Munachi

|Chapter 17|

In a minute the light re-enters. It's place on the table again. It's an old lamp and someone hadn't deem it right to clean up the glass shade, stained and darkened with soot. In a moment, I can sense people around me. From the voices I guess they're adults like me. I can barely turn where I lay. I can't see faces, just images. The ward is damp. A pungent smell in the air, a mixture of chemicals and blood and perhaps sores. Some really smelly sores.

Though I was once a nurse, but that doesn't keep me from getting nauseous. My head feels really heavy. A nagging pain slowly doing havoc in my skull. The heaviness is rapidly spreading to my eyes. It's as if an unseen pair of hands is trying to shut them as I frantically trying to keep them open.
My head feels like twice its normal size. I feel like someone inserted a leather ball in in my head and inflated it to its maximum air content.

I begin to groan, trying so hard to muffle my pain. With great effort, I raise my right hand and touch my head. I feel the great swaddle of the bandage. It's so huge it feels like a ball. My hands are still exploring when I touch the wound at its sorest pain. It feels like the sting of a thousand bees tearing through my entire body.

♣♣♣

I squint as my shut eyelids slowly opens to see the sun pouring all over me. My bed is located at a far end beside the window, and the sun is shining like a spotlight right through the window onto my face, sending a warm glow all over me. My eyelashes flickers for a while, and for a moment, I feel as if the pain is gone. I wonder how I'd manage to fall asleep. It seems the darkness swallowed up the pain. Or is it the sunlight that has done the magic.

I have a desire to get up from the bed, but something seems to hold me down. And against that overpowering presence, there is a hunch on my path not to show a resistance lest my pain be stir.
I turn my face to the window in order to soak more of the sun. I still feel heavy, but the pain has dull somehow. My eyes are firmly fixed outside a brick wall fence, until a voice diverts my attention.

"You're finally awake!" the fat nurse wearing a pair of dark spectacles, stands close to my bed, a bright smile on her face. "I'll go get the doctor!" The nurse walks away.

He's led by the fat nurse to my bed. He is tall and straight. He is a dark man with a dean-shaven face. He approaches my bed with another nurse dressed in the customary blue pinafore.

"How're you feeling?" A smile accompanies the touch which lands on my left shoulder.

No reply. It's deliberate on my path.

The doctor must assume the wound and pain are responsible for my silence. He outstretches his right hand to the slender nurse who hands him a case file. He notices the file has no name. He looks at the nurse.

"No name?" he asks.

"She could barely talk when she was rushed in. It was an emergency," the nurse elaborates.

The doctor turns to me. "What is your name, ma'am?"

I remain silent. My eyes drifting from the doctor's face.

"Ma'am, tell us your name," snap the nurse who'd handed the doctor the file.

The man raises his hand to calm her. "That is no way to speak to a patient."

I fix the nurse a blank stare. The doctor's eyes are warm and engaging and he asks me again.

"Ma'am, can you please tell us your name?" he says, as calm as ever.

"Munachi," I answer.

That makes the man's smile wider. He writes down my name onto the case file and then he begins to examine my body. His touch is tender enough, but the soreness of my wound get me groaning at the slightest touch.

"What about your family, Ms. Munachi? Are there anyone we can contact?"

I become silent on this one. The doctor continue to examine the wounds in other parts of my body. I'm made to shift for a proper examination. Now I bare the pain with so much courage as if by so doing I might dissuade questions about my family.

The doctor writes in the file for about two minutes. Then he turns to the nurses. "Prepare her for dressing."

♣♣♣

Huge green curtains are draw round the bed forming a curtain cubicle. The doctor and the two nurses are in the cubicle with me in the center. The dressing of the wound begins.
They start with my head. The blood-soaked bandages are being unwrap. The doctor is tender enough, but the pain can't be avoided.
I begin to groan, especially when the blood-soaked bandages that seems immerse into the wound are being peeled off. In no time, the groaning changes into a stream of painful cries.

The bandages are all stripped. My wound lay bare. My skin hold together by a stitch. It must be a deep ugly gush with the way the doctor squintes his eyes.

The doctor is now done. And the pain in my head has somehow subsided, but the pain from my back feels like the type one gets when a thousand needles are to be stuck in one's spine as punishment.

After the slender nurse has inject me with hypodermic needle, I close my eyes pretending to sleep. When the curtain cubicle collapses, and the doctor and nurses left, I reopen my eyes.

Something inside of me detest this place. I wish to leave now if I have the strength, but I know I'll have to wait at least few more days for that. And besides, where will I go? Pain keep me awake for hours even though I'm trying so hard to hide it.