Virus (8 page)

Tunrayo’s face and thoughts were
glum as she and her mother walked away from Oraromi crown hospital.
It was a ten-minute walk from the hospital to their house, and they
had already spent about four minutes walking.

In those four minutes, neither of
them spoke. Tunrayo found it strange that her mother had not said
much about the incident involving Chike and the mad man. It was so
unlike her.

She rarely passed up the opportunity
to voice an opinion on anything, especially something as serious as
this. Tunrayo grew so entrenched in her thoughts that she did not
notice that her mother was speaking.

“Tunrayo__” She cried raising her
voice to almost a screech.

“Yes_” She shouted jumping in
fright.

“Did you not hear me speaking to
you?”

“I am sorry mum, I did not. What did
you say?”

“I want you to tell me what happened
yesterday morning in greater detail please. Leave nothing
out__”

“But I have already told
you__”

“I want to hear it AGAIN!!” Her
mother snapped in a voice that brooked no argument.

She sighed in resignation and began
narrating the events of yesterday morning. When she got to the part
where Eze bit chike, she paused looking horrified as she recalled
what happened. Her mother listened without interrupting her once.
By the time she eventually finished it was her mother’s turn to
sigh.

A long silence followed. By this
time, they had almost reached their house. They could see its
bright red roof fifty paces away almost hidden by a thick cluster
of teak trees.

The dusty road leading to the house
seemed even dustier today. It covered their sandaled feet with a
thick coat of white dust. Her mother cleared her throat twice
before turning to face her.

“Tunrayo__” She began
slowly.

“Yes mum.”

“I know sometimes I seem hard,
but__” She paused as if she was struggling to find the right words
to say.

“But what mummy?”

There was another pause.

“Please my daughter, I want you to
be very careful from here on out. I don’t know what I will do if I
lost you. I do not want you taking such risks.”

“But that’s just it mum, I didn’t
take any risk. Chike caused everything. Wole and I warned him on
countless occasions to stop taunting Eze but he refused to listen.
There was even a time I almost slapped him, but stubborn goat that
he is, he refused to listen to me.”

“I will not say more than what I
have already said__” Her mother continued as if she had not heard a
word she said.

“__ I haven’t said a word about it
since you told me because I was frightened and in shock. You are my
child and I don’t want anything to happen to you__ in fact I will
not let anything happen to you_ not while I am around.” She looked
so fierce as she said this that an amused smile crept on Tunrayo’s
face.

Her mother smiled back, patting her
on the back gently before turning to enter the house. Tunrayo
paused for a couple of seconds and hurried in after her.

Chapter
Fourteen

Four days later

“Doctor please what is happening to
our son?” Chioma gasped looking at the doctor’s face with wide
terrified eyes.

The wan faced doctor sat behind a
wide mahogany desk sifting through a pile of papers in front of
him. They were in the doctor’s office, a wide and spherical shaped
room with high walls, asbestos ceilings and thick blue carpeting.
Frank stood some distance away. His back faced them cos he had his
eyes fixed on the closed wooden door.

Chioma glanced at him searching for
support but he gave none. He had barely spoken more than ten words
since Chike’s return to the hospital and with the almost helpless
vibe she sensed coming from him, she doubted he would say anything
more.

Before she could dwell on that
thought the doctor rose to his feet staring at the more than half a
dozen test results spread out on his desk.

“Mr. and Mrs. Chidozie, I am afraid
I do not know what is wrong with your son. His symptoms defy all
our attempts to treat them. From the test results that just came
back from the lab, we really have no idea what is wrong with
him.”

“Then send his blood work to another
lab.”

“I am afraid there is no other lab.
The two labs we sent his blood to are the only ones in Oraromi. If
he does not improve by the end of the day, I would advise you take
him to the teaching hospital in the next state.”

“But__” Frank growled turning around
slowly. “There must be something we can do?”

“I am afraid I do not know what else
to do_” The doctor replied with a helpless look on his
face.

An eerie silence engulfed the room.
The silence was broken by a hard knock on the door a few moments
later.

“Yes!” The doctor barked
irritably.

“Its me__” A soft voice answered
from behind the door.

“What do you want?”

“Its time to give Chike his next
shot sir.”

“Then give him and stop bothering
me.”

“His other results just came in__
but__”

“But what?”

“Something is happening to him which
I think you should see.”

That made everyone in the room
freeze. Without another word, they hurried to the door. Chioma
somehow managed to reach the door first. She wrenched the door open
and rushed out with the others following close behind.

She reached Chike’s side and fell to
her knees sobbing hysterically. Frank got to his bed next and his
face instantly grew pale. The doctor pushed past them and gasped in
horror.

Chike lay spread-eagled on the bed.
His eyes shone with maniacal maniacally intent and were unfocused.
He wore a pair of navy blue shorts, which was the only item of
clothing he had on.

Along both sides of his body, on the
part of his ribcage that lay beneath his arm, all the way to his
abdomen were several orifices, seeping blue green pus like liquid.
The openings of these orifices opened and closed spasmodically,
sort of like the way a fish’s gills moved as it
breathed.

Each time they opened, a sickening
hissing sound burst from it and several frightening spasms would
rock Chike’s body. His skin, which had always been a healthy
chocolate color, was now blackish green tinged with a bit of
red.

“DOCTOR WHAT IS HAPPENING TO HIM?”
Chioma wailed.

“I honestly do not know.” The doctor
gasped looking plainly horrified.

Seven hours later

Doctor Makinde walked out of the
hospital with long hurried strides. He had a strained look on his
face. The black slacks he wore were rumpled and the white long
sleeved shirt covering his torso was wrinkled, stained in several
places with greenish red dots.

He frowned as he looked at it. He
could not remember where he had gotten the stains. His face grew
grimmer as he replayed his day in his head. The only place he could
have gotten the stains from would have been from Chike
Chidozie.

Thinking about the Chidozie boy made
a cold chill run down his spine. Hundreds of goose pimples sprouted
on his skin as he remembered the gill like holes on Chike’s
sides.

He scratched his fingers
absentmindedly. It itched badly from the scouring he had given it.
He and his team had moved Chike to another room and had him
quarantined. He forbade everyone from touching him with their bare
hands since the start of his new set of symptoms.

The nurses and doctors who attended
to him wore masks and thick latex gloves. Just thinking about the
green pus coming out of his body made him feel like
puking.

In all his years as a medical
practitioner, he had never seen anything like that before. He made
a mental note to pull out some of his old textbooks and do some
searching. If he found nothing he would try checking
online.

He could not wait to have the boy
and his parent’s transferred to the teaching hospital in the next
state where they would become someone else’s problem. For as long
as he could remember, he had always been a down to earth and
extremely realistic person. He hated it when he could not figure
something out or the world around him did not make rational
sense.

It made him feel un-tethered.
Trapped in a world without gravity, floating, drifting on the whims
and caprices of the weightlessness around him; he hadn’t felt like
this for years. Truth be told, he never believed he would ever feel
like this again. How wrong he had been.

A sting on his left arm just beneath
his elbow snapped him out of his reverie. He touched the spot
carefully and almost jumped from the sharp pain his touch
evoked.

Still frowning he raised his elbow
to look. A circle of bright red blood brought him up short. What in
the world? Ki lo n sele si mi?* What is happening to me?

Rolling up his sleeve to the elbow,
he was shocked to see a set of crescent shaped marks on his arm
just beneath his elbow. He studied them carefully. They looked like
bite marks. His skin was broken in four places and blood seeped out
of the broken skin.

He had been bitten! But by whom?
Fear stole into his heart. Why hadn’t he noticed before now? Four
patients struggled with him as he tried to give them their shots.
It had to be one of the four that had bitten him. Chike was one of
the four. He refused to consider the possibility that he was the
one responsible.

His strides grew longer as he
hurried towards home. When he got home, he would rinse out the
wound and put iodine and spirits on it. All would be well. The cold
feeling in his heart told him he did not really believe what he was
trying to get himself to believe but__ he tried to clear his head
the closer he got to his house.

Nurse Damilola stood in front of a
long mirror examining her reflection carefully. A thrill of fear
stole into her heart as she looked at the tightly clasped green
rubber suit she wore. She packed her luxurious black hair into a
shower cap and a green surgical mask covered the lower part of her
face.

The lime green wellington style
boots she wore made walking quite difficult. Since her destination
was the next room, she did not have to go too far to get to where
she was going. Her wide panicked eyes drifted to the digital clock
hanging on the wall to her right.

It said 11.45. Great! Why did her
shift have to fall on this night of all nights? Maybe the gods
hated her, especially since she was the one charged with the
responsibility of giving the Chidozie child his injection. A shiver
ran down her spine and she shuddered.

Deciding not to put it off any
longer, she started for the door behind her. Taking a deep breath
when she reached it, she opened it and stepped into the room
closing the door firmly behind her.

She turned facing the large bed
sitting in the center of the room. Chike’s fragile looking body
filled her with a sadness so great that it seemed to come from her
very soul.

There were long tubes inserted into
the gill like opening in his sides, which were sucking out the
greenish fluid from his insides. His skin color, which a couple of
hours ago had been blackish green, was now a cross between red and
purple with a tinge of black.

Damilola took several deep breaths
to calm herself, before unzipping the massive pocket on the right
side of her rubber suit. Removing a long hypodermic needle and
syringe, she headed to the bag of saline fluid fed into Chike’s
body intravenously.

The syringe in her hand was
half-full of a clear colorless liquid, which she injected into the
bag of normal saline. The fluid in the bag turned deep
blue.

Reaching down for the drip control,
she made the liquid flowing into his vein faster. A sigh burst from
his lips but Chike did not open his eyes. If not for the rising and
falling of his chest, she would not believe he was still
alive.

A muffled cry from her right reached
her ears and she jumped startled realizing at the last minute that
it came from the large window to her left. Her eyes grew sadder
when she saw the tragic looking expression on Chioma and Steven`s
face. Chioma’s had her nose pressed against the glass as rivers of
tears streamed down her cheeks.

Steven stood beside her squeezing
her shoulders and trying hard to look strong. Damilola could see
however that he had tears in his eyes. Her heart went out to them.
She could only imagine the pain and horror they were going through.
Their eyes were red and bloodshot and they looked like they had not
slept in days. She nodded at them slowly. Steven responded but his
wife was too overcome with her grief to respond.

Chike’s body suddenly jerked, as if
five hundred volts of electricity ran through his body at once. A
piercing scream erupted from his lips at almost the same instant.
His body went into intense spasms, so sharp and furious that she
thought his body was going to snap in two.