The old woman, the nurse and the boy

You are a young nurse, working in a small clinic downtown. You wake up around 7:00 am like every other day, and scream “Oh my God, I am late!” jumping of your bed. You grab your towel and rush into your bathroom. Ten minutes later, you come out and jump into your working clothes. You check the time; it is exactly 7:15 am. You have exactly fifteen minutes to eat, pray, look for your car keys, read your bible, run outside to stop a cab that would take you to work, or do all in this short time. You have exactly one minute... No, twenty seconds to decide. Within the space of this twenty seconds, you rationalize that when you get settled after signing in, you would read your bible and pray, you decide not to eat until it’s time for your lunch break and you decide to forego looking for your car keys. You make a dash for the streets and two minutes later, you flag down a cab, poke your head into the front passenger seat and tell the cab driver where you’re going. The cabman immediately starts to rattle off in a language you totally cannot seem to grasp and you go “Oh, shoot!” it takes you exactly five minutes to find a cabman that can speak English and also knows where you’re headed. You settle in the back seat heaving a sigh of relief. Barely two minutes into the customary five minutes drive, the cab screeches to a halt. You glare at the cabman who begins to rant something about having forgotten to check his fuel level. You hiss, tear the door open and after throwing yourself out, you slam it so loud that you don’t even hear the cabman ask for his money. You decide to walk the remaining part of the journey all the while hoping that your boss somehow died in his sleep just so you don’t get to be on the receiving end of his tear-jerking reprimands. You arrive at the clinic at exactly 7:49 am. The atmosphere that greets your sight is pandemonium. In the midst of whatever was happening, you do a three sixty glance with the corners of both eyes and establish that your boss is nowhere around the scene. “Nurse Titi, Nurse Titi, there is an emergency”. One of the just-employed junior nurses tell you, looking like she is about to puke and cry at the same time. Wondering where all the qualified nurses in the city had gone to pitch their tents, you allow the white-faced nurse to usher you into the emergency ward where an old woman is writhing in pain. You go straight for the pain-relieving injection, get a firm grip of her hand and run the needle into one of the green veins scattered nakedly all over like misplaced vegetation on a desert. The woman immediately stops shaking. Only then do you notice a teenage-looking boy standing by the bedside, a look of horror stamped on his face. “Is... is my mother going to die? Am I going to become a... a lone orphan?” He stutters in fear. You tell him not to worry, after checking her temperature with the back of your palm. “She’ll be fine, it’s just malaria” you assure him with a smile. You – who have suddenly become the doctor and pharmacist within the space of five minutes – quickly scribble down a prescription of drugs in one of the clinic cards, then hand the boy the clinic bill, which he stares  blankly at. “Oh money” he goes, after his brain seemed to have recovered from its temporal shut down state. He reaches into his pocket and brings out an ATM card, and waves it in your face. “Do you know where I can withdraw money?” You point out the window, telling him to go just across the road. You watch him hurry out of the clinic, brushing past the naïve nurse whom you make a mental note to explain for the umpteenth time, what an emergency really is. You walk to your desk which is opposite the window that faces the main road. Sitting down, you bring out your bible in a bid to commence your ‘early’ morning prayers. Just as soon as you open your bible, the sounds of screeching tires and an ear-piercing scream that makes the bible in your hand vibrate, reaches your ear. You look up, trace the sound and the imagery that captures your eye doesn’t look any bit pleasant. Running outside, and stopping dead at the middle of the sidewalk, you behold the gruesome sight of the old woman’s only son almost drowning in the pool of his own blood right in the middle of the expressway, you see people coming from different directions converge together to form a crowd; some heartless ones take snapshots of the scene. There is no sign of whoever had hit the boy. You run back into the clinic, more out of being unable to believe what you had just seen than out of the sudden feeling of irritation that attacks your guts at the bloody sight. You head straight for the ladies room hoping that somehow your hallucinations would come to an end. Opening the door, you are face to face with the old woman. Smiling crookedly, she croaks “Hello nurse, I think I am feeling better now. I want to go home. Where is my son?”

By Amani Velly