The Operator

SAMUEL COBBY GRANT

THE OPERATOR

KL was at work when he received word that his mother had been admitted to the hospital after she collapsed at home.

Hurriedly, he immediately sought permission and rushed over to her. He found her lying on the bed, an IV fixed to her veins with five women by her side, and she was conversing with them.

Kuuku stood at the door for a while and went back to the nurses on duty and recognized the one who had been kind to him when Pat was on duty.

He was about to ask why there were so many visitors in his sick mother’s ward when he heard shouts of ‘Doctor!’, ‘Doctor!’ ‘Nurse!’ ‘Nurse!’  from several voices from down the corridor.

Worriedly, he found out that it was coming from the room his mother was in.

The nurses rushed in, drove all of them out and attended to her. It seemed she had passed out again. Kuuku waited in the corridor for about an hour before he was allowed to see her. She was asleep, breathing steadily as her chest heaved in and out.

He looked at her, feeling guilty for abandoning her.  He really loved her despite their differences. They were real buddies. Much more than Mother and Son. They used to be more like siblings until her desire to get him hitched drove him out of the Mansion. Her constant attempts at match-making were the only things he didn’t like about her. She was a strong woman and had a good heart. But seeing her now, in her most vulnerable state was heart-wrenching for him. He was still there when the Doctor arrived to examine her.

“Your mother needs a lot of rest. She’s been over stressing herself too much,” the doctor told him as he went out to see the next patient.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said and sat down by her bedside again. He put his head on the bed and prayed silently to God for the quick recovery of his mother.

He drifted into sleep and was dreaming of the time he was a kid and his mother would always buy him coconut and bread, his favourite whenever he went to the store after school.

Suddenly, he felt a hand on his head and he looked up to see her awake and smiling at him. She went back to sleep again. He relaxed in the chair. He felt a whiff of air at the back of his neck and saw Pat emerging from the entrance when he turned around

“I came as soon as I could, I am so sorry,” she said, worry lines on her face.

He nodded.

“Come, I want to talk to you,” Pat said and dragged him out of the Ward.

He took one more look at his mother before leaving.

 She took him to the hospital Cafeteria and bought a burger and a milkshake for both of them. She had guessed correctly that he hadn’t had breakfast yet. He ate the burger without a word. He was done in record time and drank the last of the milkshake and leaned back in the chair.

“Thank you,” he muttered and belched.

They then went back to the ward to find her still sleeping.

“Why don’t we go together and come back later,” Pat said after she had made her intention to leave known to him.

“No!” he said, shaking his head, “I’ll wait.”

“I am afraid you’ll have to leave,” said a nurse who had entered to replace the IV. “Those women really caused her exhaustion.”

“Please don’t let them ever come here again,” Kuuku said.

“Don’t worry, we won’t,” she said and smiled

He went out but to sit in the lobby and no amount of persuasion from Pat would make him change his mind. He went back into the ward when the nurse got busy elsewhere. His mother came awake slowly and saw her son asleep in the chair beside the bed. She stared at him for some time before drifting into sleep again. The nurses changed their shifts, gave her injections, made her comfortable, and he stayed, refusing to leave. He spent the night there, at the hospital, in the chair.

“He woke up around 5:00 a.m. and an hour later, the doctor arrived to check on her.

” Please, what’s wrong with my mother, ” he inquired.

“It’s just stress. She hasn’t been having enough rest. She’s not a young woman anymore, you know,” he said and patted him on the shoulder as a sign of assurance.

She woke up not long after, and the IVs were taken off.

Auntie Aya later brought in some oats and tarts for her. It was only when she had finished eating did he leave her side to go home, though it was obvious that he was reluctant to leave.

In the evening, on learning that she had been discharged, he went to the hospital to take her home. He saw that Pat was there already, chatting gaily with her and after payment of the bill, he took her home. They stayed till she went to bed.

At lunchtime the next day, he went to check on his Mom and to do some business at Kokompe, missing lunch yet again. Kate who knew he hadn’t been at the Canteen, went to the Blending Room to give him a dish of ‘plain rice with chicken sauce’ which Pat refused to partake in when he called to invite her. She couldn’t hide her annoyance for accepting the meal from Kate.

He ate it regardless of her attitude, unaware that it was jealousy driven.

Pat’s suspicion of Kate’s intentions were right. She had had her eyes on Kuuku the Killer, for a while now, but by that time she was dating Eugene the Quality Control Manager so she was able to suppress her feelings, but now that Eugene had shown his true colours by proving to be a hardcore womanizer, she had parted ways with him to redirect her attentions to Kuuku.

In fact, it was only the appearance of Pat on the scene that had emboldened her to take a more decisive action.

“Very soon, he’s going to start eating more than the food he’s eating now,” she told herself.

Kuuku was exhausted when he got home, so after having his bath, he crawled into bed without having supper. Just when he was making himself comfortable, he got a call from Manza that she was at the door. He debated with himself whether or not to open the door, but his humane character prevailed and he got up to open up for her.

“Eeii Kuuku, so you don’t miss me, erh,” she asked him playfully.

“I have wai,” he said, not feeling comfortable in her presence.

“Prove it then,” she said with asperity, and walked over to him, placed her arm around his neck in an attempt to get him to kiss her.

“Kiss me,” she whispered.

“Why should I kiss you? What may I offer you?” he said with a cagey look on his face.

She was about to tell her of her love for him when the ringing of her phone startled them. She saw that it was Kuuku Koomson, her lover.

“Meet me at the Guest House now,” he said and ended the call.

She clenched her fist in annoyance and breathed in deeply.

“My mom needs me. There’s an emergency. I must go,” she said and left, without glancing back.

Manza had wanted to sleep with Kuuka at all costs. One, because she found him attractive. Two, because she saw him as the perfect husband material for her, and three, because she wanted to saddle him with the pregnancy she was carrying. Though she already had Ayi and KK, she above everything, wanted KL more. She didn’t even know who got her pregnant. There were so many.

Pat was at home feeling bored. She did what she always do whenever she was bored. She took an A4 sheet and wrote her initials, PG (Patricia Graham) on it several times. She found herself writing PL when she got to the middle of the list. She stopped, not understanding what informed that deviation. She picked up the pen again and wrote, in bold letters, Mrs Patricia Laing.

She perused what she had written for some minutes, and fell asleep, clutching the paper to her chest.

Kuuku got out of bed the following day with a great desire to see Pat. He wanted to resume going to work together with her. He quickly had his bath, dressed in blue-black jeans, with a navy blue checked shirt. He then wore his Nike sneakers and went to her end. She had gotten dressed and was on her way to the door when he rang the doorbell.

“Killer!” she said, extreme happiness building up in her.

“Let’s go, we are getting late,” he said, in a clownish manner.

She laughed, heartily, leading the way to the car, her waist, swinging from side to side.

“Just a minute,” she said, just when she was about to open the car’s doors, and went back to the bedroom. She searched for the A4 sheet, found it and wrote at the reverse side in capital letters MR & MRS KUUKU LAING.

 At the Guest House where Manza and her lover had spent the night,  KK had woken up early and had had his bath. He was dangerously calm as he stared at the sleeping Manza with narrowed eyes wondering whether she was truly pregnant and if she was, when was she planning on telling him. He liked her, though he already had a wife and kids which he had told her. He didn’t want her to leave him when he wasn’t ready to let her go yet. He felt that he was the one that was supposed to do the ‘leaving’. Maybe it was time to let go of her but he didn’t want the complications of any out-of-wedlock child in his life.

He was an accomplished casanova and he had found her inner core unusually warm when they were making love the night before. The slight fullness of her breasts also pointed to the fact that she could be pregnant.

She woke up with a start to find him looking at her with a strange look on his face.

“Why are you looking at me like this. Do you want more of what I gave you last night?” she said, and bared her chest at him and smiled seductively. He made her go into the bathroom to have her bath and when she got out, he served her with a fruit juice which he had spiked with a small yellow tablet he always had with him.

“When were you going to tell me that you are pregnant?”

“I wanted to go for a check-up first before telling you,” she said, wondering how he had found out.

“Ok, let me know what happens then,” he said and gave her some cash, giving an excuse about why he couldn’t take her home.

“What an ugly brute, as if I’ll let you be a father to my baby,” she said to herself as the taxi took her to her home.

Pat and KL soon got to the Factory’s premises. He was quite a gentleman that morning. He opened the car door for her and even held her arm in the full glare of everyone at the factory.

“Maybe I am happy because I am close to realizing my dream of having my own machine shop,” he thought, trying to explain his exhilaration to himself.

He called his mom to check up on her. They conversed for a couple of minutes.

“Someone wants to talk to you,” he said and gave the phone to Pat.

“Hello, Ma.”

“Hi Pat, how are things?”

” Everything is well,” she replied, knowing exactly what she was asking.

Done with the calls, they entered the yard with calls of ‘Last Killer’ and ‘Killer o Killer’ reverberating from almost all the corners of the factory. They separated at the usual place and Pat went into her office, a happy smile on her face.

KL had really made her day. She saw that she had gotten a message from Eugene, the Quality Control Manager who had been trying to take her out, but she hadn’t been interested, though she had sat with him a couple of times at the Canteen. She ignored the message, not giving him time to get close to her.

To be continued…

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