20 minutes was how long they waited at the gate for a response. She released a huge sigh that caused her exceptionally still counterpart to stir. She had a justifiable reason; it was her house call. She was tapping her leg rather loud; she couldn’t help it.
“Was the patient really in labour?” she asked herself, her patience was wearing thin although she was only a lending hand. At last, the grand gates swung open swiftly. Seconds later, a man emerged, elegantly dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. Suddenly, she instinctually found the man a bit odd. All she wanted was to turn back and go. She could not pinpoint what she saw and seemed to be the only one who saw it.
She didn't know him well, and they hadn't spent much time together. But she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something off about him. Maybe she misjudged him, but she didn't think so. She had a good gut feeling, and it was telling her that something was not quite right about him.
Her patience ran thin, thinner to anxiety, eventually to dread as they approached the doors. Once open, the man politely directed them to their duty; first floor, two doors right. She tried to mastered the smallest details to avoid the chilling gut feeling about the man. It was not just the man, the house held secrets, those her alone could see. She focused on the plain olive painting that sat at the centre of the living room, where one would typically hang colourful pieces sat a pale olive painting.
' a bit odd'
They arrived and quickly, the elegant man ran to the side of the bed. On the bed was a woman with vigilant eyes. As if on command, she knew what was running through her head; ‘she didn’t want to have the baby’. It was an unspoken truth that only she and the woman knew.
She saw the ferocity and determination she had. Her thoughts were going to be a reality she hoped would be true but at the moment, her duties permitted her to chew as far as her rope would allow. She didn’t wish to but she had to. Like autopilot, she quickly got to work which was to bring the baby to this cruel world.
She didn’t miss how she counted one to ten more than seven times. All in the room thought she was timing contractions, except for the two women. They knew she was taming her anxiety. She didn’t miss how the elegant man held her arm too tightly. She didn’t miss the constant flinching. She never missed it. Cause she learnt the rhythm.
A piercing cry sliced through her thoughts and she knew she would leave this place seen enough. It was a girl. The cruel world indeed, she thought. The momentarily glance at the new mother turned into a stare. She knew what she was thinking, almost like she was there like she saw the question. “Would it be from her father?”, “Would she suffer the same fate as her mother?”
Underneath all those questions she saw the unending love. Without the healing black eye, one would have said they had witnessed a miracle. But deeply rooted, she also saw the urge to save her. Then she glanced at her and the question she saw just a second before it became a plea,
“Save her?” she said in a low tone. How could she save her when she retires to the same thing every day? In that moment, the new mother knew she had a comrade but the only problem was that the new mother saw her as a survivor rather than a drowning soul like her.
The despair that shone in her eyes turned into tenacity and the nurse no longer wanted to look at her because she once had that tenacity and didn’t want to affirm a promise she couldn’t keep. She didn’t want to look at the elegant man either because she could feel herself trembling and sweating with the knowledge of impending doom. So, she chose to look at the walls that were painted in tears, cries, strokes, hits, kicks, fists and blood. Only she and the residents of that house saw the walls for what they were.
How she managed to see all that from the gate entrance, she couldn’t fathom, but for the 5 hours she had been there, she felt like she had lived there for years. The only way to explain this is that, in modern society, problems are often identified quicker than solutions are found.
She packed her things, ready to dismiss the malice that had followed her to work that day. She never once lifted her eyes past the chest area for anyone plastering a fake smile. As they showed themselves out, she didn’t turn back because of the guilt washing over her. She knew the tenacity she saw in that woman would come with consequences. She could only hope that the woman would emerge resilient. That one day she would say “At least one of us walked out of the system.”
In ways beyond her understanding, she had discovered a sister from another world, but it wasn’t a concern that weighed on her then. One would think she didn’t care but they didn’t know, they couldn’t understand the language the two women spoke.