WHEN LOVE MET SCIENCE {COMING 2024}

CHAPTER ONE

Being sick sucks.

The first day she knew of her condition, she was just seven. She had been feeling severe pain and everything her parents did to help wasn’t helping. It wasn’t the first time she felt pain in her joints but this time, it was more painful. The day would start with her mother entering her room with a heating pad and end after she had taken her drugs.

“Why am I always sick?” She once asked her mom after seeing the extreme concern etched on her face.

Her mother’s black eyes had a hint of pity, tears glistering them up. “Everyone falls sick. It is nothing.”

“Why are Demi and the twins never sick? I am weak all the time.”

“Tell her the truth, Michelle. Let her know what is wrong with her,” Her father replied instead as he walked into her room.

Her mother’s eyes slayed him with her gaze. “Do you not understand? She will grow up to hate us if she knows.”

“I will not grow my daughter in a lie. She deserves to know.”

It was the first time she saw her parent argue. They tried their best not in arguing in front of their children. On the bed then, her curiosity was greatly piqued. What was it that everyone was keeping away from her?

Her spacious room suddenly felt so small with tension slicing through the air.

“Why am I so different?” She asked, again.

For a while, there was silence in the room. Sometimes, she felt her life would have been so great if no one answered her then.

Her father swallowed with great difficulty as he adjusted his thick black glasses. Those next words he had said changed her life forever. “You were born with sickle cell disease. I am sorry, Tito.”

Then she didn’t understand what he had said. She had never even heard of those words.

“Oh, I could go to the hospital and get treated right?” She asked.

Now, she was seventeen and it was still the same. She still hated hospitals. The smell of bleach and antiseptic, the white colors, the beds, everything that could describe a hospital. She hated it.  Perhaps, it might be because hospitals were associated with sick people and according to her parents, she was one of those sick people. From the hospital bed, she could see nurses in white uniforms walking down the hallway. God, this was so annoying.

Years later as she grew up, she researched if she could ever be cured but the result left a sour taste that lingered forever. Sickle cell disease was a type of disorder that causes the red blood cells to contort into a sickle shape. Those cells die and can block blood flow which could cause pain.

“One day, you are going to get yourself killed and I wonder what you will have poor me do then,” Her mother said, shifting in the white plastic chair. She looked at her mother. She was a splitting image of the woman. They both had dark skin and long black hair. The only difference was Tito was slimmer.

And if there was one thing Nigerians were fond of, it was the way they made one feel bad for being skinny.

She sighed and glanced at the rubber tube with the white liquid passing through it, holding the needle stuck in her left arm. Her mom had always been a dramatic person. If she wasn’t yelling about Tito’s death, it would be something else with a rhyme that sounds like 'Use your drugs.'

She had been on this bed for two hours and she was already losing her mind. This was why she didn’t want to come in the first place. Taking fluids through IV was time-wasting. Each drop was taking about two minutes. She didn’t have that time to spare.