Maduka's POV~
"NO!"
She looks up at me in shock. I shove the tumbler out of her hand. It falls to the ground and breaks into pieces. But it's too late.
It's already empty.
"What's going on?"
I'm trying so hard not to panic. I don't know how to tell her that she has just been poisoned. My eyes are threatening to shed tears, this huge lump has formed in my throat and my chest wants to collapse. I gather her into my arms and scoop her up.
Nwanyieze struggles to free herself, but I hold her in an iron grip.
"Maduka, what's wrong?" Her voice shakes a little.
"We're going to the hospital."
"Why?"
As I shove her into the car and fasten the seatbelt over her, I'm gripped by so much emotion that it nearly paralyzes me.
He tried to kill us. He tried to kill her.
Daa Ndidi is running towards us, her silhouette outlined by the light from the house behind her.
"Wait, Maduka! She is alright!"
What does she mean? Is this some sort of joke?
I've already started the engine when she comes to stand by my side of the car.
"I changed the drinks and the cups Maduka! She is fine! Why do you think I wasted time to get cups?"
"What does she mean?" Nwanyieze demands, impatient with all that has been going on.
"I'm taking her to the hospital."
"Son," my aunt touches one of my hands gripping the wheel. "I promise you, she is alright. Trust me."
I scoff. "Forgive me if I don't."
My tyres screech and dislodge some soil before I back out towards the gate, ramming the back of my car into it and forcing it open.
"Maduka, I'm not-"
"You might have been poisoned!"
She goes silent. After a while, "Your uncle."
"I can't believe this."
"I feel fine, just a little bit tired."
I almost lose control of the wheel. The car swerves on the road and she shrieks.
"Maduka, your aunt said nothing happened to me. I'm fine."
"I want to make sure!"
How can she be calm in this situation?
When she goes silent for a minute, I call her name and reach out to touch her hand. It is cold, a sign that she is actually scared even if she doesn't show it.
"I'm fine," Nwanyieze whispers.
"Talk to me."
"About what?"
"I want you to stay with me."
"Did I ever say I wouldn't?"
"Lately, I haven't been so sure."
Silence.
"Nwanyieze?"
"I'm here."
"Don't go away."
She gives a small laugh. "I'm not dying, Maduka. This is unbelievable. Someone probably tried to kill us. I'm trying to process this."
My mind briefly flashes to my deceased family. I always knew something about their deaths wasn't right. Who goes to bed and doesn't wake up, just like that? And why not one, but two at the same time?
"Maduka, about Saheed-"
"I don't believe him."
Nwanyieze's POV~
What?
Is this the extent of his love?
"There's something-"
"Please, don't mention Saheed. Not tonight. I'm already upset, you are in danger and I'm trying not to get us into an accident."
The drive lasts forty-five minutes to the hospital in Owerri city. Through out the drive, Maduka tells me how much he loves me, how much he wants me to stay. And I know the double meaning- staying alive and staying with him. Occasionally he reaches out to touch me whenever I go silent.
It doesn't feel like I have ingested poison...not that I know what it's supposed to feel like. In the Nollywood movies, the victims usually foam in the mouth and fall to the ground, convulsing violently. I feel normal, except for the knots in my stomach.
Maybe it is the 'silent' and 'slow' poison? Or maybe Daa Ndidi is saying the truth?
"There's a private hospital in Ikenegbu that I know of."
I murmur okay. I wonder why the distance is much. Are there no local health centres outside the city? What if I were actually dying now? How can the health system of this country be so inadequate?
"Are you okay?"
"Yes."
By now, reality has set in. Maduka and I could have died, just like his parents.
Just like that.
Our story would have ended tragically, that of life never enjoyed with each other, dreams never fulfilled- his dreams, because I was going to leave him, anyways. Tears suddenly spring to my eyes and before I know it, I'm sobbing with my face in my hands.
"Nwanyieze, are you okay?" He asks in alarm.
"We could have died."
"We didn't. We won't."
" Why? Why would someone want to kill us?"
"All I want to find out now is if you're really fine. Please tell me, does anything hurt?"
Only my heart, I think while I answer him no.
Street lights illuminate the road, allowing me to observe that Owerri is not as active as Lagos at night. There are a few cars on the road. It's really sad that we have to drive this far for emergency health care services.
Upon arrival, Maduka lifts me out of the car before I can protest, and runs into Mercy Hospital, Ikenegbu. It is a private clinic, and so the nurses surround us the moment we step in. He explains to them that I may have ingested poison and before I know, I'm whisked away.
The doctor is a grey-haired man with a reserved smile and easy going nature. He asks me questions while checking my temperature, pulse, breathing rate and blood pressure. I reply that I feel fine. Before I know it, I'm explaining to him that I'm sure I didn't ingest any poison because it didn't feel like it.
"But we have to be sure. Some poisons cause symptoms after a few hours."
And so I take a few swallows of activated charcoal and water mixture, and some laxatives. Blood and urine samples are collected, and I am placed on watch for two hours in a room with breaks to use the toilet because of the effects of the laxatives.
My results come out negative; no toxic substances are found in my bodily fluids. Maduka stays with me in the room, lying beside me on the hospital bed and holding me even when I insist I'm alright.
"I should have given you charcoal as first aid. I'm so stupid."
"Maduka, you were panicking. Nothing happened to me. You're not stupid."
I so badly want to turn and kiss him and tell him we're fine, but I'm scared that he'll look into my eyes and see my guilt. First Saheed, and now his uncle. How much can a man take in one day?
"I shouldn't have brought you with me," he whispers, breath fanning the back of my ear.
"I insisted on coming. And I'm glad I did."
The way he holds me, you'd think I was just going to pass away and disappear, body and spirit, forever.
"Aren't we supposed to go back?" I ask after a while.
"I don't think I want to. Now I know who made me an orphan."
I give in and turn to face him. His eyes seem to have receeded into their sockets. "I'm sorry."
"There was nothing you could have done. But good things come out of some bad situations. There's you."
"I'm not worth everything that's happened to you. I'd gladly unmeet you if it meant that none of this would have happened."
Why do good people suffer such fates? Here he is, a good man, losing his family at an early age, leaving home for twenty years only to come back and almost die at the hands of a trusted one. Tears flood my eyes again.
"I'm sorry you have to go through this," I sob. "It's not fair."
Maduka shrugs and wipes my tears with his thumb. "C'est la vie."
"We have to confront your aunt and uncle."
"I want the doctor to make sure you're alright. That's what's most important."
"I am alright."
"You don't know how it felt, thinking you would...die any moment. And you were calm. You're so brave."
I give him a watery smile. "You're just trying to make me feel better."
"Nwanyieze, I don't know how I'll get over it if anything ever takes you away from me."
You're about to find out how.
"I love you. And I desperately hope you believe me."
"I do."
For a moment, Maduka looks expectant for my reply, but seems to reconsider. Instead, he pulls me closer, and places my face in the crook of his neck like he is trying to protect me from the world. I sigh and settle there, feeling safe and content. It's so much like Maduka to offer comfort even when he's the one hurting.
" Please be okay, Nwanyieze. I'm sorry I put you in danger. I'm sorry I was even mad at you in the first place."
"Maduka, stop this please. You didn't put me in danger."
The doctor interrupts us by coming in to tell us that I am completely fine and can go home. By the time we leave the room and Maduka settles the bills, he has regained his composure and there is a steely quality in the way he moves. His jaw has set, his eyes are suddenly bright, and his nostrils are flaring. But his touch is gentle as he insists on carrying me to the car. Carefully, he fastens my seatbelt and asks if I'm comfortable enough. I nod at him and he kisses my forehead.
This is definitely the kick ass Maduka, I think with a secret smile.
The drive back to his home is silent, and both of us are comfortable with it, each engaged in their own thoughts. At the back of my mind, I'm wondering how he will deal with me if he finds out that what Saheed told him was true.
But what exactly did Saheed tell him, though? What is it that he doesn't believe?
The two compounds are brightly lit when we arrive, and people are walking about, obviously aroused by some sort of commotion. Holding my hand, Maduka leads me into his bungalow where we find Daa Ndidi, sitting on the floor of the sitting room crying.
"He has disappeared," she wails when she sees Maduka and I.
"Daa, you have a lot of explaining to do, because whoever is responsible for all of this will suffer at my hands," Maduka states in a cold voice.
She crawls to where we are standing and grips Maduka's legs. "I suspected Ikenna! I suspected that he had something to do with the deaths of your family, but I never had proof!"
"Why did you suspect him?"
She pauses to wipe her tears with the hem of her wrapper. "Your parents drank some palm wine with him the night before they died. Your father had some arguments with your uncle over some plots of land before you were born. It was supposed to go to whoever had a son first, and so your father had you even though your uncle married first. Ikenna always told me he wasn't happy about it..."
"And he resorted to poisoning us?"
"When you disappeared, he made no effort to find you. He kept telling me that he was sure you had died somewhere in the bush, lost, and there was nothing we could do about it. Then he started using that plot of land to plant cassava for exporting. It was all so suspicious, but I never asked him."
Maduka's grip on my hand loosens and he backs away slowly to sit on one of the chairs. His aunt follows him, moving on her knees and refusing to stand up when he tells her to.
"Maduka, I loved your parents but Ikenna was my husband. I couldn't confront him because I wasn't sure! But I never believed that you were dead. You had to be alive somewhere, because the God I serve is a living God. I kept the house clean, because I hoped you would return. Your uncle tried to discourage me, but he got tired, ike gwuru ya. And when you returned, I decided to watch him closely. I saw him rubbing something on the cups two days ago, I saw him with the palm wine before sending someone to give it to Nwanyieze.
"I quickly bought another keg of palm wine from our neighbours, the same colour, and changed it when he asked about it. I didn't want it to happen again. I put some of his palmwine in the water bowl for my chickens, and five of them died this morning. Imagine what Ikenna planned on doing!"
For a few minutes, she covers her face with her wrapper and cries bitterly. "Ikenna, you are a devil! I bu ekwensu!"
"Where is he?" Maduka questions coldly.
Daa Ndidi spreads her hands and shrugs. "He has disappeared. I have searched the two compounds."
Wow, I think, rubbing my temples.
Maduka rises to his feet, and I do the same. When he turns to look at me, his eyes soften.
"I need you to get some sleep. I'm going to search for my...uncle."
I shake my head. "I'm not leaving you."
He thinks about this for a few moments while we stand over his aunt who is crying on the floor. The windows are crammed with faces peering in at us, watching the scene. Maduka nods at me and squeezes my hand.
"I'll get you something warm to wear."
The search for his uncle proves futile. By daybreak, the story has spread like wildfire all over the village, and more and more people join us in the search. Excited voices whisper all around Maduka and I, in the typical Nigerian way:
"Ehen, I always suspected that man!"
"See the way he rushed and started farming on that land ehn, after his brother died!"
"God will always expose the wicked."
"I know say ihn way no straight, you no see as he no gree believe say na Maduka be dis?"
"Ndi gbara wicked enweghi udo." There is no peace for the wicked.
"And that was how a good man died?"
Yes, a good man, his wife and unborn child died over a land. And his surviving son had to exile himself from home. Because of land. Isn't it ironic, that land will still outlive people who fight over it?
While the birds sing their high-pitched songs in the early morning, Maduka and I sit on the porch of his bungalow, resting. Neither of us has slept.
" Where are you going?" I ask when he suddenly gets up.
"To the plot of land he showed us yesterday."
I get up, too. Maduka leads me to his car, and three of the young men who had stayed back after the search approach us. He tells them our destination in Igbo and they reply that they would like to follow us.
The drive is silent, reflecting the exhaustion of everyone in the car. One of the young men then launches into the story he claims his parents told him of the deaths of Maduka's family.
"He said that day was a black day, ubochi ojoo."
Maduka only chuckles in reply, but when I squeeze his thigh, he opens his mouth to say that he wants to hear from his uncle what form of greed would drive a man to murder his own blood.
"I don't think he's here, Maduka. This land has no trees to cover him," I whisper when we get out of the car.
"It's just a feeling."
The early morning sun is warm, the breeze is light, and the air is fresh. Morning dew clings to the leaves of the plants around us. Suddenly I get this feeling that something is really wrong here. I squeeze his hand, and Maduka touches the top of my head with the side of his.
The young men have gone off in different directions, beating down the plants with sticks to clear paths in their search.
"Maduka, the tree."
The lone tree is large and thick with leaves, but I can't tell what type of tree it is. Approaching it, I get the sense that I shouldn't, but I also know that there's no turning back.
The moment we get under the tree, my eyes are drawn upwards to the branches above. I moan, feeling nausea overwhelm me. My knees go weak and I collapse against Maduka, who catches me and quickly turns my head, burying me face in his chest so I don't see it again. But the image is burned in my mind like the negatives of a photograph on a film roll.
Dee Ikenna swings from high up in the tree, hanging from a thick rope around his neck. Although lifeless, the breeze animates his body by making it move slowly. His eyes are open, staring out into nothing.