Billy Goza’s day at the office was relatively good. He had of late constantly had thoughts of Mary and the kids running through his mind, with the urge to fix a date for his wedding to her as his times away from her were torture, even though they had gotten real close. He had so fallen in love with her.
He was already in talks for a two-bedroom apartment he had seen. He felt it would be a dream home for them and the kids.
Already, he was playing with the idea of getting married to her after the online course he was secretly engaged in, even though he hadn’t formally asked for her hand in marriage. The course he was pursuing had a year and a half to be completed. So by his permutations, he could be a married man in two years.
”I can’t wait to enjoy the bliss marriage will bring into my life,” he said to himself and leaned back reflectively in the chair.
He had begun to attend church again. Something he hadn’t done in a long time. Even Father Samuel was impressed. He hadn’t seen such dedication in a while. It was as if the young man was making amends for his past mistakes. He always endeavoured to pray for him and wished that he and Mary and the twins would be a family in the not-too-distant future.
Kutorkor came awake and found herself in a hospital bed. She remembered how she had gone to see Billy only for her to be humiliated in a such disgraceful manner.
”If I had known that this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have asked Kofi, that disgraceful replacement of his for tips on how to confront him. To think that I even asked for directions to that imp of a girl’s house,” she thought angrily.
”I have to go back and see him. He can’t just leave me hanging like this. He didn’t even tell me that he had children with another woman. All I wanted to do was to go and warn her to stay away from Billy.”
”Well, if shove comes to push, she must know that I am also carrying his child,” she said in anger as if she was quarrelling with someone.
”That man Kofi is a bastard. He made me believe that the girl was going to be a pushover. I’ll go and meet him in Mantsekrom. He’ll smell pepper.”
She was prodded out of her thoughts by Akos, a nurse who was already fuming, albeit inwardly, at her for snatching Billy away from her the other day. But she, as a professional nurse, went on and checked her stats, refusing to allow her personal feelings to interfere with her duties. But it was hard attending to a woman who took away her dream man.
Her patience was sorely tested when Kutorkor requested to see the doctor who had brought her in.
”He’s off today but would be in tomorrow,” Akos told her woodenly.
”I didn’t get to see him well. I would like to show my appreciation to him,” KK said to her and lay back in the bed tiredly as she was wrought of strength.
”The cheek of it,” Akos hissed with venom as she marched out of the ward and almost collided with Dr Nat who though wasn’t on duty had arrived to check in on the accident victim he had rushed in. He looked startled at Akos who seemed to be quite angry in contradiction to her amiable persona. He rushed after her when he found Kutorkor asleep and caught up with her as she walked briskly to the Nurse’s Station.
”Hey, what’s the matter with you?” he said as he touched her arm.
She kept quiet. She was so worked up that she was on the verge of tears. He took her to his special corner of the building. A corner of a balcony that had a view only he seemed to enjoy. It offered an uninterrupted view of a cassava farm.
He sat her down and gave her the unopened bottle of water he had in his hand and enjoyed the view of the cassava farm, with its occasional goats and sheep wrecking havoc on someone’s labour.
She stole glances at him as she sipped from the bottle. She knew most of the nurses fancied him but she had had no interest in him. She wanted a man who loved her enough to want to be with her not a handsome man who had nothing but his looks to fall on. She wanted to be pursued, with love, sweet words and with care, not because she was available but because she was loved. So she had not fawned on him as the other nurses had.
”Now can you tell me what the problem seems to be?” he asked gently. He knew her as a no-nonsense type of person who wasted no time with fickle things.
”I am sorry,” she said with a little bit of shame. ”I got agitated because the patient you brought in is the same one who abducted a patient here the other time.”
”Ohh I see. So she’s the one that took that Billy chap away,” he said, trying to remember something that was pricking his mind.
It seemed to him as if there was a connection to something somewhere but was unable to grasp it.
”Maybe I overreacted. I had bonded with Billy Gosa and she arrived out of the blue to take him away,” she said, trying to make light of it.
A bell rang in his mind again but he silenced it with a shrug.
Akos got up then, straightened up her crisp-looking uniform, and sought permission to leave before her supervisor noticed her disappearance. He nodded absent-mindedly and waved her away.
Mary had been brooding a lot since the day Dr Nat visited. She found herself thinking about him a lot, comparing him with Billy in all spheres of life, and of how he had loved her even when her life was in shambles and the darkest hour of her life. At a time when she needed emotional stability, he was there for her even if it was as a friend.
But he was so honourable and honest enough to confess his love for her. She was touched.
Billy, the love of her life, on the other hand, had treated her so badly in the past. It was as if he had cast her away like trash. He had gone after other girls even when he was with her. He had refused to pick up her calls, shunned and forgotten about her, and had only found his way back to her when his life was at its lowest ebb.
”That man had even tried to get me to abort my babies. How can I be with someone like this?” she reasoned to herself.
”It is important for me to think about this carefully,” she said to herself with sadness as if in search of answers.
Even though Nat seemed to be humanity’s best gift to any woman, it was Billy who got her heart as a gift.
”Once bitten, twice shy,” she quoted, in an attempt to convince herself to remove Billy from her life. She was confused about the way forward, even when she was convinced about what the reasonable thing to do was. Especially with the potentially constant harassment by that evil priestess to them.
”It’s not everyone we love that we can get married to,” she said with frustration.
Those thoughts went through her mind and influenced her thinking concerning her relationship with Billy.
So she, who hitherto couldn’t bear going through a day without calling or sending a WhatsApp message to him ceased doing so. Even then, thoughts of him refused to go away.
If either Maame Konadu or Billy had seen the change in her, they made no mention of it. As for Billy, it could be attributed to how busy he was with bettering his life. He was so busy that it could take a tsunami for him to be jerked back into reality for him to understand what was going on.
Truth be told, Maame Konadu had absolutely no inkling of the life-changing decision her daughter had taken. She was more concerned with the state of health she was in as she so easily got tired. She had taken to not prying too much into her daughter’s privacy and would only interfere when she found her going astray, which she hadn’t, so far. She felt Mary had her life under control without knowing the details or the torment she was secretly going through.
Dr Nat was bored with the kind of life he found himself leading. It had always been that way with him but he needed a change. His only previous interests had been his love for medical journals, watching TV and the occasional stray nurse in his bed. He wanted more than all that. He wanted a permanent partner but his choice hadn’t appeared yet, it seemed.
His mind went on that plumpy patient. The lady who was knocked down by the runaway taxi cab. When he was told that she refused to leave after being discharged because he wasn’t around, he was quite intrigued. Akos, who called to tell him was so irritated that it took all of Nat’s placating skills to calm her down.
”I heard you refused to leave because I wasn’t around,” he had told her with an amused smile when he made it to the hospital eventually.
”I wanted to thank you personally for what you did for me on the street,” she had said with a show of gratitude.
They were sitting in the Cafeteria with glasses of fruit juice in front of them.
”I came to town to search for the father of my unborn child but found him living with another woman who had given birth to twins,” she had said, with tears threatening to come out of her eyes.
”Ooh, sorry,” he had said, and again, a bell rang in his mind.
”It’s okay. That’s life,” she had said bravely but with sadness.
”Where did you arrive from,” he asked saddened.
”I came from Mantsekrom. I am going back today, but would come back another day to reason with him.”
Bingo! It dropped. He stared at her as he recollected how Akos had told him about Billy being abducted by a woman.
“This is the woman therefore Billy could only be Mary’s runaway boyfriend who escaped from his responsibilities to Mantsekrom. That’s the connection that has been so elusive,” he mused.
”I am so sorry,” he told her and assured her of everything going to be well for her.
She eventually left after the automatic exchange of phone numbers.
A FEW DAYS LATER
Mary, regretful about how she had shut off Nat went to him but in a cunning way. She had used the periodic weighing of the twins as the excuse to be there and had enquired of him from the nurses.
“Your Dr Nat has become moody these days o. Go and cheer him up,” Auntie Mary told her.
”Whose Dr Nat. Please don’t start,” she said in mock anger but it pleased her a lot that he was on duty.
”You be there and waste time. Nurse Akos is biding her time and would soon pounce on him,” the elderly woman whispered to her.
”She dare not,” Mary said with humour which got the midwife smiling widely. She had no idea that the young mother was weakening towards the handsome doctor.
Mary left in search of the doctor and found him talking to someone on the phone.
”I am here. Tell the one you are talking to that effiewura (‘house owner’) is here so she should clear off,” she said with a smile that instantly rendered him speechless.
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