Kay-Grace’s Journal

Thursday, September 10^th, 2009.

I feel like every bone in my body’s going to crack. I don’t even know where I find the time to write. The hospital was swarming with people, and I had to attend to the little boy with the broken nose. His story was suspect, and I caught his mother looking terse, like there was more to the story than she let on.

I’m back in the doctor’s station, on-call over night. I took over from Dr. Matthers, she had to go home to cook for her family. Though Dr. Matthers was tired, and looked like she needed days sleep, her eyes leapt with joy when she said the word ‘family’. It sounded deliberate, like she enjoyed tormenting me with my absence of one.

Family is not mom and dad, or any of my sisters. I have all that. Family is a warm masculine and exclusively-for-you hug waiting when you get home, and a little adorable child calling you ‘mama’. Would it ever happen to me? All I do is run from work, home, and back again.

I need to drop off a card for Jumoke. Tomorrow is her birthday.

Saturday, September 12^th, 2009.

Got home, and got into an argument with Dolly-Dee. It was all her fault – she started it. So much for being the first born. Why is she always out to draw blood? Good thing I’m on leave for a week, I’m sure to take time off.

Sunday, September 13^th, 2009

It’s been a while I was in church. It’s been one long duty to another. It was refreshing – hearing the choir sing. It was simply amazing, until I noticed Njideka at the back row.

He hadn’t changed one bit. I hear he was in some Asian country on cross posting – Malaysia, or Indonesia, I think. If I didn’t know that Njideka was a Christian and had loved God all his life, I would have said he secretly went to Bahamas to lay on the beach – he still had the looks of a brazen idol, and I think he even looked better than he did when I saw him last five years ago. I caught him looking my way, or was it the other way a round? Hey, Kay-Grace, stop acting up like you’re a little teenage girl. You know knights in shining armour don’t just turn up in your church, do they? Especially ones that treated you bad in times past.

After service, I tried to avoid him, and it was easy. When all those young sissies were crowding around him, akin to a stream of fans around some pop star, I took the advantage to make my glorified exit.

I got back home, and I made jollof rice, without any complains or prodding from my mum. It was my special treat, I said. If only they knew the truth – I had to do something to think, to rearrange my thoughts. Njideka couldn’t be back after so long. I had set the table, arranged the plates in a cute circular fashion. It had taken only a sharp eye like Dolly-Dee to notice. She asked if she had seen him in church. Why did this girl annoy me this much? Couldn’t she understand how much I wanted Njideka to be buried in the past where he belonged? Couldn’t she see that I needed to get my life together, and move on? I had thought Njideka and I had been an item. It was certainly decreed from the heavens – but the unthinkable had happened, when Njideka had called me. I had thought he was going to pop the question – the mood was perfect – the setting was beautiful. Njideka called me to let me know he had no intentions of going further with our relationship. He had a whiff that I might have been thinking there was something more than our ‘just friends’ and he wanted to set the record straight.

I endured the long talk for a while, I smiled, and nodded and told him not to worry, then afterwards, I went to my room and I cried. He had gone off on a posting a year later, so it was easy to assume that nothing had happened. I stopped writing him, then I stopped calling. It was a smooth and easy transition.

Then, just in the middle of lunch, after everyone had bounced on the table and started eating, there was a knock on the door. Someone went to get it, that’s the benefit of being first born. This was my first Sunday in the past three months, and I wanted to make the most of it.  I was on the table when I heard a smooth, deep baritone voice that I couldn’t mistaken with any other. It was him! What was he doing here? I was shaking my head, squirming in my seat, and I got up to my feet, and I was heading towards the stairs when I heard my father’s hearty laugh. He welcomed him in, and so did my mom. Njideka, had after all inspired me to become a doctor in the first place. I moved away, quickly towards the stairs.

‘Kay!’ Father called me. ‘Guess who’s here!’

I halted in my steps, feeling like a reluctant teenager. No one had known about my secret crush. Well, maybe they had all assumed something was going to kick off between us, but after he moved to another country, and we stopped communicating, it didn’t seem likely.

I came down to say hello.  He looked gorgeously amazing. I sucked in my breath, feeling dizzy spells like swarming bees. I chided myself. It’s been five years, you’ve grown up. Njideka was the person I had always dreamed I’d get married to, and have three cute kids for. It had worked well, in my dreams.

We talked, and underneath it all, I was trying to figure out what he was doing here. Njideka had grown up with my family. I’d known him all my life, and he was welcome here. But he had broken my heart, in a way, and seeing him here hurt, terribly! I wanted to ask him if he was dating anyone. I didn’t see a ring on his finger, which meant he was single, right? He had come back to Nigeria and was going to be working in my hospital – well, it wasn’t so bad, because we were going to be in two different departments.

Njideka took me to a corner, and he said he had something to tell me. He said he had been doing a lot of thinking, and he was interested in marrying one of the Sassis – only that it wasn’t me. It was my sister, Joy-Kemi!

Kay-Grace Sassi: 32, medical doctor, loves her job, immerses herself in work, hates to make friends.