I was already out of the door when I heard the Doctor calling me back.
“Listen, Anita, let us not make such a big issue out of this..”
“I am not making a big issue out of anything!” I’d thrown back angrily at him.
“Please, come back and let’s get on with this,” he said to me. I remained at the door, unsure whether to heed his call or to simply walk away. I was staring at him with rage in my belly. The man was simply driving me nuts.
“I said come in, Anita, please…”
He repeated, trying to sound apologetic. After a brief silent moment, I stepped back inside the room.
He looked into my eyes speechlessly and then shook his head. “If you’re insisting we do it the way you want, no problem, let’s get on with it.”
I sighed heavily and dropped my bag on the only chair in the room before taking off my undies and then climbed back on the bed. From where I lay, I watched as he and the nurse began to make preparations for the evacuation. My mind began to drift. I was a little nervous. I was scared. Supposing something goes wrong? Supposing I lose my womb? What if MD gets to find out what I came here to do? A cacophony of thoughts was running through my mind. I remembered how traumatising, how challenging life had been for me before everything changed when I met MD. And the tears started to course down my face.
A lot of pictures were flashing through my mind. A lot of memories. A lot of pain… a lot of joy… I remembered those difficult days back in the village when mother and my siblings went through very harrowing days after the untimely death of my father. I could see pictures of mother slaving and labouring hard to feed her children. Memories of those days that we went to bed hungry without food flashed through my head. I remembered how hard it was for us to survive. Scenes of that fateful day when the news of Papa’s death reached mother flooded my thoughts.
“You people are not serious!” Mother had thrown at the men who’d come to break the shocking news.
“How could you come here and be playing such stupid pranks! My husband is alright, there is nothing wrong with him. He left home not long ago to look for a job and he promised he’d be back soon.”
There was an eerie silence. The men were looking at each other, unsure of what to tell her, scared they were on the brink of sending the poor woman into a severe state of shock.
“Please, tell me, are you telling me the truth? Is there something wrong with my husband?” she asked them when she realized they were not ready to say a word more.
“Mama Anita, please, take it easy, you have to take heart, please….” One of them said to her.
As young as I was at the time, my heart was pounding hard against my chest. The fear of the calamity that was about to befall our family overwhelmed me. The darkest days of our lives were about to begin…
My mother let out a loud scream and threw herself on the floor, rolling from one end of the room to the other. She was simply inconsolable…
As I laid there on the doctor’s bed, waiting for him to begin the D&C, the flood gates of my eyes flung open and, more seriously this time, the tears started to run down my face. And I got up from the bed.
“I can’t do it, doctor,” I turned to the man,
“I don’t want the D&C again!”
…to be continued
