The clink of the glass when it fell with a thud to the ground, made her heart beat increase and she felt she would swoon. It had happened to her time and again--this beautiful girl. At first, she thought of a heart condition, cardiac whatever, but it was not going to be it when she told her doctor--their family doctor.
"Come closer Kefi" Doctor Fejiro said.
Her mother had been asked to stay outside for confidentiality's sake.
"This was the way they worked these medical people they handle humans and all of a sudden it looks like they have entered into your body and they would sigh, write a lot of jargon and ask you to go to the pharmacist." Mama was talking to her friend.
"Yes oh! that is their own way of doing things. The other day I was sick and the doctor requested that he wanted to have a private discussion with me and you need to see when I entered. He was talking like a sick patient and I began to wonder how many ailments a person could have suffered from in just a lifetime. He always knew how it felt and would cut me in by saying the next thing I would say and it was totally hypnotic" Mrs Akpor replied.
"That is why I want this my fine daughter to study Medicine since o riobe gaga! she is very intelligent and now they want her to die e fia! it will not happen only my children would bury me and I would not bury any one of them." Mama cursed.
This was the way Mama would always do. When she sensed indignation--something that was not meant to happen, she would wage a verbal battle with her enemies cursing and cursing, and punctuating whatever she said with the blood of Jesus. I have always thought of it as strange--the way Mama did this. I thought from what I had read in the bible that the blood of Christ was meant to wash our sins and make us whole. The other thing that was perplexing was that she would always refer to our hometown whenever she talks about these enemies.
"They are witches orieda! they fly in the daytime--broad daylight wherever they are"
Mama would shout and make my heart skip beats, and repay with successive short spaced and fibrillating pounds.
Some nights, she would come to my room, wake me up, rub olive oil on my forehead and ask me to open my mouth letting a beady droplet or two fall with the usual sheen right on my tongue. I did not like the saline and greasy sensation on my tongue whenever she did this, but I would not tell her--Big me, I was already 18-years-old but we did not dare Mama. After chanting a few words, and watching me with pitiful eyes, she would ask me to get up from the bed I was lying, put me on my knees, and ask me to pray, after which she would leave me to continue her ubiquitous march in prayers within our house. I did not pray in more than a third of those occasions, I did not know how it happened that she would always come to wake me up. I would think I am awake, but I was not. Those trances were real.
I often wondered why Papa was different. Papa was a thoughtful and easy person he would often look at Mama as if to ask what she was doing. I believed he would have asked because I saw questions in his eyes. He was very wealthy, and Mama had always considered her marriage to him as a gift--the kind she could not pay for. "God knew I had nobody, that was why he gave me your father. Papa spoke seldom. He would often look at you in a way that either tells you what you ought to do or that it wasn't what you ought to be doing. I liked Papa except that sometimes his presumption that you knew a thing he never taught you was troubling. The other day, he asked Merit to do a sum of fractions and the next thing was a heavy knock on his head and I watched the swell at the spot on his head astonished.
"Where did you go to? Where you not in class when your teacher taught this?" Papa thundered.
I was scared. Mama quickly held my little brother put her arm around his shoulder, and started to massage his head, and I sensed the smell of aboniki balm all around the room.
"Please try to be attentive in class. Your father does not spank easily but he likes book too much. His father said he came first every time when he was in school and warned me not to be a barrier to his son furthering his education. You have to read okay? so that you can be like your sister who is studying medicine." Mama was talking to my younger brother--Merit.
That day after I explained all I felt to Doctor Fejiro, I expected him to refer me to a cardiac specialist but I was shocked by what was happening. I am a medical student I knew the position of my heart and that was exactly where it hurts.
"Burning tremors Sir, around my heart and I feel like fainting." I accentuated.
Unmoved by my defiance he told me to be calm that he wasn't going to do anything, or rather that he felt there isn't something he should do. He wrote on a piece of paper adjusting himself and in his motion, I saw one more expression of Eureka each time he let his pen touch his paper. He called a nurse handed it to her and asked me to follow her.
I uttered a dissatisfied. "thank you, Sir."
"You are welcome sweetie" He retorted with familiarity and composure.
The man we met next was a warm temperament person. I knew he was experienced from his becoming aged appearance, and added to this was that I considered him a doctor--probably more qualified for my case. The nurse handed the paper over to him with a genuflect and left. I watched as his eyes scurried around the paper from behind his apparently medicated glasses curious.
"I would like to address you by your name young lady, and what is it?" He smirked.
"Kefi" I replied.
"You see Kefi, I hope you are able to understand all that I would tell you. I am a psychologist and a social worker. Have you heard of any of those?"
"Yes," I said, "I am a medical student.
"Pretty!" he exclaimed.
"What you experience is phobia resulting in panic attacks whenever it is triggered. You have to know that life is filled with uncertainties, and sometimes, the worse happens but we can and would never be able to do just anything about them; and if we fear, that would be worse because the fear kills faster than the killer. Look pretty you have a whole promising life out there, and you have to live it but I am afraid I have to go by this. You would go so far Kefi. You are going to be a medical doctor and that would take a lot. Your fears are unfounded and you have to deal with them." He ended his speech moving towards the brown Formica coated shelf at the left side of the office and handed me a copy of Overcoming the Fear, and I held the book in my hand.
"Okay, you can go. That is all. Make sure you read the book okay?" He stretched his hand to shake with me and my little hand sank in the softness of his palm. He motioned as if to say congratulation, and off I went through the door.
My mother jumped to her feet as if she already heard something terrible.
"Omome" she placed her right arm around my shoulder, bringing me a little closer to herself.
"What did they say is wrong again?" She asked me that question, and in her face, I saw a preparedness to lunch into the kind rants she made during her night prayers.
"Mum it is okay they said nothing bad, and I would be fine. It is just a phobic attack."
"Phobia?" My mothers face said a thousand things. This time, I was confused.
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