She was fond of leaving the table without touching her glass of water.
Source
I had spoken to her severally about it but she didn't remember most of the time. Sometimes when she did, she just took a sip.
I took at least two sachets of water after eating because I didn't eat a lot of food. It seemed our cases were reversed, she ate a lot and drank little water, while I ate a little and drank lots of water.
We laughed about it sometimes. When she was teasing me about eating like a mouse, I would tease her about drinking water like a chicken.
But today she was clutching her stomach and writhing in pain. I returned from school to meet her like that, rolling on the floor, moaning lightly, and holding the sides of her stomach.
“What's wrong?” I noticed she was sweating profusely too when I got closer to her. She was moaning “My stomach…” inaudibly.
I was confused for some time, knowing that wasn't the right time to ask questions like what she ate or when it started. I decided to help myself with the answers, walking around the house carefully to observe if any packaged food nylon was lying around.
There were two pots on the electric cooker we used. One of them was empty but contained oil from what I perceived to be beans, while the other had the remains of oats in it.
That answered my first question.
I went over to the dustbin as well to rummage through a broken shaving stick, small pieces of local broomsticks sticking out of the black nylon, and a fancy wrapping sheet that had ants and small linings of icing on it.
I sighed wearily then went back to my roommate.
“Have you had water since you returned home?” I asked her, she wasn't supposed to be in school that day but judging from the cake wrapper, she had been somewhere else. she shook her head gently from side to side, no.
I sighed again. I felt my underarms begin to moisten up and small beads of perspiration trickling between my small neck folds, I was supposed to have gone into the shower so I could feel refreshed but with the situation on the ground, I couldn't.
I took a bottle of warm water from the carton lying in our kitchen instead and took it to her.
“Try to drink this. Don't force it down your throat, drink it gently until you're done” She raised her eyes to look at me. It wasn't a look of gratitude, her face was already contorted with pain but her eyes looked at me as if I had brought her poison.
I was gritting my teeth hard without knowing it, my chest was already rising and my heart was palpitating, but I took several deep breaths to calm myself down. If I got angry at that point, she would be the one left to suffer.
I took my phone and placed a quick call to one of the senior medical students I knew.
“Are there oranges around?” He asked, I replied negatively, “Then let her take some warm water. At least two bottles. She should be able to empty her bowels after that”
I turned back to her, a smirk on my face. She too heard it because she was uncorking the bottle of water.
I sat with her throughout the drinking process, when she was done with the first bottle, she ran into the toilet and began releasing foul odors into the air. I had to run outside to avoid being suffocated.
By the time she took her second bottle of water, she spent almost an hour emptying her bowels into the toilet. When she was done, I took the air freshener spray on the toilet window and nearly emptied its content into the air.
She laid down and slept like a baby till the next morning. I woke up to find that two extra bottles of water were gone.
“Treasure,” she began when she noticed I was awake, “do you know that a human being is meant to take 8 glasses of water in a day? It is said to flush toxins out of the body and keep the body organs functioning properly”
I burst into laughter, “Oh, when did you become a health science teacher?”
She shook her head, “After what happened to me yesterday, I decided to do small research and I found that drinking water is underrated. I know I'm not a water person but I'll try my best. Affliction shall not rise the second time, please”
I laughed so hard at her last statement that water seeped out of my eyes, but I agreed with her, drinking water definitely needed to be taken seriously.