If Love Can Defy All Odds, What Excuse Does Hatred Have?
Dealing with family issues was not new to me, not after years of practice. I had heard and seen and intervened in a lot. Although, compared to what I had seen during my time at Emergency Medicine, I would pick it all over again.
With family medicine, things are usually in a controlled state before all hell is let loose. And usually, things can be done at a comfortable pace. In fact, rushing things has a way of making matters worse. We know emergencies when we see them and know how to refer when needed. But, most times, emergencies know to find their way to emergency care.
But in Emergency Medicine, everyone is in the military mode. You are never fully relaxed. If you relax, you are lax (oh boy, see rhymes!) The moment you think the worst has passed, that’s when the devil rears his ugly head and decides to go on rampage. You are meant to just have adrenaline pumping in excess and on the stand by.
It is simple, if you are not ready, the patient or patients, like the days mass casualties decide to occur, would meet you so and you’d be counting dead bodies before you know it.
I remember the case of a father and his son who set out to work one fateful day. I don’t know them from Adam but I can imagine that they were enjoying the cool breeze blowing past as the car sped on and maybe talking about the plan they had for the day.
Maybe they even joined other passengers to talk about the government and everything wrong in Nigeria (lol, it takes one person in the bus saying, “God safe us in Nigeria” and the whole bus becomes a community. We share the same palava).
The driver had been swerving potholes and showing his skills in the extreme sports of driving on Nigerian roads and was doing well. Then, mid yawn, the last thing the father remembers was the driver plunging into one of these manhole-like potholes and losing control.
Father fractured both legs on the spot and God knows if those legs would walk again.
And the son? Fractured his right thigh bone and perforated his intestine.
Ladies and gentlemen, when cases like these come in, you are either ready or you’re a murderer.
That’s minus the very much avoidable tertiary delays we encounter in most Nigerian hospitals. (That’s how a periop nurse was telling me that I have to get the anaesthetist to come tell her directly to send for the patient. And when the anaesthetist arrived and did as she bade him to, she told him to go and inform the porter himself.????. Meanwhile, patient’s BP was singing ?low high, low high, low high?)
Now, with Lolo and Abbey, I was not sure if I was dealing with an emergency or an urgency.
Here were little children risking their own future just to get back at their parents. What could have happened?
Lolo was willing to go through pregnancy and it’s ills just to gain… What?
I was once a teenager and I remember clearly that I carried my fear of pregnancy right into marriage. Carrying another human in me was a big deal and forget all that anti-premarital sex talk, I was not going to easily get used to the fact that my body was capable of doing such. This is a whole human we are talking about here!!!
“Lolo, what happened? Who hurt you?”
I figured that was the best way to start; trying to understand where she was coming from.
“My parents keep talking about God and getting saved but they are living a lie. They think they can deceive everyone. I can’t even believe they get so many people attending their church.”
“You don’t attend? I thought as their child…”
“You think they care? They have Abbey, he is enough of a good church going child for them.”
Abbey shifted uncomfortably in his seat. This was getting brutal. He was torn between leaving and missing out on finding out his unfortunate role in Lolo’s scheme of things or staying put while being battered verbally.
“And you are trying to make them pay for it?”
“Something like that. You see, everyone sees them as mini gods but I know better… Especially about my mum.”
“I’m sorry but I think I have to call your mother.”
“She does not even know we are here in Ibadan.”
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
(yeah, don’t you also like dollars?)
“Gòkè, you are a dog. Why did I even marry you again?”
“See pot calling kettle black. Have you forgotten where I picked you up from?”
“You did not pick me up from anywhere, pastor. According to your gospel that night, God arrested me. So, stop forming hero. I’m not part of your congregation… Gullible fellows.”
“Watch your tongue! I don’t care how far I have strayed from the truth but those people, my congregation, still believe in God through me.”
“No sir, they believe in God through Jesus. You’re really getting dull in these spiritual matters? Have you been studying the Word at all? Asewo.”
“That is enough! We have bigger issues at hand. We have not heard from our children for a week, shouldn’t that bother you?”
“I can’t say for your son but I am sure Lolo is doing just fine.”
“You are arrogant and blind. Your daughter hates you, yet, you have no clue. When last did you speak with her? Do you want her to toe the path you once walked? Do you want her exposed to the same evil?”
“Pastor, did you say exposure? She walked that path with me. She had to if we were going to have a life worth living. She did not like it. She first resisted it. But she eventually came to see that I did it all for her.”
“Listen to yourself. You prostituted your own daughter and you’re claiming it was for her benefit. You’re are more crazy than I thought.”
“Please!!! You are not her father. You will never be. Please pick up that phone and save us from losing our hearing to that hideous ring tone of yours.”
The call lasted less than 5minutes.
“Aduke, we are going to Ibadan. Today. Now.”
“Why? What’s going on? Who died? Tori, I am not buying aṣọ ebi oh.”
“That same brain you used to think of aso ebi at this time is the same one you’ll use to fathom how our kids traveled from Lagos to Ibadan without our knowledge… Since last week.”
