Saturday February 24, 2018

"Now close your left eye and read the alphabets on the lamp." The doctor ordered.

Tokunbo nodded, removed the palm that covered her right eye and placed it on the left. The lamp stood a couple of meters away from her luminating a bunch of black blurry letters on it's surface. She shook her head at the doctor.

"Can't see anything?" He asked and slipped a lens on the contraption over her eyes. "Better?"

"Yeah. I can see the letters a and u." She muttered.

After a few more minutes of doubling lenses, reading black letters off a lamp and the doctor taking notes on his pad, he nodded that the session was over. For almost three months the routine had been the same. She would be escorted from her cell to the hospital and they would make her put her face in machines then evaluate whatever it was that was wrong with her eyes.

"You may come in Mr Micheal." The doctor called out.

Uncle Micheal was a colleague of her father. Francis had wanted someone he trusted guarding his daughter while the force hunted down Demi and the rest of the Skylars. He wasn't taking any chances apparently.

"Sir?" Mr Micheal's baritone voice covered the whole room.

"Well, turns out she'll need glasses after all. I've gotten the power for each lens and it'll be sent to the opthamology department. Next Saturday then?"

"No." Micheal replied and she nodded in agreement. She had waited almost three months for a solution. There was no way she was waiting a whole week. "There'll be a court hearing then. Is there a way we can get it today?"

There was silence for a while. Tokunbo glanced up to see the blurry outline of the doctor and figured he was nodding his head.

"Of course." He said. "It should be ready in about three hours, and then little Tokunbo can see again."

Her lips split into a grin as relief and joy flooded through her. After all those weeks in blurry darkness, she ached to recognise faces, to pick out colors, to stare up at the stars and to see her baby brother.

I am never taking the stars for granted again.

Mr Micheal led her out of the room into the waiting area and helped her sit on the chair. He, unlike some of her police escorts didn't hand cuff her to himself like some hardened criminal and she was grateful for that.

Two weeks after the incident, the judicial system had decided that young or not, killing a girl and landing a boy in coma barely six months after couldn't be overlooked. Tokunbo had to be punished. Her father had never been so stressed. His wife went into labor a few days later and he had to juggle his house responsibilities as well as the law. It had been hectic. Court officials came to her asking the same questions over and over. The victim's mother slipped into her ward one time and tried to attack her. She lost her eyesight and couldn't see. Everything had felt like she was locked up in a tight box and couldn't come out. And when the judgement was finally passed, she was relieved.

They ordered her isolation for three months in a refurbished cell that attended her basic needs. She was to have visitors once every two weeks and would be schooled online. A government assigned therapist came twice a week to help her overcome her anger issues and she was allowed eye check ups every Saturday.

She remembered the first time they had locked her away. She had cried so hard she ran out of tears. She recalled Timilehin, her brother shouting her name at a distance. Her father stood next to the bars that caged her in, murmuring words of comfort.

"It's only for a while Tokunbo. Calm down. You will be fine. I'll make sure to get all those gangsters. Every single last one of them. I have failed you before, haven't I? I won't fail again. Okay?"

She wanted to believe him. She wanted to run into his arms and nod as he patted her hair and covered her in warmth. But she couldn't. She sat in the cold dingy cell on a cold hard bed, blind and broken.

But not anymore.

She couldn't wait to tell Vicky, Eli, Enoch and Betty the good news when they would come to see her the next day. And she couldn't wait to get away from her dreadful therapist. He did nothing but tell her sentences like "More people, more emotions" or "people beget anger". She pictured him as a sad miserable man who did his government assigned work begrudgingly.

"Come on let's resume our game or how are we supposed to wait three hours here without losing our minds?" Mr Micheal groaned beside her and she chuckled. "You think it's funny? I'll show you funny when I beat you at Rock, paper, Scissors."

"You always win because you change your hands at the last minute." She accused and he responded with a loud belly laugh.

"Well, it's my last day of winning. Your blind days will be over soon and so will my cheating days."

She smirked. "Make that your last few hours of winning."

Three hours and a long round of Rock-paper-scissors later, Tokunbo found herself sitting on a chair in the doctor's office and slipping on her newly made pair of glasses.

"We didn't discuss the frame so the department just picked whichever they thought would suit you." The doctor explained but she was far too gone to listen.

Everything suddenly zoomed into focus like a blurry camera wiped clean. The white of the doctor's coat startled her first and she stared at it strangely before squealing with delight.

"I can see! Oh my God, oh my God! That's water in the dispenser and your table's brown. And... And you have full hair like Wole Soyinka! Uncle Micheal you're dark? Fish balls! I can read all the letters on the lamp! Is that a candy wrapper? Oh I have missed you candy-"

"Okay that's enough." Mr Micheal cut her excited ramblings short. "I'll finalize everything with the doctor and then we can go explore the world."

The world was bright and clear and even more beautiful than she remembered. She raced through the hospital hallways in happy chatter wanting to take everything in in one deep breath. The nurses blue scrubs, a lame man's wheel chair, a baby's pink skin and her reflection on glass doors.

"Eh, skinny as always." She shrugged and glanced up at the sign above the glass doors. She stood motionless for a while, her eyes taking each letter one after the other.

I.C.U.

Mr Micheal appeared beside her panting heavily. "Kid...stop running... off like that." He clamped a hand over her shoulder.

"Can I go in?" She asked, still staring up at the letters.

He shook his head. "Not a good idea Tokunbo. Your father doesn't want you stressed."

"Please? Just one peek? I just want to see how he's doing and we'll leave." She begged. "Please."

After a minute of hesitancy he nodded and they walked through the glass doors together.
______________________________

Andrew Adigwe's ward room was loud. No there was no one but her there, but there were four machines that kept making beeps at different intervals. The resulting sound was cacophonous and most definitely annoying. But Andrew laid on the bed silently, oblivious to the irritating sounds.

She took a few steps towards him. She barely knew him. Scratch that, she had no idea who he was when he came upon her in Demi's house. All her instincts focused on keeping the diary and surviving the brawl. And it was all useless. Demi was still on the loose and she had to be detained in a cell.

They had said the wounds she inflicted on him were bad. They lied. The wounds were horrifying. His face looked mashed up even though it had been three months. A tube, connected to one of the machines, passed through his bandaged head into his body. Other tubes went through his mouth,nose and somewhere in his back. Shivers ran up her spine and see recoiled in horror.

"I did that." She whispered, her hands shaking. She glanced at them and saw it. Blood. They covered her hands. Suddenly she was holding the bicycle handle. She tried to throw it away, she shook at her fingers needing to let it go. But it wouldn't drop. It stuck to her hands and dripped.

Blood.

"Get off!" She yelled and shook at her hand violently. "Get off my hands! Why won't you get off? Kuro! Go away."

Panting with fear, she glanced up to find water and saw Andrew's eyes opened. They were black and souless. A scream tore at her throat and she fell to the ground scurrying backwards.

"Tokunbo!" Mr Micheal rushee into the room with a dozen of other people and she opened her eyes. She hadn't realized she had closed them. She peeked at the unconscious body on the bed and saw his eyes closed. The bicycle handle was nowhere to be seen and the blood was gone.

"You!" A woman gasped and Tokunbo looked up at her from her position on the floor. "You... Ekwesu! What is this monster doing in my son's ward ehn?!"

Andrews mother. Fish balls.

She rose to her feet quickly feeling rather small under the woman's deathly glare. The woman who had tried to strangle her a few months ago.

"What is the witch doing here ehn?! You have come to finish your job ehn? You have come to kill my Andie?" With each word the woman stepped closer to her. "You have come to finish what they have sent you? You will not succeed! You will perish! You and all your witches! Monster!"

Her heart thudded in her chest. She glanced at the faces of the nurses that had trooped in. They looked like they agreed with the woman before her. Mr Micheal weaved his way through them and stood before her.

"Please calm down madam. We'll leave now." He urged.

The woman gave a hiss. A hiss that terrified Tokunbo. "Leave kwa? She's not going anywhere. I will kill her myself today hmm? I will kill her. Look at my son. She what she did to my son o! He cannot do anything by himself again. He needs those machines to survive you hear me? He used to be so capable, until this stick abomination of a girl came! You're a monster and with my ancestors behind me, I will kill you today."

Chaos erupted. The woman lunged for her but Micheal shoved her away, threw Tokunbo over his shoulders and tore through the increasing crowd out of the ward and the ICU. While her head dangled behind his running form, all she could think about was the woman's words. She had done that to Andrew. She had ruined his life. And even if he survived it, he would be scarred for life.

Monster...Abomination.

She now understood what her dreadful therapist meant. What he had been trying to tell her.

It's simple. I'm a Monster. And Everytime I get close to people, someone always gets hurt. Badly.

.