A friend to remember

6: Awake and confused

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"Denise! Denise! Are you listening to me? Can you hear me?" Shettima tried to pull her from her sister's limp body.

"Denise you are hurt, we need to get you to the hospital." Shettima forcefully yanked her away from her sister's body.

"No! No!" Denise screamed in tears. "What are you doing? Where are you taking her? Let me go! I said me go!" she trashed in Shettima's hands. He frowned, as the blood continued to slip onto his finger.

Grace was on her way to the police station and an ambulance was here to pick up his daughter and the girl she had been living with. Dunni was not breathing when they willed her away but his daughter was still conscious and losing a lot of blood.

"I don't think she going to calm down, we need to get her to the hospital." a paramedic said, Denise tiptoed, trying to check what they were doing to Dunni. Her sister was not responding to her and that terrified her.

"Denise..." Shettima called again, she started panting, and her eyes turned weary and bloodshot. "I don't think she okay! She is shivering! I..."

Denise went still, her eyes closed. Fear ran through Shettima's body. Fear for what was going to her. She had suffered through enough distress. He prayed she did not die because Sheila would never forgive in. He would never forgive himself for not listening to his wife, for calling her delusional.
The paramedic put her onto a stretcher, she was perfectly still as if she was asleep.

Shettima shivered just thinking about what happened tonight and what was left up to it. He thought long and hard about how everything came to be. His private investigator worked for three weeks on getting all the information about Denise's parentage just to be sure and who he saw shocked him. Grace, his best friend from uni. Someone he fell out with because her father embezzled funds from his company.

"We are going to get her the help she needs," the paramedic assured him and he nodded. He entered his car and Sani, his driver started the car.

The day was chaos.  The emotional rollercoaster he went through, finding out the truth, the real truth behind the kidnapping of his daughter. It was heartbreaking. He had given up hope, thinking that there was no how he could get her back, he tried to love his other daughter, but to think that he met his daughter once and he asked her to get out of his life, he believed that she was a fraud. It was something he did not know how to think about, he did not know how to process the emotions he was feeling.

His phone's ringing tone sprang him out of his thoughts. He looked at the caller and sighed, his wife. She was probably wondering where he was off to. He did not tell her where he was off too, after the fight he had with her about her approaching random strangers, there had been a divide between them. He loved her so much, but their missing daughter did a number on their marriage.

"Shettima, where are you? I am worried sick about you," she said, as soon as they all connected. "Ca... Can you come and meet... Meet me at St Paul Hospital in Ajah." He stuttered, not recognizing his voice.

"Shettima, what happened? Are you alright?" Shettima sniffed, he was not a man to cry but to see the extent of his mistake, was sorrowful.

"I..." he sniffed, "I am fine... I just used you to come there now."

"I... Alright... I will be there." Sheila said and hung up.

Thirty minutes later, Sheila was running into the waiting room, toward her husband who was bent over, praying. Shettima was not a religious man, he was not close to Allah but at that moment, he knew that he needed to pray for his beloved daughter who was in distress.

"Shettima?" Sheila called. Shettjma looked up frantically and hugged his wife tightly. She panted in his arms, as they held each other tightly.

"What... What's wrong Shettima? Why have you come to the hospital? You do not look hurt! Are you okay?" she asked, frantically. "I think you will need to sit down for this."