Blood Moon | ✔

Chapter 1

The rain fell in heavy torrents, harsh and unforgiving as if letting go of pent up fury. The man was exhausted but for her he kept going, even as the rain soaked through his clothes and the cold made him shiver.

He kept his eyes down, careful not to meet any stranger's gaze, he was half afraid someone would recognize him, point and make fun of the man who has given up everything for love but it was all in his head, he was not the only man struggling to make their own path, he was not the only one with his head bowed and chest heavy with worries.

He skipped over a puddle, almost losing his footing and stumbling straight into a suya stall, he apologized hurriedly when the Mallam behind the stall sent him a glare as he attempted to put off the fire on his grill and attend to the line gathered at the stall — some of them voicing their impatience and threatening to leave and visit the other stall across the street.

It reminded the man of how people ran when everything fell to hell, it reminded him of the friends he once had, the family he had once fed and the same ones that had fled at the first hint of doom.

The man's name was Lekan Daniels and he had a wife battling lung cancer in the hospital, tonight he had been called by the hospital, they had finally found a lung donor for the transplant that his wife would be needing and that finally, his wife would be getting the surgery she needed — but it would not come for free.

Nothing good ever did.

A year ago, things had been rosy, he'd had a job, he had a beautiful wife and the smartest little girl, they hadn't been rich but they had been happy. Then the cancer diagnosis came and things went downhill from there, the disease was a bloodsucker that had drained his finances, his wife's beaming joy and after a brief romance with drinking, it had cost him his job.

The man hated how in the movies everything seemed to fall in place, how God would miraculously heal everything, but in real life everything was more difficult, in the movies they never depicted how cancer not only affected the victim, but the victim's family.

The worst thing he had gone through was watching the hope slowly leaving the eyes of his wife, it was watching his daughter's face fall every time she visited her mother and saw her lifeless eyes. He hated it, he hated feeling out of control.

A year ago, he had been a man with everything in the world, now he was a man with nothing but an empty pocket and a breaking home.

Lekan shook his head at the injustice of it all, he continued walking, ignoring the weakness in his knees and the grumble of his stomach as he did so, I don't matter, he told himself everyday, if they are fine then I am too, I have to be.

Across the street he spied the wide open gates of the hospital and the florescent lights that lit up the sign on the gates, reading; Solomon Research Hospital.

He crossed over, and upon reaching the gates, he nodded his greeting to the security men sitting on plastic chairs and drinking beer under the now drizzling rain. He tried and failed to ignore the look of pity that flashed through their eyes as he passed them, he was sure that after he was gone they would change the topic of their conversation and instead discuss how life had fucked him over, whispering how they were grateful to God that they weren't him.

There were only a few cars left in the parking lot and Lekan let out a sigh of relief when he spotted the black jeep of the chief medical officer in its spot. He hoped the man was not in the middle of a meeting, he didn't want to have to wait in anxiousness, mulling over what price he would have to pay for the health of his wife.

As he stepped into the spacious lobby, he breathed a sigh of relief when he noticed the receptionist was not the usual one, that one liked to babble on and on about how God would heal and make everything alright in the end as long as he believed, he usually wanted to laugh at her when she went on and on about her spiel because those words were the first ones he had reassured himself with during the first stages of the diagnosis.