pay the doctors

I was awoken by the repetitious chant, ‘ni chuki ndio nahisi’. Someone somewhere woke up feeling quite religious. Then suddenly the music stops. The curtain becomes a lot more circlic. It seems like everyone was standing up. Pin-drop silence. I guess that’s just what we do as humans. When we wake up and all we can do is stare at the white ceiling board above us. We look ahead and all we can fathom is the blue attire we have on. We try to laugh but all that manifests is a dry and rather scary cough. We try to smile but inside us is nothing but gloom. A sadness that comes from the rather aching wound on your shoulder, an uncomfortable stomach, a body that’s ready to give in at any moment. More than that, it’s the heart that gets you. The cards say ‘get well soon’ , ‘there’s no stronger person in the world’ , ‘speedy recovery champ’, but you….you are tired. You don’t wish to recover neither get well. But what gets you the most is the thought of not seeing the senders of the cards ever again. And how will these card senders feel once I’m gone? You heart sinks even further into an abyss, one of sadness and solitude. One which no hope exists.
The prayer is rudely cut short by the cough. Yes, that very dry and rather scaring one. The cough doesn’t seem to reduce. But the cousin or aunt just increases her volume to enable the Almighty hear her better…or maybe…just maybe the cough induces partial deafness. The prayer is suddenly brought to a halt by a continuous high pitched sound. A sound similar to the one you get in your ear after you alight from a loud matatu. It never spells any good fortunes. It’s a warning that your eardrums are in peril. But I was not alighting a matatu…and there wasn’t any loud music in the hospital or was the aunt a little too loud? For a moment there, I could not tell. This was definitely not in my ear.
The nurses frantically rush in. ‘Clear!’ ‘Clear!’ ‘Clear!’ . The aunt now breaks into tears. I can’t see her, but she is getting closer. Wheel sounds are too. A bed is wheeled past me. The aunt follows behind held afloat by her brother or uncle.
He had just come in yesterday. He didn’t even have a chance to complete his last prayer. He was on his last ‘Hail Mary’. He would have wanted to get a chance to see the flowers that were sent to him, eat the not so tasty hospital food, read the cards he had received. Maybe his cards had a better message, maybe written from the sender’s heart and not bought from the hawkers outside the hospital.
He would have wanted a chance to tell his mother and father how much he loved them and how thankful he was for the years he had had with them. Maybe he wanted to tell his siblings how he would get back on his feet as soon as possible and be there for them no matter what.
Maybe he had a wife, a few kids,..kids who, by the sheer definition of their ages, we not allowed into the ward. He most definitely would have wanted to hold them in his arms, kiss their foreheads and whisper into their ears, ‘daddy will be ok’. He would have so much liked to look at his wife in the eyes, get lost in them as he always had. Kiss her, hold her tightly in his arms, because it was the only place he found solace.
He definitely would have liked to finish his prayer. He would have liked a better defence before St. Peter.
What he would say, were he to wake up right now, was to tell the government to pay the doctors. Had there been a doctor in sight, then maybe, just maybe, he would not have the headache to deal with so much maybes. He would read his cards and stumbled upon some cash even. He would hold his kids and they would know they are safe. He would finish his prayer…St. Peter wouldn’t have to see him on that day.