"Andoah, Sarah Jane..." his mother cried out when he got close enough, reaching her hand to him. Andoah grabbed her hand reflexively, the frightened little boy in him looking for comfort from his mother as incomprehensible events unfolded around him.
"She'll...She's in good hands mum. The very best she can have right now." he comforted as he squatted down before her. He extended his other hand to clutch his father's upper arm and have his clutched by his father in turn.
Mahmoud almost ran in his haste to get to Sarah Jane. At least, the rest of the Kwesi clan would hold each other up. No matter which way the news went, they would be there for each other.
Obinna was at the very end of his patience as he listened to yet another crook mouth off at him and his partner as they tried to interrogate him. He had been edgy today. It seemed all the wires and nerve endings in his system were crossing themselves. He wanted this interrogation over so that he could go figure himself out.
Maybe when he called Sarah Jane, he would feel better. She had a way of talking him down when he was in one of his 'out-of-sorts' moods. He had tried to reach her last night but her phone had gone directly to voice mail. That was odd but he figured that perhaps she was tired or busy and he would just call her in the morning. Then morning had come and his boss' call had gotten him up and out of bed at the crack of dawn with an emergency. He had barely had time to think much less remember that he had meant to call Sarah Jane.
It was late afternoon now and he had barely eaten all day. He was hungry and cranky and exhausted and he just wanted this day to be over. He needed eat a good meal, check in with Sarah Jane and fall into bed and crash in exactly that order.
He looked over at his partner and realized that he had been subtlety trying to snag his attention. When he saw that he had, he eyed him with a small nod to indicate that he felt they were done with the bozo sitting across from them.
Obinna stood and knocked on the door twice with deliberation and emphasis as per their agreed signal for when the interrogation was over. A few moments passed and he heard the key rattle in the door. The door swung open to reveal two burly officers dressed in their uniforms. He gave them a quick nod and they nodded back and marched in to physically remove the man they had been interrogating.
The man on seeing the uniformed officers and the handcuffs began to demand loudly for his rights and his lawyers. None of the officers, both the uniformed pair and the plain clothed pair responded to his demands. They just went about their duties, ignoring him completely as if no one had spoken.
When his voice had faded as the burly pair dragged him off to the holding cells, Obinna turned to Lawrence to speak but Lawrence beat him to it.
"Is everything alright?" he asked as he gathered up papers, tape recordings and other whatnots of their interrogations.
Obinna frowned and rubbed his hand over his face.
"I'm hungry and tired and generally...out of sorts." Obinna replied.
Lawrence nodded his understanding. "Let's hope that when we report in, nothing else comes up and we can get out of here and go eat."
Obinna nodded as he held the door open for Lawrence to go through.
Mercifully, Lawrence's hope came through and they were let off without further claims on their time. They both stepped out of the building and breathed in the evening air deeply into their lungs. The fresh tanginess of the air felt good. It had been a nasty day. The propensity for meanness in man never failed to astonish Obinna and a lot of officers, never mind how long they had been on the force.
"You want to go by the joint and grab something before heading home?" Lawrence asked. "I'm too keyed up to go home directly." he said.
Obinna had heard a lot of his fellow officers who were married express the same thing. That it was sometimes very difficult to go home to loved ones when you had just been in touch with, God forgive him, the bottom dregs of society. It felt like you had to diffuse their evilness somehow from your being, reduce the potency of their effect on your essence before you went home to the goodness of family and loved ones, lest you infect them with it.
Obinna shook his head tiredly. "I'll just head on home. I'm so tired I can barely think talk less of mix." He said as they strolled to where their vehicles were parked.
Lawrence shrugged. "I'll just head there then. Some of the other guys are there already. Just hang out a bit."
Obinna gave him a thumb up sign as he got into his car and gunned the engine. He still felt out of sorts. He checked his phone. There were some text messages from an assortment of friends and family but none from Sarah Jane. He scrolled to her number on his call log and dialed. Again, he got her voice mail.
He contemplated driving by the Centre on his way home to check on her. He looked at the time on his dashboard and tried to judge if he would still catch her at work. He shrugged. It would be a quick visit. Just to check in on her and be sure that she was not overdoing things. He smiled in anticipation of seeing her again as he shifted gears and zoomed off.
CHAPTER 16
Obinna sat in the chair and leaned his elbows on the edge of the mattress. He had run out of words to say. He had told her everything he had to say. How she lit up his day and his world, his relief every day when he got here to see that she had made it to yet another day. Breathing, if nothing else at least she was breathing.
He had gotten to know her family pretty well in the past few months, her dad and his quiet strength, her mum and her passionate nature, her brother and his young family and especially her best friend and sister-in-law Chrissa.
He and Chrissa had talked a lot as they sat keeping vigil over their friend's breathing body. They had talked of everything and anything, each eager for information about an aspect of their friend's life that they had not been allowed into previously. Obinna found that Sarah Jane had, well always been Sarah Jane! That she had been just as stubborn, just as willful, just as passionate and purposeful as she was as an adult as a child. He learned that she had always been quiet, that at some point she had been painfully shy but had slowly overcome her shyness as she grew older. He found out that her relationship with her brother had deteriorated as she had become more and more immersed in her work as a doctor and her burgeoning interest in genetics. That it had taken disaster to bring them both to talking to each other. The toll it had taken on their relationship and how they had just begun to rebuild it when she had gone into this state of unconsciousness again.
Obi told her of Sarah Jane's dedication, her willingness to push herself to the limit with no hope of any other reward than that she had gotten it done right, whatever it was. He told her of her friendship to him, of his feelings towards her and how scared he had been that she would turn him down, that he somehow did not measure up to her and how he was hoping with all his heart that she would wake up so he could tell her and see if they had a chance.
Chrissa thought that Obinna was either a very brave young man or a very reckless one but she liked him. He would be good for Sarah Jane, may the Lord show them all mercy and let her wake up again.
They all worried about what she would wake up to. What will have happened to her when she woke up? What would they have to hold her hands through? There was none more worried than Mahmoud.
He stood by the door, leaning against its post and watching Obinna. He was apparently lost in thoughts because Mahmoud had been standing there watching him for a while but he was yet to realize it.
"Do you sometimes wonder if it might not be better if she never awakens?" he called out as he straightened out and walked into the room. Obinna whipped around to face him.
"Have you been there long?" he asked as if just realizing how out of it he had been.
Mahmoud made a demurring shake of head. "Not so long." he answered as he pulled the second visitor's chair closer to Obinna and the bed. "How are you doing?" he asked him both as a friend and as a doctor.
Obinna sighed. "I will be so much better when she wakes up." he responded.
"You should t
ake care of yourself." Mahmoud chided mildly. "You don't want her waking up to you broken down and all that." he held his crossed fingers up between him and Obinna. Obinna felt his breathe catch and release, 'If she woke up'. How he hoped that she would!
As he came off the prayer cloud he had just been caught on, the reality of what Mahmoud was saying sunk in. Though both of them had never openly acknowledged it, they had both realized very early that they were rivals for Sarah Jane's heart. Obinna looked at Mahmoud, trying to decipher what had gone on in his mind to make him say that. 'Was he saying something even?' Obinna did not want to ask.
He had met Mahmoud through Umar who he had met in secondary school where they had become fast friends in spite of their different religious beliefs and tribe. Their friendship had grown tighter as the years had worn on and when they had both gone off to different schools, in different countries for further studies, it had not waned. He wasn't as close to Mahmoud who he had always sensed some reserve from. They had not seen each other in many years until Jay's case had brought them all together again. And till now, there had been the specter of their feelings for Sarah Jane between them. 'What had just happened?'
Obinna wished he was comfortable enough in his friendship with Mahmoud to ask him outright. He was a good fellow, Mahmoud was. But he was unwilling to give up Sarah Jane just to placate him, if she would just wake up.
Pray she woke up.
CHAPTER 17
She had woken up screaming her lungs out, her voice had been so loud with an unnamed terror that it had hurt to hear her.
The shrill cry had brought almost everyone running to her room. The only person who had not come running there was Umar. He had been at the lab, in the middle of a critical moment when the screaming had started. It had been a mercy that he had not dropped the beaker he had been holding at the time.
She was sleeping peacefully now, at least it seemed so. They were all waiting with bated breath, hoping that it was not a fluke. That this was regular sleep that she would wake up from in a few hours not another few months.
Obinna burst into the room with one of the staff nurses hot on his heels.
"Doctor, I tried to tell him that he couldn't come in here now." she explained to Umar as she panted out her breath.
Umar wove her away. "It's alright Nurse. It is alright." he said and then he gripped Obinna by his upper arm and dragged him to a seat. He looked just about ready to collapse.
"I thought she was awake." he gasped as he tried to control his breathing.
"She was. She was awake for some fifteen or so minutes and then she clocked out." Umar responded. Obinna glanced at him sharply at his choice of words.
"We hope it's just normal sleep. It seems to be just normal sleep." Umar continued in a soothing voice. Obinna relaxed only slightly. He looked at the sleeping form on the bed, his thoughts going off at different tangents in fits and starts.
"Has Mahmoud seen her?" he finally asked as his thoughts mellowed.
"He got here before I did." Umar answered simply.
Obinna nodded even though he was not sure why. He took a deep breath and was about to ask another question when there was a knock on the door.
"Doctor," the same nurse who had chased Obinna down poked her head through, "her parents are here." she said.
Umar looked at Obinna. "Come on." he said as he stood up. "Let's head to my office so we can all review our options together."
"Review options? Is something wrong?" Obinna asked.
"Apparently." Umar joked as he got both of them out the door. "She's been in a coma. At the very least, she'll need some sort of physical therapy. At worst, who knows how bad it can get?" he finished solemnly.
Sarah Jane was fairly certain that she was awake. In fact, she was fairly certain that her eyes should be wide open. She tried to wipe her hand across her face but yowled as she felt the extremely painful jerk of what must be an IV line hooked up to her and put her hand down. She tried the other hand and there was no jerk or restriction. She put it up to her face to see if there was something blocking her view. She felt the skin on her cheeks and followed the trail up to her eyes. It was just skin. She held her hands in front of her and then brought it down to her forehead. She felt her skin and the sheen of perspiration on it.
She heard the approaching footsteps on the other side of her door. She realized that the door was to her right. The door opened and she turned towards the sound hoping that she would see a familiar face but saw nothing. At least, nothing that made sense. It seemed like a sheet of white light with the occasional wriggle.
"Oh good! You are awake. We were starting to get...what's wrong?" the nurse asked as the frightened look on Sarah Jane's face began to register with her.
"I can't see." Sarah Jane complained and that was all it took for her to realize that she had gone blind. Was it going to be a permanent condition? Could she dare hope to recover her sight in the not so distant future? Like right now?
'This on top of everything else.' she thought and she began to cry in big gulping sobs.
"I will go get Doctor Umar. He..." Sarah Jane heard the sound of retreating footsteps as the nurse fled from the room to go call the doctor.
Sarah gave release to her tears and cried even harder. 'Blind as a door mouse.' The phrase chased through her head. How fitting it was. She felt like a lab rat. This serum, bolster, whatever it was she had gotten injected with, was holding sway in her body, turning it inside out, upside down, whichever way and there was no way to stop it, maybe until it finally killed her. What next would it do before it took her life? What other torturous experience did it have planned for her? At least, she won't get to see how badly it had destroyed her looks. No, that agony would have to be borne by others instead. She did not know whether or not to feel grateful about that.
There was a rush of footsteps, definitely more than one headed down the corridor outside her door. She tried to sit up gingerly and had just successfully swung one leg over the edge of the bed when the door was opened.
She sniffed the air. How was it that she had never consciously realized until this moment that Obinna had a peculiar smell? Oh, she knew that she must have known on some subconscious level if not, she would not have recognized the smell but she was only just now acknowledging that she could smell it. She turned towards the sound of the door shutting. It was all white. She couldn't see her beloved Obinna's face.
"Obi? Who is with you?" she asked her voice hoarse with long disuse and all that sobbing. Silence greeted her question. She would have wondered if she had imagined the door opening and all those footsteps if she had not continued to smell Obinna.
"Obi?" she called out again.
"It's me. Can you see me?" he asked.
Sarah Jane was so overcome at the sound of his voice that she could only shake her head as she tried to savour the sound of it.
"So you can't see us?" Umar asked and Sarah Jane smiled.
"No, I can't but it's so good to hear you guys. At least, I haven't lost my hearing." she joked. She held out her hand in front of her trying to hold on to someone. Someone came close and she grabbed a fistful of the person's clothes. It was Obi. She checked herself and resisted the temptation to draw him closer for a huge sniff. It felt good to be alive even if she could not see.
"How do I look? Colourful again?" she asked as the thought occurred to her.
Obinna shook his head and then realized that she could not see the movement. "Not colourful. You look the same. Thinner and a bit paler but the same." he said thoughtfully as if he was trying to give her an honest enough evaluation.
"You look like you just woke from a coma after six months." was the next response. It was from Mahmoud.
"Mahmoud." she smiled and sighed. "Six months!" she exclaimed, totally shocked by how long she had been unconscious. "Are my parents aware I woke up?" she asked. “Yes they are." Umar answered. "They were here earlier, after you first woke up but they left. Mahmoud persuaded them to leave and go an
d take some rest. We had no idea whether you were going to wake or leave us hanging again."
Sarah Jane felt the mattress depress as he sat on the edge of her bed. She squeezed Obinna's hand tightly. "You, I hope you have not been negligent at work." she scolded happily.
She heard Obi chuckle lightly. "She'll do fine. She's already her bossy self." he squeezed her hand in return.
"I'm so tired guys. Do you think you can help me sit up?" she asked and suddenly there were several hands prodding her. Something about her countenance must have alerted them to her disorientation because Mahmoud suddenly said, "Just one person. This will take some getting used to."
The number of hands trying to assist her immediately reduced to just two hands, Obinna's hands.
"Do you think I will regain my sight?" she asked the room.
"Who knows?" Umar answered. "The good news though is that we think we've worked out a way to stop the drug."
Sarah Jane perked up at that. "When? How? So, are the effects reversible?" she asked with excitement in her voice.
"Actually it was months ago. You were asleep and no." Mahmoud responded. "Not as far as we can see. But apart from this vision thing, the other symptoms seem to have stopped completely. As far as we can see."
"In order words, while I may never go back to who I used to be, I won't get any worse?" Sarah Jane asked hope and dismay waging a war within her.
"We hope so." Umar answered and Obinna squeezed her hand tightly in silent support.
CHAPTER 18
Obinna stirred the contents of the cooking pot while his mother bustled about behind him at the counter.
"Obi where is your mind?!" his mother exclaimed. "You've almost burned that sauce and you know your father will not eat it if it's burnt." she scolded.
Obinna barely managed to stop himself from scoffing. His father was coming for his periodic visit with his family and his mum was going stir crazy trying to make everything perfect for him. Obinna was of the opinion that if that was what it took for a man to not leave his wife and son and go start a family with another woman, then his father would never have left in the first place. But he had, and Obinna could not understand why his mum kept putting herself in this position of pain.