Inquisitory: Patient 1; Fiction by Ghanaian Writer David Agyei–Yeboah

The moon danced with the sky, boring a path of vigorous bright light in its wake. The light streamed across Ntreh Avenue, a milky fluorescence that arrested the stillness in the air and the dark tinge of dead day. It bounced across the main road, which had ill-functioning street lights, joining in a stream of headlights that gave the road a silver and amber hue.

Silence

A few miles ahead, the road forks into an interchange. Then a community health clinic lies dotted across a shrubby left.

Silence

The silhouette of a beat-up Sedan slithers across the clinic’s car park. The driver kills the engine and steps out; wincing at the sheer cold of the night as she straps her backpack on her shoulders and scampers towards the main entrance.

Silence

She is wearing a bright blue sweat chemise with pure cotton wash pants, her feet bare from the hell she just escaped 30 minutes earlier. Behind the counter, the clerk, a formally dressed man with a pierced expression asks whether she has an appointment.

“I believe when the doctor gets to know my name, he’ll readily have me.”
“But madam we don’t work like that and at the moment he is in intensive care, performing surgery.”
“Then he’ll have to stop to see me.”
“Madam, with all due respect I believe you are not a self-conceited woman.”
“I am just a woman in desperation. What would you do if you were just informed you had two bullets deep in your skull allowing you life for only three days?”

The clerk shrieks in alarm and then manages to calm down, straightening his lemon chiffon necktie.
“C’est impossible. Madame,” bringing on a thick French accent. “If you could wait a few minutes, I am very sure he’ll be able to attend to you.”
The clerk gestures toward a wicker chair at the extreme left of the room, where a man lies curled, sleep, a close companion. “You can make yourself comfortable.”
She grumbles but finally makes her way to the wicker chair, looking up to see the clerk gazing back at her in pity. He turns his focus from her to some papers sprawled on his desk.

Silence

She keeps glancing at him, a thought beginning to form in her mind, then mouths, “What is your name, Mr. Clerk?”
“Francois Leblanc,” he replies without looking up.
“Oburoni clerk, I’m Leslie Quaynor.”
He keeps silent.
She walks straight to him and notices his features. Skin like milk clouds and pouty cherry lips, strange for a white dude.
“It’s nice meeting you anyway. I think you’re delicious to devour.”
He frowns. She lays a hand on his shoulders and leaning, whispers into his ear, “Oh boy have I got it for you!” She nibbles at his ear and breaks into a sprint, her forehead creasing as she gallops across the corridor to Intensive Care.

“Dr. Tetteyfio! Dr. Tetteyfio!” Her screams pierce the empty corridor as she races. Hearing footsteps behind her and assuming it is the clerk, she runs faster till nothing can be heard except her billowed panting and the trail of her bare feet.
She opens the door to another corridor. Inches from her, she sees ICU emblazoned on a door frame and can hear faint beeping slipping out the door to the corridor. There are two nurses sitting on a bench beside the door. Breath spent, she takes in three lungfuls of antiseptic air, plasters a smile across her face, and then reaches for the ICU engraved door.
“Madam, you can’t enter there. There’s an operation going on. You are not even supposed to be here.”
“Get out of my way.”
She yanks the bench away violently, hurling the nurses onto the marble floor, then rushes into the room. A foul odour greets her, pressing its fumes deep into her. Men in sky-blue overalls with ghost-white gloves and nose masks are huddled across a bed. A woman is stretched across the bed, her skull bare, brains sticking out at its right side. The men turn at the creak of the door. She recoils at the sight, barfing up all over the floor.

Silence

*********************************************************************

When she awoke, she tried to drink in her surroundings but felt her eyelids too heavy with sleep. She succumbed minutes later.
7 hours afterwards, she jolted upright from bed. She’d been dreaming about bodies of fire-consuming darkness. And she’d been the last caricature of darkness remaining. Her sheets were drenched and her head felt like it had been spinning on end. Noticing the walls enclosing her painted in Prussian blue, it dawned on her that she was in a patient ward. Ward 2. She’d been here numerous times. There’d been tears here, family here, and oh, lots of fits.
“But what happened?” she said aloud to herself.
“You passed out, Miss Quaynor.”
She was jolted by this exclamation. She had thought she was alone in the room. The voice came from the corner.
“Relax.”
She recognized Dr. Tetteyfio’s voice. “But how- why-did-I-”
“Please calm down. You’re stressed.”
He walked to her, placed a hand on her shoulder and helped her return to fetal position.
“Get some rest, when you wake up, we will talk in-depth.”
“But I just woke up. I must have been sleeping awhile.”
“You still need more rest.”
“Dr—”
He pulled the bedspread above her waist to breast level then lowered the tone of his voice. “It would do you some good.”
Before he closed the door, he added, “And….there were no bullets in your head. You’d be dead already if there was. You’ve been hallucinating. The bipolar is kicking in again. We need to re-calibrate your meds.”
Leslie tucked herself under his comforting voice and closed her eyes, allowing sleep to envelop her. Right before she slipped into a deep sleep, she smiled at the soft thud of the door and the swish of the curtains draped around it.

Silence

Glossary
Oburoni – White man