The smell assaulted his senses as soon as he got into the compound. Beni was here again. The night had dragged itself towards morning yet still morning had come. He moved from the World Outside through the wide blue gate. And the smell hit him harder. It was the same stinging smell he had associated with such places as this since his childhood. He felt uneasy. He whispered to himself that had he been given an option, he would have turned back. He would have gone to the World Outside. Yet here was necessity, forcing him to go through the gate into the compound.
Just outside the gate, the World Outside throbbed with life. Nothing stopped. The daily actions were carried out, watched and received as usual; almost as if the doers, watchers and recipients of such actions were oblivious of what was happening within the walls of the compound he now entered. People were shoving and shouting and cursing and laughing and boarding vehicles. And more. The vehicles and other automobiles not only deposited people at the gate but also ferried others from it. The battle had already begun in the wee hours of the morning. And in that morning bustle, it was evident that everybody was keen to beat the runaway dollar. How different it was for those who were closed in within the buildings he was heading to.
The smell intensified as he moved farther from the gate and closer to the buildings. Because it was neither a bad odour nor a scent, Beni determined that it had to be a smell. A bad odour related to the unpleasant things in life; a bad odour was a stench that everybody wished to avoid. This was not that kind of thing. It was, on the contrary, a smell that reminded one of the presence of medicine, and hence the existence of life.
It was this same smell that drove his mind to reminiscence. He went back to his childhood days and thought of the dreadful but necessary visits to hospital. Despite the pleasant reminiscences of his childhood that this smell aroused, Beni almost detested it because of the manner in which it half-stung his nostrils with a near-pungent effect.
“Watch out!” shouted a lady in white. “What are you doing?” she spat out. “You don’t cut corners here like that.”
“Pole sana,” Beni ejected, “I’m sorry.”
“Pole? Nini wewe!?”
Beni looked at the anguished face below the white cap and above the petit shoulders, then shifted his attention to the load the owner of the face was pushing on a trolley. Beni would have gazed on but he stopped when he saw it. The man’s leg was broken on the shin and his lower leg remained connected with the rest at an acute angle. The only connection between the two pieces was a red mesh of flesh. Blood was spurting out of it in spasms. It reminded Beni of the sight of a chicken being slaughtered. The blood from the man’s leg shot out in the same manner blood ejected itself from the chicken’s neck. And he lay on the trolley more than helplessly. his hands covered his face. Beni felt an imaginary but realistic crashing of the man’s bones in his own body as he gave the nurse right of way. The lady pushed the trolley through the crowded waiting bay, and into the door marked EMERGENCY.
The corridors were jammed with traffic going in and out of rooms. It was not he kind of thick depressing traffic jam found in the city at rush hour, but it was a jam nevertheless. Beni walked on, effectively evading collision with the people who were walking in the opposite direction.
* * ** * *
Thirty minutes had passed since his entry into the ward. He now sat on an empty bed which a teenage-looking girl in the next bed told her was his sister’s. He went ahead to busy himself by scrolling through his phone’s menu. He knew he was looking for nothing in particular but it was better that way. It would keep him busy up to the time his sister would be brought back from the theatre. It was not a hot morning but Beni felt his forehead start to burn. It started to burn at almost the same time he glanced at the wall clock and noticed that only twenty minutes remained of the visiting hour.
“Time inasonga haraka!” Beni said glancing at the clock and then quickly at the girl.
“Aaaiii!” the girl responded and then after a lengthy pause, “Ni wewe unaona hivyo. Hapa time haisongangi.”
“Who was on that empty bed? To the theatre too?”
At this question, the girl did not respond. She only stared into the space above her. Blankly. Before Beni could re-state the question, the girl sighed audibly and continued staring in the open as she had been. Then suddenly she began trembling gently and turned to face the wall. Then Beni realised that she was crying. Beni guiltily looked around the ward and noticed people looking at him accusingly. He wanted to move to the girl and say he was sorry but he did not have the chance.
“Which kind of question is that?” a woman asked. “She has been through hell and needs to recover. And the only thing you ask is why the bed is empty.”
“Hakujua,” said an elderly lady who was sitting on her bed in a corner, “Kijana yangu, kuna maswali mtu haulisangi kwa sipitali. Ni mama yake hiyo msichana alikuwa hapo. Na alituacha jana usiku.”
Beni made as if to move round the girl’s bed but the first woman’s voice rang out and caught him in his tracks.
“Achana na yeye. Na utoke nje huko!”
“I’m waiting to check on my sister. She is in the theatre.”
“That’s not news. Toka nje,” she glared, “she is not the first one to go to the theatre. Usitushibishe hapa.”
He moved out of the ward just in time to see a patient being wheeled out of the theatre. He waited at the door expecting them to come but they did not. They instead went to an adjacent block. Beni hastened towards the block. He was about to enter the room into which the group went when the door was shut in his face. He clicked and turned round. On turning, he came face to face with a nurse who huddled a number of bottles on her chest.
“Is that Bela?” he asked pointing at the door.
“No, that is ward thirteen,” she replied.
“I mean whoever is in there.”
“Many people are in there.”
“The patient,” he said patiently.
“Come at one o’clock. There is only five minutes to the end of visiting hour,” said the nurse. “She is still sedated anyway.”
Having no more to say, he sighed looking at his dusty shoes. The next thing he heard was the clicking of sharp heels on the hard surface. He looked up only to see a grenade-shaped behind disappear around a corner.
* * ** * *
TO BE CONTINUED.
