Caught In between

CHAPTER 32: From the past

"Marlise! Marlise! Wake up!" Someone said.
Her eyes popped open and she stared straight into her mother's eyes eyes. She looked around, her heart threatening to beat out of her chest then back at Ma Mado.
"Mama, she cannot die!" she said, shaking her mother's arms as she tried to regain her composure.
"She cannot die. You were dreaming," Ma Mado said.
"but...but that's what the doctor just said," she said frantically, looking around.
"The doctor hasn't come out yet. You were dreaming," There were fewer people in the waiting area now. The clock on the wall showed ten minutes after 1 pm; they'd been waiting for three hours already.

***

"My, my, you want to get out of this hospital today, dont you?" Doctor Kamara said after taking off the stethoscope from Viva's chest.

"Ga!" Viva blurted out and smiled.
"She agrees!," Doctor said to her audience in the examination room. Her two assistants, Doctor Di and and another doctor, Tulis who had been part of the surgery.
Seeing the raw scar on her daughter's  chest made her cry and thank God at the same time. It had been three weeks in the hospital where she prayed and hoped no complications will arise.
"Marlise, this little one is a fighter, she's healing well," Doctor Di said.

"She is," Marlise agreed.

****
The sound of Ma Mado laughing with Doctor Kamara outside mixed with Viva's babbling was sweet music to Marlise's ears as she cleaned Doctor Kamara's room this morning.

The woman had decided to take a break from surgeries and media interviews so she could spend more time at home. She wanted to make her house into a home and her first idea was to make a garden of flowers and vegetables. Ma Mado had come over to help her start planting.
As she sent her broom over the cupboard to clean, a bag came crashing down from the top of
"Ah!" she screamed and dodged before it landed on her head.
"Is everything okay?" Doctor Kamara called.
"All good here!" She replied yet staring at the items that had fallen out of the old bag whose zip had already been broken. She looked down at a very leather bag, the kind her mother used to have when they were young. One by one, she started picking the stuff on the ground, old brown paged books, papers, an album. "Don't pry" she scolded herself. As she threw the album into the bag, a black and white photo of a man and woman fell out. She recognised the woman as a young Doctor Kamara. The strange part was that the features of the young man looked very familiar. She stuck the photo into the back of her pocket and continued to clean. When she was done she stepped out of the house to find just Doctor Kamara watering a freshly planted plant.

"Oh Marlise look at what we've made. what do you think?" she exclaimed as soon as she saw Marlise.

"Its beautiful ma," Marlise responded, looking at the dark brown earth that would soon produce plants.

"You know, planting is like having a vision. You don't see the future but you put in the work, believing it would come to pass," the doctor suddenly sounded philosophical.

"Is this how you envisaged your life and dreams when you were younger?" she suddenly asked.
Doctor Kamara gave her a serious look for a few minutes.
"This fell out of one of your books," she said, extending the photo towards her.
Doctor Kamara's silence made her uncomfortable. Why didn't she just mind her business? A look of sadness had settled on her face such that she seemed to have aged in a few seconds. She took the photo from Marlise's hands, walked to one of the chairs under the lawn umbrella and sat down. Marlise was rooted to the spot, wishing she could withdraw the question.
"I'm sorry for prying ma, I...I shouldn't have brought this up," Marlise apologized.
Assuming the woman needed some alone time, she started walking away.
"You asked me how I envisaged my future?" Doctor Kamara said.
Marlise turned around.  Doctor Kamara was leaning back in the chair, a half smile on her face and arms folded. The picture lay face up on the table in two halves. The young Kamara and the man, separated.
"I envisaged my future with this man and my child but...but that vision never came to pass," she spoke staring into space.

"Death is very cruel, I'm sorry ma," Marlise said.

"Death, oh yeah, my child died at birth but him? He died in my heart the day he left me," she said and let out a short dry laugh void of joy.

"A husband walking out on you is horrible," Marlise didn't know what else to say.

"Ha! Husband? We were going to marry but I got pregnant before we did. I was medically unfit to carry a pregnancy because i had a heart condition but i did. Because I loved him. I went ahead and carried his child. during the CS, my heart rate went very low and they thought I had died. It was the 80s, they didn't have good scans so I was told I shook at the door of the morgue,"

"Oh my goodness," Marlise said.

"Unbelievable right? I think I did die that day because when I woke up, I was told I had had a still girl and nobody had shown up to claim me because I defied my parents to get pregnant for him. I had such loving parents who said they would prefer a living childless daughter to a dead one but I was in love!"

At that last part, she laughed again and looked directly at Marlise as if she was about to unpack the crux of the story.

"The man I loved had left on hearing I'd died. Ran away from the hospital lobby and out of town. The baby I'd so desired was dead and I couldn't even see her because she was buried before I gained consciousness," Doctor Kamara said.

They remained in silence for a few minutes, only the distant sound of cars honking filled the space.

"After that, I left Bamenda and left for the USA and only returned five years ago," she said.

"how long ago did this happen?" Marlise asked.

"If my daughter had lived, tomorrow would have been her thirty fourth birthday," she said.

***
"Why is your face like that?" Ma Mado asked Marlise when she walked back into the appartment. Before she could respond, a text message entered her phone, from Cherish.
"Tomorrow is Levi's birthday. We were thinking of doing something simple, I hope you and mama can come," it read.

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