this night was different

We have gone around. The moon has become full. Disappeared. Then come again. Thirteen times.

I remember the bubu I was wearing. It was the same one I always wear. My uniform. I had just gotten out of the shower, and was brushing my teeth in preparation to lay in bed, when Skye comes into the bathroom and says, “Arinze is calling, he says he’s been calling your phone”. 

These words have been uttered before. Anyone close, who hasn’t been able to reach me, has called Skye to find me. I am notorious for being an errant phone haver. But on this night, as I prepared to go to bed, before I put the phone to my ear, I knew. I knew something was different. Why is Arinze trying to find me at this time of the night?

“Where are you? Is Skye close to you?”

“Just tell me.”

“Mom says they are on the way to the hospital.”

I call my mother. She doesn’t answer. I call my bonus brother Samuel, who’s been at my fathers side unwaveringly for the last 12 years.

“Ma, we de go hospital.”

Even the Lagos traffic, knew to get out of my way that night.

As we pull up to the hospital gates, I know in the moment, that this is a night I will never forget.

“Excuse me! You can’t drive this way, you need to go and park there, and get ticket.” 

“My father is dying, I need to get to him”

As the car pulled into the emergency driveway, I have one thought in my head, ‘I do not want to enter this place’. A hospital in Lagos never guarantees your departure alive.

I peek in the door of the triage room, and my mom is sitting on a chair, her head in her hands.

“Ma, what are you here for? You can’t come in here!”

“That’s my mother sitting there, we came with my father…”

I stare at my mom, trying to ask questions my mouth can’t form, she looks at me with a blank face. I walk back outside. 

It wasn’t hot. Even the weather had sense enough to give us grace that night. 

I walk to the car where my father is, and a few minutes after, my mother walks out. I had been waiting to ask her what the doctor was going to say. How long it would take to get him admitted into the hospital. Before I can open my mouth, she hands me a piece of paper.

Time of death 10:11pm.

Oh. He’s not going to be admitted. Oh. This is what the doctor is saying.

A man I don’t know walks out from the hospital, and before I ask him to explain what I’m looking at, he says, “Take this to the mortuary and you can use it to drop the body there.”

68 years of a life. A lifetime of legacy, and I was to carry this quarter sheet of paper with off-brand ink, and dump my father’s body in a place where a sack of garri is treated with more care and respect.

“Call your uncle Mac. Arinze, call your Dad’s brother, we have to tell him.” My mother's voice floated through.

I move closer to my father lying asleep in the backseat of the car held by his nurse. I reach out and hold his hand, and smile.

“Daddy?”

He doesn’t respond.

“Savior abeg, please can you help me straighten his hands, and his legs. I don’t want his limbs to lock up like this.”

Savior nods.

Savior. The Nurse with a name that made me constantly chuckle at its absurdity, yet aptness. 

“We need to go home. I need to take him back home. I’m not taking him to the mortuary”

Samuel nods. My brother nods.

My mother nods.