do what she asked since you paid her almost all your income for four one-hour sessions every month. But what she was asking was difficult. Little Boy could have been saved. Moses should still be living. Malaria should not have left Alfa’s toddlers fatherless. Heritage was only twenty-two when her breast started to chew itself, giving way to the cancer cells. Ademide might have made it if they did not have to wait for a police report. Folarin had presented with a headache, and then his body turned against him. He was dead within months. Mariam desperately wanted her own kids, but sickle cell had more territory in her body. She would die trying to deliver her baby. Precious…….you would struggle to remember. Your journal only carries her name and not her story. Joseph was hit by a hit-and-run driver. He insisted on being discharged against medical advice because he could not afford the private ward, and the general ward was filled. He was back one week later with multiple infections. Mr Dauda died of loneliness. A retired civil servant whose kids were all living the Nigerian dream in another man’s land.

Slowly, you wrung out the little pieces of them you carried with you from when your enthusiasm had buoyed you through a life stifled by the misery of others. You let go. You had a journey to prepare for. You would leave that faux leather-bound journal with Simisola engraved on it on your reading table, never to be read again. You had finished packing. All your life was cut down to two 23kg bags. You laid down to sleep and felt yourself being buoyed across the ocean, where the promise of the NHS made life all the better even though the threat of cold, lonely days and nights was real. 

To be continued……..

Àlàkẹ́ Akọ̀wékọwúrà🍒