"Doctor?"
Tari looked up to see a silhouette in the doorway, it took a while for the image to register.
"Yes Deola?"
"It's a minor, he was in involved in an accident, we have stabilized him but he'd be needing a blood transfusion sir"
"And suddenly you can't handle this?"
"His parents are in the waiting room sir, we are running a blood test, none seems to match, he's lost so much sir, I fear for his-"
"Get me his chart, meet me in the waiting room" Tari waved her away, surely the case wasn't as bad as she paints.
"And get nurse Tunji to look up with the blood bank" She couldn't stay to tell him that that was the first thing she did before coming to him, she scuttled off before he lost his temper.
*
"Nkem he's going to be alright. The doctors here should be capable, sit still for a while"
Ifeoma looked at her husband and envied his calm. Did he not see how badly mangled Chukwudi was? Could he not feel this foreboding fear that racketed her whole being?. The nurses were taking forever to come back, they just took blood samples but something nags at her navel, it tells her that all was not well. She ran.
"Hey lady, get a hold on yourself, this is a hospital, you don't run amok like that" Tari brushed off a woman who jammed into him head on. He saw the frantic look in her eyes and suddenly felt sad that he spoke to her in such manner. He hated that he was on edge this night. He held her hand to stable her.
Ifeoma withdrew her hand so quickly that you'd think something bit her. She remembered that touch from so many years ago. Cold and clammy, pressing over her mouth. Threatening to bludgeon her if she made a noise.
"Hold her legs apart for me!"
Her mind drifted to one night that she had let burn itself into her memory. The series of events unfolding before her was too much for her heart and as she phased she saw the white patch of skin on his collar bone, suddenly Ifeoma was spiraling, spiraling down sixteen years ago, it was Tari that held her from hitting the tiled floors of the hospital.
"Taribalimi, you have to help me, you have to help my son..."
As Tari connected a drip to the woman that fainted in the hallway he brushed of the disturbing thought of how the woman had said his full name, it was only the people from his past that could pull it together or was she familiar with his tribe? It was clear that it was her son in the emergency ward with the urgent need of a blood transfusion. Deola had noted that the boy was an Ab(-) and none of the parents blood-types matched and as they do not have the reserve in their bloodbank he let them run a syringe through him. His was an Ab(-). But what disturbs him most was how she must have lied to her husband about the child's paternity. How else would they be oblivious of his blood-type at this age! The boy was fifteen!
He held no sympathy as he told her when she came to, He expected her to break down in tears, at least for the fear of losing her marriage. It was her son alright, He wasn't adopted. Women and their unfaithfulness!, he shuddered with the thought of an innocent man being lied to, hooked with a child that wasn't his. Her silence irked him the more.
"Mrs Adioha, I think it's time you tell your family, tell them the truth" He offered, more out of despise.
"True, I should, but that child lying in there, hooked to those many IV, that child is your son".