The Cost Of Retribution( Not your usual Hausa love story)

Chapter 12

Suddenly we were such an important part of his life, the part he pretended didn't exist for over twenty years. The part on which he had complete control over at the moment.

The wedding had been set for the second of the next month, it's was on a Friday. I didn't need to try hard not to think about  the fact that I'd be married by next month because it was the last thing on my mind.

I sat by the bed and held her hand, like I did the last time she was in the hospital.

Frail.

Pale.

Skinny.

Those we're what was going through my mind as I sat there looking onto her sleeping figure.

How can such a once happy and bright young girl with her life ahead of her look so detached from the living. So...  Dead.

Oh Layla, was it so bad that you couldn't trust Allah to take away your pain,
that you couldn't believe when he said that he never tested a soul with more than it could bear.
You had to attempt to take away the gift that Allah bestowed upon us.

I almost gasped out loud as I felt a surge of emotions, what was I doing that I hadn't noticed that my sister was slowly withering away with each new day that she woke up to, that she was losing bits of her soul to every glance she took at the world and realised that she was never going to be the same again.

I had prided myself in always sensing the calm before the storm hits, as such I never got too comfortable in comfortable situations. I told myself that whatever is too good to be true is just that.

How much her smile had changed now that I thought about it, in thinking she was getting better she was actually becoming worse, her once bright and contagious smile didn't reach her eyes anymore, she didn't crack jokes and sing too loudly around the house, or whined when I ignored her when she wanted to tell me of this really cute guy in her year and I was too tired from a twenty hour shift.

She wasn't Layla anymore, just a girl who felt broken and cheated and soulless.

Anger rose to my chest as I realized that in the upcoming event of my wedding, I'd been too engrossed thinking or rather worrying about myself to have paid her any relevant attention, what a foolish thing to do. I thought. Worrying about a wedding in which the very tiniest details such as the colour of napkins to be used at the dinner might have probably been planned leaving me with no say and my husband to be who probably didn't care about how the wedding went down.

"Has she woke up yet?"

The voice came from behind me but I didn't need to turn to recognize who it was, I recognized the shrill undertone that always lay in his words, Alhaji kangiwa I'd come to describe as a benign tumor of my own, due to my medical expertise I had no other way of thinking.

In the beginning, a tumor that is benign has no harmful effect on the body on it's own as it's not cancerous, but it can prevent useful bodily functions if it's situated at a bad location or it can definitely become cancerous later if not taken care of.

He has always been my father, biologically that is, but he was benign in the beginning not really serving any purpose and now he had become malignant or harmful. A little too dramatic you might say but that's how I saw it.

"She's still out, but she's stable" I answered not turning around.

I heard him walk in and shut the door, then walked further into the room until he was in my line of vision standing at the foot of her bed. He was dressed in a crisp light blue babban riga, looking in my opinion like the rich old man he was, that was how he liked to appear anyway.