KIMBERLY PART 11.

Kim visited Mrs Smith at the home. 

(Continued from the previous part).

“I am Adams, you may not remember me because it has been how many years now? Four years I guess because you were still around nine years old the last time we met. A lot of things had happened in between as well” he said.

“I am sorry, that name did not ring a bell” she said apologetically.

“No problem, perhaps you remember my good friend, Smith?”

“Mr. Smith?! Of course I remember him, how could I ever forget him?”

“Good. He was my golf partner, he still is but I’m afraid he may never play golf again” he said suddenly with sadness as if speaking to himself. Kim wanted to ask what he meant but he had quickly moved on with other things “You were involved in a vehicle accident today and it was just God that made me to be passing by so when it happened, I waited to offer help, not knowing who was injured but I was shocked when I found you in a pool of blood on the road. The bus driver ran in the middle of all the noise but we thank God that you are safe and sound”

“Thank you so much sir, may God reward you for your kindness abundantly” Kim said gratefully. “But you didn’t use to come to the Smith’s place when I was there because I knew most of the friends of the family. I knew the Isholas…”

“Ah, Ishola, that is our third man. Smith, Ishola and I are what we called aaro meta the three cook stones that will never let the soup pour away.” He said with nostalgia and Kim could sense his unease.

“Sir, tell me about the Smiths, how are they now? Angela must be grown up now and beautiful too?” she asked wistfully.

“I’m afraid the Smiths are not so lucky right now…”

“What happened?” Kim asked, agitated.

“Well, about four years ago, the family lost its first son, Maxwell, did you know him? A very fine and promising young man”

“Yes, I was aware of that” Kim said.

“The following year, his sister too died…”

“Jesus Christ!” Kim shouted. “Why, how, how come?” she began to cry softly.

A nurse came in and shot Mr. Adam a baleful look.

“You shouldn’t have told her anything that could complicate her issues” the nurse chided. “She has to rest now, please you may leave” the nurse said and sent him out of the ward. She came back to bed and adjusted the drip “You have to take it easy young lady; you are in no position for excitements and surprises. You need to rest now.” She said as she exited the ward.

Tears rolled down Kim’s cheeks as the door closed softly after the departing nurse. She remembered the last time she saw Rose, she had been going back to school after her brother’s burial and before she left, she had told Kim and Angela to take care of Mrs. Smith and bring her out of her grief. Kim remembered how Angela and her had risen up to the challenge and how they have succeeded before she left them to start living with her aunt.  She remembered how had treated her like a member of their family and how generous she was to her. Kim cried herself to sleep that morning. When she woke up, the sun was already setting and she was alone in the ward. The drip has finished so she sat up in bed and removed the syringe from her arm. She rubbed the place where the syringe had left a tiny mark.

She sat up in bed and began brooding about her life and how things were going from and to worse. She was still on this an hour later when Mr. Adam came in. he came with a bouquet of flowers and a card which he dropped on the table beside her bed. Kim thanked him and immediately he sat, Kim asked him what killed Rose, it was a question she had been meaning to ask when the nurse shooed him out the previous day.

“It was a genetic defect. When Rose’s incidence happened, the autopsy showed that she had died from the same cause as like her elder brother- Maxwell. Medical practitioners said it was a genetic defect that had never been discovered before and that it was as a result of the incompatibility of the genes of both Smith and his wife and this backfires on their children” he said.

“So what about John and Angela, I  hope they are safe?” Kim asked, alarmed.

For a very long time, he didn’t say anything. His silence confirmed Kim’s fears.

“Jesus!” She wept.

“Did you know that yesterday, we were coming from John’s burial when I saw you?”

“John too?!” she shouted, unable to take it any longer. John was the third child of the Smiths; he was very calm and too brilliant for his age.  Rose used to call him The Living Library. There was hardly a thing that he didn’t know despite his young age. John had been the perfect and amiable teacher to Kim while she lived with them. He was the only who understood perfectly how her Tourette worked and how to ensure that she did not have to be over excited. John had been. If John was dead too, that leaves only Angela out of the four children.

“Yes, it is a very painful thing. We were coming from the cemetery when I saw you. His death had negative impacts in the family.  Lola has been admitted at a psychiatrist institution since Rose died, her death really affected her mentally and she had to be checked into the institution. As I am speaking with you, she doesn’t know yet that John too is gone.”

“What about Mr. Smith, how is he holding on through all these?”

“He has been valiantly trying to bear the pain but no matter how prepared one is, the death of a loved one will leave a permanent mark. Since Rose’ demise, he had been paying the best scientists in the world to ensure that John and Angela were saved but John’s eventual demise last week made him give up and lose hope. He collapsed when he heard the news of John’s demise and had been in coma since; the doctors said that he may not regain consciousness again”

When Kim was discharged later in the afternoon, at her insistence, Mr. Adam drove her to Mr. Smith’s hospital. They were led into his private ward by a plump smartly dressed nurse. Angela was sitting beside his bed and holding his cold and lifeless hand in hers. She stood up when she saw Kim and ran to take her into an embrace. They both held each other and Kim cried very hard. Mr. Adam left the reward after he had checked on Mr. Smith on the bed. After a very long time, Kim and Angela pulled apart and surveyed each other. Angela looked haggard and forlorn. Kim’s heart melt and she broke down into another round of racking sobs. She felt sad to see Angela whose contagious happiness could melt even the hardest heart, looking sad and if she had never smiled before.

Quickly, the two girls told each other what had happened within those four years that they were apart.   

“Kim, I don’t want to spend the rest of my days shedding a single tear anymore, I have done enough of that already when bro Maxwell passed on, when Sister Rose too passed on and recently when John too joined them. My only regret is that our parents have to see all these sadness. I cannot imagine a greater sorrow than this.  No pain is comparable to a mother’s or a father’s whose child dies”

They both took a stroll in the evening through the big garden at the back of the hospital. They pause when they got to an artificial fountain. They watched as water rose and fell in the fountain.

“Did you know that dad owns this hospital?” Angela asked suddenly.

“Really?” Kim asked, wondering why she had told her that.

“Yes. Apart from this, he has three more hospitals and many companies and industries that are almost countless. Yet, he gives to the less privileged a lot. Sometimes I wonder why God will not consider all his goodness and spare his children, his happiness” There was a sorrowful note in her voice that made tears swell up in Kim’s eyes again. “But whenever I think about this, I always also think that God’s ways are different from ours. He must have a plan that is not clear to anyone but God shouldn’t have given our parents children instead of plucking us away from them like this”

Later in the evening, they both went home to sleep. The big mansion looked forlorn and empty without the happy voices and noises that had once filled its walls. The cook, the gate-man and other workers in the family looked somber and sorrowful. Kim walked through the room, remembering how she and Angel used to run through the house, playing hide and seek. That was four years before but it looked like eternity.

They had a quiet supper that night with Mr. Smith’s secretary who came to ask Angela’s opinions about urgent decisions that needed to be made in all the companies and industries that Mr. Smith owned. Kim watched with undisguised fascination as Angela listened to the secretary and read carefully through the documents that he presented her to her to sign. All these took almost two hours, when they were done, the secretary left and it remained only Kim and Angela.

“You were so impressive” Kim said “And so matured”

“Dad could have done it better. He understands the situations and circumstances better than I could ever do. I can only try but thanks for the complement. Anyone could do it though. The day that dad wen into coma, the secretary had stood beside his bed, hoping that he would be able to sign the documents. I was mad at him at first when he explained the import of the documents to me, I fully understood the reason why they shouldn’t be delayed. Thousands of people are working in dad’s different companies and establishments. These people have families and their families have different needs. A family may urgently need a loan to pay a hospital bill for a surgery or to pay a school fees and so on. If I refuse to sign these documents because of my own grief over my family then I would be robbing another family of its happiness, I may be sending some children off to bed at night because I have refused to sign a document that will release the money that their parents need very badly to take care of them.”

“Hmm, you are so right. If all the privileged people in our society think this way, this world would be a better place”.

Kim and Angela were woken up early the following day that Mr. Smith had regained consciousness. This was very good news in the middle of all the sadness and gloom. They’d both planned to visit Mrs. Smith at the psychiatrist hospital that day but Mr. Smith regaining consciousness meant that they had to always be by his bedside henceforth and help out his recuperation process.

They met the doctor in charge of the hospital in the ward.

“He came to this morning” he told them as they walked in.

“Thank God!” they said as they neared the bed to peer at the sleeping Mr. Smith.

“But the shock had paralyzed the right side of his body. He may be confined to the wheelchair for the rest of his life”

This was a very deep shock to both Kim and Angel; this piece of news broke their hearts beyond imagination.

“But doctor, isn’t there anything you can do to avoid this?” Angela asked “Money is not an issue, all I want is to see daddy walking and happy again”

“Miss Angela, you should trust me that if this has a solution, I would have done it without even letting you know but it doesn’t. A part of his brain had shut down and this affects a whole side of his body.”

Angela thought long and hard about this. Being the decision maker for her family, she was now quick in identifying problems and providing solutions.

“Apart from not being able to walk, hope there is no other side effect?”

“It depends. The brain is a very complex part of the human body and each brain is unique in its operation. Until he gets well, we may not be able to say specifically what else this partial neurological shut down will cause” the doctor said gently. “In order for him to get better faster, you both have to always be near him and make him happiness. Happiness is free though it may be hard to get” the doctor said and he gathered up the charts by the bedside and put them in a file. “He is sleeping now but when he wakes up, I want you to be the first person he sees, so take care not to go anywhere till he wakes. Also, remember that the last thing he knew before he went into coma was the news of your brother’s death, so it might be very hard for him to bear when he wakes up. Good luck” he said and exited the ward.

Kim and Angela both took seats and sat beside his bed, gazing at huis sleeping features.

While they were waiting for him to wake up, they discussed a lot of things, especially about the fetus growing inside Kim’s body.

“Kim, what does it feel like to be pregnant?” Angela when they began to discuss again how Kim had planned to abort the pregnancy and how Angela had talked her out of it when they met again. “I may never experience it with this genetic problem” she said with a sad smile.

“It feels a lot different. For me, I feel powerful- like a god who can create because I am making another human being. Besides, it feels sometimes both exhilarating and annoying. You feel nauseous, dizzy at times, hungry and emotional. There are lots o other feelings, indescribable feelings. And then there’s a fear of the delivery day, the pains that you will most likely pass through before you give birth to the child. For married women with loving husband, pregnancy can be sweet because he will shower you with love, care and attention but for people like me who got pregnant out of wedlock, you are at the mercy of scorn and criticism and ridicule. It is harder in the ghetto where I was living before but here, it is a little bit bearable because I don’t see much people the ones I meet are educated enough to mind their own businesses”

“Speaking about education, what is your plan?”

“Everything I do every day is centered on going back to school. It doesn’t matter the number of setbacks that I have had, I am still going back to school and one day when I finally graduate at the top of the class, i would be proud to tell the world what I have been through.”

“Wow, that is so awesome.” Angela said admiringly. “Kim, I have a request, now that your aunt is no longer in the country and your uncle had treated you badly, don’t’ you think you should be part of us? Look at the way God brought you back into this family in the first place and now”

“I’d very much loved to. I wished that all these things did not happen to your family. Your family is one of the best in the world. But whatever happens to us, we must give thanks like you rightly said. Now, how does it feel, this genetic disorder?”

“Awful. Before John passed on, in his last days, he said that he felt as if his body belonged to someone else and he lived so much on drugs to dull the pains.  I can already feel the pains gathering in my own body and I knew I don’t have so much time left…”

“Don’t talk like that….”

Mr. Smith stirred from the bed and opened his eyes; they both stopped their discussion and stood up with smiles at him.

“Dad, are you alright?” Angela asked excitedly. “Can you imagine who you have here, it’s Kim!”

Mr. Smith’s eyes rested on Kim and there was a spark of recognition in his eyeballs. He face creased into a smile and he smiled, showing his teeth but he smile suddenly froze on his face.

“Where is John, he is gone too, right?” he asked, his voice came out raspy and in a whisper. Both Kim and Angela held his hand as he sobbed endlessly.

Later in the evening when he had calmed, Kim told him everything she’d been through. He listened without interruption at all she said and when she was through, he didn’t say a word. He kept gazing at a spot on the wall. Kim and Angela excused themselves from the ward as the doctor came in. for the rest of the night, both Kim and Angela sat at his bedside, reading some passages from his favourite books and singing him songs until he finally drifted into a deep sleep; that was when they left the hospital and went home.

Mr. Smith was in a lighter mood the next day when they arrived at his ward. A nurse was feeding him his breakfast. Angela relieved the nurse and began to feed him. They were all chatting happily in the meantime. At his request, a wheelchair was brought for him to sit on because he insisted that he wanted to take a stroll. Angela and Kim pushed his wheelchair out of the ward out into the early morning sun. They moved slowly through the garden, observing the beauty of nature in silence.

Kim gazed up longingly at a school of white clouds that were chasing one another in the blue sky and others eyes were drawn to the same spectacle.

“Wow, this is something you don’t see every day” Mr. Smith said sagely. “It is so funny that while we humans die and perish here on earth, the nature continues its beautiful existence, oblivious of our pains and sorrows”

“That is very true. But isn’t it right that our loved ones never die, that they are part of all the nature around us? They are in the air that we breathe? The water we drink? The trees and flowers that provide our foods?” Kim said. “I read that part in a book but I cannot remember exactly which one.”

“Whoever wrote that is indeed blessed. That makes all my pains bearable. Thinking that my children are part of the air I breathe and water I drink makes their loss a lot more bearable.” Mr. Smith said. I want that saying engraved in all the rooms in the house before I am discharged”

“I’ll see to it dad” Angela said, quickly taking note inside a jotter that she carried in her backpack. “How long does the doctor say that you are staying dad?”

“He said a week, after that, I will be able to go”

“That’s good to hear” Kim said “You should go on a vacation for a couple of months sir”

“I can’t, my businesses will suffer” he said immediately.

“No they won’t. dad, you have been out for the past one week, we thought we’d lost you but God brought you back. Within that time, there were considerable improvements in all your businesses, at least your secretary comes in every evening to brief me as he would come today but I won’t allow him to see you. You need a vacation like she rightly said. Take a sea trip to any part of the world and by the time you come back, you’d be refreshed and strong again. Remember, a dead man will not know anything about a business” Angela said but her dad said nothing again after that. The rest of the stroll was in silence.

At noon, the girls visited the psychiatrist hospital in Yaba where Mrs. Lola was admitted. The hospital was located on a large piece of land and it was walled round by tall imposing fence with barbed wires. There were many blocks of living quarters within it and the garden was filled with sweet smelling and rare species of flowers. They were made to fill a form and sign at the beautiful reception where beautiful landscape pictures hung on the walls. A nurse in an immaculate crisp white scrub came in and led them to the private suite where Mrs. Smith was admitted and all through the way, large canvas of nature pictures adorned the walls. The suite had its own living room, two bedrooms and toilets. A nurse stayed in the suite with Mrs. Smith twenty four hours to keep an eye on her and to record her recovery progress. On the day Kim and Angela visited, Mrs. Smith and the nurse were playing scrabble in the living room. A song was playing softly in the background. The song brought tears to Angela’s eyes as they waited for the suite’s door to be opened.

“Any problem?” Kim asked

“No, it ‘s just the song coming from the suite, don’t you remember it, Kim?”

Kim listened attentively but she couldn’t remember if she had heard the song before or not.

“Is there anything special about it, I can’t feel….”

“Do you remember one day when Maxwell was celebrating his birthday, before he travelled to the US? You remember that he was playing a song in his room and increased the volume till the whole house was shaking from its foundation….”

“Yes, yes, wait….this is the song!” Kim exclaimed, putting her hand on her mouth to suppress her shouting.

“Remember that day that all of us were singing and running through the house because he kept the song on repeat, remember?”

“How could I forget? I remember the neighbours ringing the doorbell and telling us to put down the volume and how we have all insulted them….”

“Yes, though we all apologized to all the neighbours on our street the following day” Angela said nostalgically.

The door was opened by the nurse and she led them into the living room where Mrs. Smith was waiting on the couch. She jumped up from the couch excitedly when she sighted Kim and took her into an affectionate embrace.

“I thought I’d never set my eyes on you again, where have you been and why did you leave us for so long, don’t you miss us?”

“I missed everyone, it is long story and I’ll tell you. Kim said, still locked in the embrace”

The nurse served them fruit juice and excused herself to give them privacy. They exchanged pleasantries but no one mentioned John’s demise. Later in the evening, the girls took their leave after giving Mrs. Smith the gifts that they’d bought for her. They stopped at the Doctor’s office to hear the report about her progress.

“Your mother is progressing fine. She is getting better.” He said.

“But she seemed fine to me! Maybe there’s no need to get her admitted here in the first place” Kim said.

(To Be Continued)