Everyone wants to know the baddest trickster that ever lived. In the medical laboratory, Lady discovered something higher. Lady discovered the baddest trickster that ever lived.
One thing about developing countries is their hard work towards perfection. Perfection, not for behavior but for public image. Even Public Relations is not enough to achieve this.
In the core of a bustling city, Lady's father's hospital lay remarkable, saving hands outspread. It was built in three years but its reputation was not built, it was born. It was born with her father. Her father was the hospital and the hospital was her father. On her graduation day, while walking with her parents in the convocation arena to greet their friends, she realized that a business is like an extension of someone's soul. Her father, Dr. Shaka beamed proudly while discussing her with his friends. He needed her to study Medicine but Lady? Lady had not come to an understanding of what she needed for herself yet. In the end, she graduated a Medical Laboratory Scientist. Lady loved to be the opposite of her father, an unsung hero. She needed to be important yet unseen. Unseen in televisions and newspapers.
We should tell Lady that what she loved is being seen in people's heart.
The upper class chatter with glasses of wine was exhausting, even excruciating. Magdalene, her second sister, had picked a four-inch heel for her lazy legs. Magdalene was pragmatically their father, she had said to Lady, ?better arrive late than ugly.?
?But I'm not ugly!? Lady shot.
?You are ugly without heels.?
Lady furrowed and kicked out the shoes after the first trial.
Her entire legs hurt while she played the most sought human of the day, she stamped her feet gently and swayed restlessly. She smiled to her parents' friends and answered scientific and ?what next?' questions. Her own acquaintances were mostly her course mates and they had all gone to the club to dance together. Lady didn't dare dive into that to dishonor the graduation dinner set for her. She was the last girl of three daughters, older than a boy. Her older sisters both studied Law, the mantle had fallen on her to study Medicine but since she bent on the line, her younger brother became the next and only target. The day they set her free to study Medical Laboratory as a close substitute was the day her 14-year-old brother declared overtly, ?Daddy, I want to be a Doctor, just like you.?
Lady had practiced in her father's hospital for a year, two months, three weeks and one day. She counted judiciously her days to when she will rush out of the lab, out of her father and become a baker. A cake baker.
Still, she was in agreement with herself that she could never do that.
Everyone wants to know the baddest trickster that ever lived. In the medical laboratory, Lady discovered something higher. Lady discovered the baddest trickster that ever lived.
The fine Medical Laboratory Scientist examined the sample of tissue from a lump and gasped. She peeped through the microscope again, a cough suddenly gripped her throat. She coughed till she fled for a chair. Two of her colleagues made it to the chair with her. Lady scratched her throat repeatedly before accepting water.
Waiting till work closure was not going to solve the matter and she must see her father immediately.
?After all, this matter is work related. It is work,? she yelled at herself as she matched to his office.
She had duly maintained an employer and staff relationship with her father while at work. Though Dr. Shakah said she didn't have to yet Lady could not be subverted. The seriousness of her face appeared like a pretty frown. Most times, she only saw her father at their ride home. The elderly man loved riding with his daughter, Lady wondered if she would ever meet a man while playing Daddy's girl on a daily.
?Your father went to meet your mother at the other hospital,? his Secretary proffered.
Business had been good so Dr. Shakah had established another hospital in another part of town that her mother headed. Though reality was right in her face, Lady often omitted the details about her mother's profession because she had studied Agriculture before her father kidnapped her through love and conditioned her into Medication. Her mother went ahead to study what her father studied and she supported every of her husband's motive all lifelong.
Lady walked into her father's office anyway and began to pace. She adjusted her skirt twice or more, sat and stood. She pulled out her tucked-in shirt from her skirt and began to blow herself. The air condition functioned properly but she was unaware, unaware of herself too at that moment. Only Mrs. Odega's face was in her head, mind and heart.
Engineer Odega and his wife had been thrown into panic and depression after a lump germinated in one of her wife's breasts. Man loves breasts so Odega mourned profoundly one of his wife's breasts after it was amputated four days ago. The test result had shown that the lump was cancerous 15 days ago but on that day, Lady was driven by a force she didn't know to conduct another analysis on the preserved tissue.
Every month, she missed two days at work if her menstruation came on week days. The first two days of her menstruation was steadily like a furnace at her lower abdomen that could not be quenched even by her own father, the great Dr. Shakah.
One of her colleagues had definitely made a grave mistake. She rushed out of her father's office back to the laboratory, conducted another test and got same cancer-negative result.
?Mrs. Stan, how did this happen?? She shot with the result in one hand, a microscope in another.
The petite woman took the result, read through and went to run another test for her own confirmation, she cupped her mouth strongly when she realized her flop.
?It was the day Zion...Zion my child was ill?I came late and? hoooh!? The woman wailed She slapped her thighs and fell on the floor. Lady took a seat and the both women began to cry. The other two Lab Scientists came in and began to rub their heads franticly. Departmental duty was collective in the hospital. They were going down the fall together.
Lady wept and cleaned her eyes. She returned to her father's office and gave up on life for few seconds. Her eyes counted the ceiling rapidly not her brain.
She reached her father but he revealed that he was heading home with his wife. Lady objected loudly for the first time and ordered them to come to the headquarters.
?Of all days, you took a ride home without me! Dr. Shakah really? Mum?? Lady snapped as they walked in.
Her parents were lost, they glared at each other first before reaching for their raving daughter. The next episode was rapture. Lady saw her father run out of himself. He froze before groaning. Her mother, Dr. Bridget, gently walked to a chair, sank into it and lowered her head into her palms.
?I am impeccable, infallible! Yes, I am! This has never happened, not in my hospital!?
Dr. Shakah was average in height but sturdy and as he spoke angrily, his words rushed out, taller.
?Who else knows this?? he inquired.
?My colleagues.?
The three of them trouped in shortly.
Dr. Shakah punished them with his eyes first before uttering a sentence, ?If I hear this incident from anywhere else!? His lips and hands vibrated.
An angel has just been stained.
For loyalty purpose, Mrs. Stan was still retained. There was no hitherto written section in the hospital's constitution that dealt with such unfortunate error so the man of repute followed the matter slowly.
Lady and her parents settled for truth later, the question in the situation was common, who will bell the cat?
Engineer Odega was simply a normal man though clothed in rich dark hair from the womb. The hairless space on his face was no larger than a palm. He wore very soft cotton T-shirts every time Lady saw him. The hospital had discharged his wife and let the family relax for a week before the honest invitation.
?Engineer Odega, how is your family, how is your wife?? Dr. Shakah asked repeatedly. Lady eavesdropped at the door with a file in her hand. Her mother was at the branch waiting anxiously for her call over the outcome.
?Very well Doc. Thank you.? Engineer Odega answered with a laugh and Lady's father realized that he was a simple man.
?It is not easy, it is not easy Doctor,? he rubbed his bushy head and gifted a depressed smile.
?It is well We believe in healing either through instruments, people or God in this hospital. And you know our standard. Good. So?what can I offer you?
?Nothing or water.?
Dr. Shakah offered him a bottle of cold water and a glass by himself.
He allowed him drink first before shooting again.
?Your wife could not make it??
?Yes, she complained about ?she is tired.?
?I see. Engineer Odega.?
?Here it goes,? Lady commented under her racing breath outside.
?I will give you the lead Engineer as it is, based on the test we have just conducted.?
The Engineer began to nod.
?Your wife?eerh the lump found?discovered in one of your wife's breasts was not actually cancerous. There has been an erroneous incident occurring?' There, Dr. Shakah lost his voice ignition. The man's facial reaction had been the brightest colors ever, shooting sparks like the face of Joker.
?Doctor, you are playing me,? he commented freely. Suddenly, his face hardened, he leaned over the desk and his grip fell on Dr. Shakah's red shirt.
Lady's eyes popped outside like her fathers' and urine protested to drop in her underwear.
Then, Engineer Odega returned to a wild laughter, poured himself some water and drank. He dropped the empty glass hard on the desk.
?April Fool Doctor! I caught you first.?
?What?? Dr. Shakah asked discordantly.
?Today is April 1st, you are good Doctor. I hail thee! You can't prank me, ask my family I am good. I know it is my brother that begged you to help him prank me?or.?
?What?? Dr. Shakah could not believe the man before him, who cares about date? April Fool shenanigan is for idle people, not him and he had no business with dates, his Secretary took that burden. All he knew was healing through instruments, people and God every day, every damn day.
?Or is it my son or my colleagues. They talked to you right? Doctor, you tried but tell the person that I am good. I caught you first. Tell them I caught you first,? Engineer Odega continued and laughed even more.
Dr. Shakah was almost amused by the folly in human form sitting before him.
?Today is April 1st? Look Engineer Odega...?
Her father was being a realist again, Lady stepped in with the file. She fought hard to prevent herself from laughing and crying simultaneously.
?Good day, sir, are you Engineer Odega? Yes you are, sorry,? she stuttered and glanced at the file as if she was looking for something very crucial.
Engineer Odega still had a wide smile on his face while starring at her, Dr. Shakah moped in the weirdest astonishment. Everyone was definitely acting up too much before him.
Lady pursued, ?Sir, your wife has actually been listed as one of our beneficiaries in?of our cancer society, providing support both psychologically and financially. We dish out a huge sum of money to??
?I said it!? The Engineer exclaimed and guffawed, throwing his head back this time.
?You wanted to prank me first before telling me about the good news. I caught you, Nurse, tell me the good news please,? he continued and sat well, pouting at the Doctor in victory.
?Yes sir, so you can come later this week to provide us with the necessary details,? Lady supplied, rather seriously. In that instance, she needed to laugh out loud badly before crying.
?I will come, there is no problem. Thank you Doc. But you are very funny Doc, do you do this for relaxation? How can you cut one of my wife's breasts and decide to prank me with it?? He was laughing again.
Lady giggled a little at a full blown ignorance and her father smiled for the first time during the period. He had been enslaved in distress ever since the incident. Engineer Odega appeared like the greatest joker he will ever meet on earth so the stern Doctor seized the moment, widened his eyes and laughed hysterically to his full. The laughter reverberated in the office, Lady lost all her composure and laughed till her eyes itched of moisture.
Silence took long before descending.
Lady had cooked up an imaginary cancer society to save her father that society was saving already. Occurrences built up to deliver Engineer Odega a prank that wasn't even there. A prank that no one planned. Something will always lead to something but social people must always tag it, social people always have a name, term or title for everything. Lady shook her head to what April Fool had caused. She lowered her head to society, ?may life not prank you.?
They attended a white garment church. Dr. Shakah expressed wearily at home, ?I will burn incent all through this week, not to thank God but for nothing. For absolutely nothing.?
After a long while of absence, Rose and Celine again reappeared within the vicinity of Ngong' hostel, and were advancing, somewhat ungainly, towards its entrance. Even from afar, they obviously expended not a care in their manner of walking as was regular with their habits.
Panting and sweating, their sweat-sodden tops sticking stubbornly to the straight of their youthful backs, the pair lackadaisically crossed the slabbed compound and onto the threshold. Underneath their clothing, Celine and Rose,--especially Celine who always engaged so much activity in her walk--, were awash in dribbles of sticky perspirations.
Mounting the last stair onto the second floor, they had now only to turn left and pass by a couple doors to reach their room, room 247. Once inside, they halted at last and effected such an exchange of consensual glances which told it all: So much for a pedestrian spree!
Walking in the sun for the whole mileage, to and from Githurai back to the campus, had affected them differently. Celine, being in possession of the most sensitive of natures and having the most vigorous of walking attitude, felt the effect more acutely. She squirmed and made such long faces as if in so doing she lessened the feverish sensations which prevailed all over her body, and especially on her brow.
"I'd better go run some cold water on my face, it's burning," Celine adjourned wisely, not applying much effort to her utterance as if the activity would have given her away or that she little trusted herself to keep her inner euphoria bottled up. The prank had to be kept as unpredictable as her face was readable, after all. "By-the-by, do release my handbag of its contents, it's too full, I'm afraid," She added from the corridor, chuckling amusedly. And wth that simple request Celine set the wheel of her masterpiece in motion.
Perplexed at Celine's amused attitude, Rose dropped onto her bed with a face which expressed a confusion of amusement and exhaustion. She stretched out on the bed with her dusty feet dangling off the edge and shut her eyes for a moment. She drew one heavy breath after another, and willed herself into relaxation.
Now that was a shopping spree! She smiled at the thought, more so at their daring attitude to even consider venturing out with only a couple hundred shillings in their pockets. She smirked broadly; of how the handbags came to be full she possessed no conscious recollection.
After a moment, she heard Celine's steps again in the corridor and just then recalled of her earlier request to relieve the bags. Rose then drew the bags to her, unzipped them and spewed their contents in no particular manner, one after the other, on the flat of the bed. Articles of all sorts fell out altogether and lay strewn all over: some on their sides, others on their backs and, yet still, a few on their tops.
At that instant, Celine opened the door and joined her roommate, by the bed, in contemplating the messy heap. They surveyed their money's worth on the bed, sighed with satisfaction and set about arranging the articles.
Celine was now almost holding her breath in raw anticipation as her eyes went slightly out of focus in attentive delight. She couldn't risk discovery, however, and so she tugged down the corners of her mouth as best as she could in feigned disinterest.
"I didn't see you buy this,"Rose chimed with a sly almost bemused look, holding up a box of saliva based pregnancy test kit.
"Oh that! Fanciful, isn't it?"
"Ha-ha, okay, I give you that. But it must have been quite costly, no?"
"Sure it was, but, as you can imagine, I drove a hard bargain. Besides, at least now we don't have go to the loo any longer, if you know my meaning."
"Oh that! sure thing. As to your habits, well, of those I'm well acquainted," Rose flashed her friend a toothy smile," and, anyway, it's not like I'm a fan of loos either. Things get real clumsy there; perhaps I should try this, what do you think?"
That said, (and smirking at Celine whose eyes, now goggling, rolled over ever so knowingly) Rose wasted no time in waiting some wise rejoinder from her friend. She proceeded to open the blue coloured box and selected a test kit.
This was too much. Celine was practically bubbling with detained laughter. The anticipation of it was killing her
"Oh don't worry, dear; I'm pregnant alright." Rose beamed jokingly, misjudging the cause of Celine's jovial agitations, and then dipped the kit's tip into her mouth while holding its end between the thumb and index of her right hand.
Still jesting, she removed the strip from her mouth with such accurate dramatization of enigma that Celine mistook it for her long-awaited cue of triumph. She burst out laughing.
However, one more look at the kit--at its colour change-- and Rose's countenance suddenly turned sour. The light-heartedness dried away and she halted in mid-action, halfway in the production of yet another comical puppetry with her body as the object. Whatever jocose occupation that had held her attentions was now totally neglected as her disposition was thrown into confusion. For a moment she possessed the stillness and outward calm of a statue, and the only moving facility were her disbelieving eyes.
Rose was at this instant oblivious to Celine's presence, let alone her bursts of laughter.
However, before a minute more was over her head, it dawned on Celine that she was losing control of the events: Rose's reactions were of a sort she never foresaw. Nonetheless she still managed to relax a little, after all there was nothing to worry about, or so she thought.
Meanwhile, regaining the use of her limbs, Rose bolted upright to the fullest of her height. The bleak lighting in their room indeed left much to be desired. She craved clarity and struggled confusedly with indecision for the manner in which to quickly gain a handle on her present circumstance.
Acting on impulse, she made a slight turn on the balls of her feet in consequence of which she found herself by the window. She threw the velvety curtains aside, and (there, at this place of vantage) exposed the test kit to the sunlight.
Outside, it was already evening, and the sun, midway through the last quarter of its daily course, fast declining over the western horizon, shed exceedingly waning rays by the hour. Nevertheless, all the while, in the immense curve of the campus sky, dark clouds were slowly gathering, driven thus by the westward winds which prevailed such sweet rain odours.
Rose however attended none of these happenings; her attentions were altogether occupied in the effort to make sense of the colour change at which she squinted ceaselessly in disbelief. And at any rate, so disposed, the gentle touch of the evening rays, pouring in through the window, set alight her outward appearance in a golden glow; as the breeze which sifted through the shutters floated the thin of her hair in wavy motions about her head.
"Am I with child, or merely attending some illusion which would soon prove itself no more than just that? Or was the kit, after all, faulty from the start by some sly design?" In such and so on a manner, in loud expressions of her thoughts, Rose interrogated herself.
And so, seeking of proof to support her belief, she gazed on at the colour change in the vain anticipation that it would soon prevail negative, as she knew it ought be. All the while, in her mind, she grappled with the possibility of her situation being an impression of reality. But that was absurd. She couldn't be with child. It was not possible.
Rose was undoubtedly in shock as, under her, her feet buckled and almost gave way. Standing was now proving to be beyond her powers. And she struggled to attain it; and more so to maintain her balance. However, incomprehensibly, this effort only made things worse It was as if she no longer possessed the fortitude to subscribe to simultaneous mental tasks. One invariably took off from the other. So she couldn't stand still and think at the same time for in this manner of continuance lay an inevitable breakdown.
She therefore took a few clumsy backward steps, as if to make an escape, only to be stopped in her tracks by the edge of a bed which connected so fiercely with the back of her knees that she yielded and woodenly dropped backwards onto the bed with her hands splayed all about her.
She then arranged herself into the pose of a foetus: she hugged her knees in a tight contortion of the back as her hands hang loose at her sides in a semblance of oars as if to aid her in sailing the storm which presently enveloped her. While this pose profited her with some repose it occasioned no further detention of her tears. And she sobbed freely.
And suddenly, on account of her veil of tears, the room was too narrow for her. Her bearing, too, accordingly shifted into overlapping exhibitions of hallucinations and reality. The wall at the farthest end of the room advanced upon her figure. And in consequence, she cringed even more forcefully into her foetal attitude as if to reach out for some misplaced solace deep within her person. She couldn't take it any longer.
With a suddenness which staggered Celine into momentary surprise from which she struggled to again sufficiently recollect her wits about her, Rose stormed out of the room.
Celine had, all the while, wisely stayed out of Rose's way and waited impatiently for her to calm down a little to permit the hearing of her confession. However, Rose's storming out of the room put all that on hold as she scampered after her friend in fearful concern and in more worry than Rose presently reserved for herself.
Only then did Celine recall of the winding staircase as if the knowledge had all this while kept out of her consciousness till this moment by design and just to add to her tortures. And with the recollection of the stairs came a dozen horrors of imaginations as she attended, in her mind's eye, the body of Rose tumbling and bouncing off the abyss of stairs into such obscene fatal disfigurement! Close to tears, she fought off these premonitions in vain. Again and again they came at her and with so much vehemence.
In her view, the only viable atonement was more than mere confession. But first she had to catch up with Rose and prevent her before she reached the staircase.
Consequently, Celine charged full speed after Rose, but only ended up going as far as the top stair and not an inch farther. Rose had beaten her to it and was bounding downward with no sense whatsoever of the layout!
Celine looked on, helpless, long before it became clear to her that closing the eyes was also an open option to her. And, in as much as she tried to shut her eyes, she arrived short every time at effecting it. So she remained, goggle-eyed, as the balls of her surprised eyes rolled over again and again, uncomprehending, in the free space of their sockets.
The scene floated before her in a sickening slow motion as it loomed in and out of focus, in flashes of misshapen contortions of reality. Just then a mournful rumble (No-o-o!) escaped Celine's worked up mouth; and with that effortful expression she keeled over onto her knees.
What more could she do but look on resignedly. She watched with becoming dread as Rose bounded over the stairs in a downward lurch, taking two at a go in her frantic strides. And then, on a sudden as if in a dream, somewhere in the middle, Rose's figure seemed to halt! It even turned around! This couldn't be! She watched, still helpless and on her knees, as Rose remounted the stairs, grinning broadly: "Feels nice to prank the prankster,(mmh it feels real nice!)"
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