PICKING ROSES
Fadare. I’ve always loved that name. When I was in secondary school there was a girl, Helene Fadare. I was in love with her. She was three classes my senior that when I was in jss2 she was in ss2. Even when she punished me, I didn’t feel bad, I saw it as a way to spend more time with her. I know, I was mad. Anyways it was that bad. When she graduated I can remember being moody and then punishment return to the cold harsh treatment it was. Not a way to spend time with Helene.
It came as a shock to me that when I saw her name on the list of patients I was to see. All those emotions came rushing back. I tried to cool myself but breathing and breathing seemed to be taking more air out of my lungs than helping. Then I thought, maybe it wasn’t not her. That was a common Yoruba surname so it was very very possible it was not her.
It was her. She walked in very nicely dressed and somehow still had the same scent she had all those years ago. She greeted me and smiled. I replied to her greeting and we began. Her consultation was very brief. She already knew she was dying. All she wanted to know was if there was going to be pain. There was no way I could answer that in the negative so I refused to answer her. She smiled and said it was okay. The life she had lived definitely caused her so much pain death would not be able to compare. Nonetheless, she smiled the same way she smiled when she walked into my office and then she left. I had put my head in my hand considering waiving away all the other patients when she popped back in. This time, only her head,
“Sorry Doc, what does the N in your name stand for?”
It was probably an irrelevant question but even after all these years, the quiver in my voice gave away that there was nothing I was not willing to do for Helene.
“The N stands for N. Uhm N Ayotamuno-Adejoke. I — I kept my father’s name”
“Hmmm” she smiled and then she left. I would probably give Helene all the money in my account if she asked for it. The way she smiled gave away the open ended thread that maybe, just maybe she remembered me. That was enough hope to get me through the day and the other patients. My husband would be getting good sex tonight because the only person I had really truly loved had crossed my path again. I should have done a victory dance but before my confidence reached that stage, the next patient walked in. One Mrs Ekedigwe. She was the kind of woman who from the way she spoke and looked, you could tell she valued things more than people. Telling her she was dying would undo her but then not telling her would be worse.
“Doc morning ehn, I have gone to one of the big hospitals you know because my husband can afford it and if need be, we can even go abroad to get a second opinion ehn so is it actually true that I am dying. Because the Lord can save me. I know he can. If I maybe pray more and fast more or maybe even give more I know my husband can afford it, I know I won’t die. Doc please say something”
I cleared my throat but it was futile because nothing that was going to come out of my throat would pacify her. Everything I would say to her would be footle. Maybe I should tell her husband to tell her that she is dying. After all he could afford it.
It was two weeks later that I saw Helene again. She came to the hospital for her routine check-up and as the stars aligned would have it, I was the doctor who saw her. She looked tattered today. As I would presume, maybe death was taking its toll on her. She shuffled into the room and plunked down on the seat heaving.
“Morning doc” she said in between breaths and before I could reply her, her phone rang,
I used to rule the world, seas would rise — -
“Yes?” she began the call. The person on the other line talked and talked and talked and she put up an irritated face while mouthing an ‘I’m sorry’. She finally spoke back “Let me call you back. I’m in the Doctor’s office”. Not waiting for a response, she ended the call.
“I hate men you know. They’re all so stupid. This particular bastard I’ve been his side piece for the past ten years. Would you believe that? Ten fucking years. And and now he’s just called me with such excitement that he’s met the one. I mean I’m supposed to be the one”
She finished speaking and was waiting for me to reply. I couldn’t. There was nothing I could say that would have been enough to pacify the pain she was in.
“I’m sorry Doc. That wasn’t professional. So today we’re supposed to see if the wound is healing eh?”
I nodded still unable to speak. She stood up and started towards the examination table. Helene was one of those people whom time had been fair to. Like wine. It was unnerving to think that someone was treating her the way she complained of.
During the examination, I learned that the man’s name was Seyi. She had met him in her university days. She had fallen in love with him. She said it so casually yet with so much fire. He never liked her back or at least not in that way. She was however hoping that one day he was going to wake up and love her. It had been 10 years and nothing. He still called her when he needed fashion advice by 2p.m and when he was horny by 2a.m.
“I wonder how I got to be that one you know. The one who doesn’t know if she’s here nor there. I honestly do pray that one of these days, I have the nerve to tell him off”
The smile she gave when the examination was over had to be one of the saddest smiles I had ever seen. Even sadder than the one I had on all those years back when I found out I couldn’t have children.
“How old are you Helene?”
The question came out of nowhere well it came out of my mouth. Rolled off my tongue and I hadn’t even known I wanted to ask it.
She looked at me the same way I would have looked at myself. She squinted a bit then she answered;
“I’m thirty. Thirty years old and I’m dying of cervical cancer. I should have a movie made just about me”
Now I had gotten my answer, I didn’t know what to do with it except go back to my desk and scribble it on a piece of paper. Helene had put on her normal clothes and sat down except on the edge of my table.
“Doc, I might miss my next appointment. I have a poetry festival to attend in Lagos and considering that it might be my last, I should attend. You know. One more for the road before I meet God. I’m a big fan plus I want to know why I had to live through so much pain in one lifetime”
“How do you know you’ll go to Heaven”
“Because Doc, the only thing that really really takes people to hell is unbelief. And you can search or at least try to search but you’ll never find another who believes like I do. I mean I believed Seyi would wake up and love me. What’s more believing that one man who was God loved me enough to die for me and that will take me into eternal bliss. That’s a very underrated love story”
The way she said it, no one had ever told it to me like that but unbelief still crept in.
“What if it’s not real. All of it”
“Doc I’ve seen not one not two not ten pastors speak about God with such passion it could move the Earth and all its contents. Anybody who is spoken about with such passion even in their absence has to be worth something”
She smiled and even after such a convincing speech, she said
“Only you can believe for yourself. I can’t make you”
If ever I had such courage to talk about Helene and the way I truly felt about her to another living soul, my passion would try to move the Earth. It just had to. We agreed that she would miss the next appointment and I bade her farewell. I couldn’t see another patient that day. Helene was worth ten. She left my office exactly two hours after she had come in and I never saw Helene again.
It was a Tuesday 10 a.m. I was sitting in my university Cafeteria reading a textbook for a test I had in two days. The food had tasted the same bland way it always tasted except I wasn’t hungry enough to endure it. Some law students passed by in their white and black arguing as always. I wonder if their jaws ever hurt them from talking so much.
“You should have taken the Fried rice. It tastes a lot better”
The voice belonged to my husband. Then he was not my husband. He was Lanre Adejoke. Lanre the engineering student who had invented something. I can’t remember what it was because I actually never knew what it was. I assumed it was something he either got too little credit for or too much. That was the way it always happened.
Lanre’s attempt at small talk catapulted him into my boyfriend some months later. He was good to me. he even said I love you first. He bought me expensive things and wanted to take me everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Lanre. I adored him but it was that kind of love that only grew because he had loved me first and because my parents liked him.
Three years after medical school I married Lanre. His love for me did not diminish even one day. Not even the day we found out I couldn’t have children. It was ironic really. A gynaecologist that could not have children. Instead he spoke of adopting and surrogacy. Lanre didn’t deserve my half hearted love. He deserved love that shook the earth with passion and someone who liked to travel like him. He didn’t deserve that I was contemplating leaving him because I was in love with a woman. Or maybe he deserved it. Not the cruelty in it but the right to be loved properly. Everybody deserved to be loved properly. He deserved kids, he deserved romance and fire.
What about me? I don’t know what I deserve. Maybe I deserve to not be with anyone. I don’t love Lanre enough and Helene doesn’t even know I love her and the baring fact that she worships Seyi and the skin piercing fact that she died not knowing and not remembering me.
Senior Helene is coming to my class. Her being labour prefect is so good. I can see her more often. What can I do to make her notice me.
“N, get up and follow me to my class.”
It worked. I don’t mind kneeling down here all day. Senior Helene and Senior Dami are talking about jumping the fence to go to the boys’ school this night. Senior Helene should not do it. if they catch her. They might expel her. I don’t want her to leave.
“N get up and go back to your class. Don’t make me come back there or you and that your weekend in our room. Before you leave, ask Senior Zainab to give you my perfume”
Picking Roses. The name of Senior Helene’s perfume is picking roses. Smells very nice, I wonder how many she has because she always smells this way.
“Thank you” she smiled at me.
There was a knock on my door. It was the receptionist.
“Doctor N, I have news about one of your patients. Not very good news I’m afraid. Her name was ehm ehm ehen Helene. Helene Fadare. News came that she passed away this morning. Her neighbour called to tell us. Apparently she has no family. Only one other person, one Mr Seyi and the neighbour said when they told him, he cut the call and never called again. What do you suggest we do”
The room was spinning. The reception was still standing there waiting for me to reply her tapping her feet incessantly. I took a deep breath and asked her,
“Did her insurance cover such contingencies”
“Apparently she’s from the popular Fadare family so yes it covers it”
“Okay then, ehm get the ambulance to go pick up her body from the house so we can bury her immediately. See if we can contact anybody from the family”
With a nod, she left my spinning office. In less than an hour, the ambulance came back only with a lifeless Helene. The receptionist was not able to contact anybody from the family. At the end of the day it was just me and lifeless Helene in the cemetery.
Helene never got to go the festival one last time. With the way she wanted to go I wish she had gone. There was nothing really worth anything if you didn’t want to do it as much as Helene wanted to go to the festival.
Thinking about all the things Helene never got to do made the cemetery spin too. The paper work was long but if that was going to be the script for Helene, it was worth all the ink and time.
Seyi contacted the hospital some days later asking where she was buried. He described himself as her husband. Pitiful. She never got to tell Seyi off. She never got to tell him that she deserved better. She never got to remember me.
Thank you for reading! Happy Pride month and may we get the time and chance for all our loves to see and acknowledge us.
