The Best Help

By Ezechukwu Dennis

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God!

Today at the office I felt numbed. I was afraid of doing anything. I only sat on one of the cushions and folded my arms, looking like a wet bird. I knew I looked scared and sickly because Maureen commented as such on several occasions before I closed for the day.

Maureen is my fiancée . She came visiting as she normally does. So this afternoon at the office she had called me,

‘Darling!’

'Come over here', I said thinking she was at the Reception.

Our office apartment has  four rooms. I was inside our chief accountant’s examining some documents. He was away with two other colleagues on a business trip to Port Harcourt city.

‘Darling!’, she called again with an unusual streak of harshness in her voice. I quickly dropped the file I was perusing on the massive table and rushed into the waiting room.

I found nobody there except our Receptionist who busied herself with a task on the desktop personal computer. I quickly dashed into my own office room, but she was not there. I hastened back into the Reception.

I was gripped with the fear of a possible danger.  Though my mind could not stumble upon anything that could constitute into a hazard in our office. The office block is a four-storey building facing Asa road, one of the major ways in Aba town. We occupied half of the fourth floor that flanked the road.

'Honey!’, I called, visibly panicking. The Receptionist gave me a furious glance. She was jealous of my relationship with Maureen. I have been so friendly to her that she thought I would marry her.

‘Yes! Come over here’, Maureen pleaded some seconds later. I saw her, when I pulled  the window blind, where she stood at the corridor, looking over the rail, straight down on the road. This has been her favourite leisure most times she comes around. But this moment, the atmosphere about her was tensed. She beckoned me to come quickly. I hurried to her side and beheld the scene that got her engrossed.

‘Darling, it’s like that man is dead”, she worried not looking at me.

‘Dead?’

‘Yes. I saw him fall there’, she began to explain, turning to look at me with a face mapped by subtle desperation.

‘I even laughed at the way the man fell from his bicycle. He was riding when suddenly he dropped  without hitting or touching anything. I thought he would get up. But he did not. When two men came passing by, I thought they would render him help. But they walked away after mumbling something. The man lay still’, she narrated, looking down at the scene as if she doubted the man was still lying there.

‘People started gathering’, she continued, fixing her worried look on me again.

‘And from the look of things, it’s like the man is dead’, she concluded and looked down where my mind was.

A crowd had gathered, keeping a safe distance. The man, wearing a brown T-shirt tucked inside white jeans trousers and a pair of sandals,lay on the pavement in front of our office block, face, dull and looking skywards, his bicycle with the two tubers of yam strapped on its carrier lay close to him.

With keen observation, I noticed the man once in a while moved his head, still with the eyes closed. His face painted a picture of agony.

Some people stopped as they were passing by, while others, after viewing the scene for some time, left. Those who stayed longer were the youngsters. The adults walked away with a sense of one urgent mission or the other.

‘Help this man’ came the voice that jolted me. I instantly started in response to this voice of reason. But Maureen held my shirt. She cried as she prevented my exit from the office, making some drama for the Receptionist who giggled to her taste.

‘Darling, please’, she worried for the fifth time.

‘The man is dying. Let me help him…at least get to the nearest hospital’.

‘Nobody will attend to him if you succeed in doing so’.

‘Why?’

‘You must deposit some money first’.

Maureen seemed right. No doctor around would examine such a patient except a huge deposit was made.  And I had a small amount of money with me. We had just come back from lunch.

‘Okay I will still take him to the hospital, leave him there and rush to the bank to withdraw some money’.

‘And what if he dies before you get the money?’

‘He will not die’.

‘He may die. And if he does, the police will hold you responsible for his death’, Maureen persisted angrily, looking straight into my eyes like a mother berating a spoilt child within her reach and who had no room for escape.

That was true though.

Finally we arrived at the decision that I should go and withdraw money from the bank before taking the man to the hospital.

I had no petrol in my car except the amount that could take me to the nearest filling station to cue up and waste some hours before it could be my turn. The fuel scarcity in the country has worsened again. And I hated going for black markets since after buying the adulterated petrol that spoilt a lot of engine components in my car. So the thought of which taxi driver who would ever accept to carry such a passenger occupied me. But I soon waved it aside, believing there would be a way out.

We hastened as Maureen saw me off to board a taxi to the bank. As we trotted, passing the scene, we noticed the crowd was expectant. Some of the children were curiously pointing at the man. So we were forced to have a look.

 I stood together with Maureen with about six rows of people in front of us. Maureen could not see what was happening because she was relatively shorter.

The man was weakly stretching his limbs. His eyes opened and gazed back at the full sun. Soon he lay motionless. My heart raced.  I automatically waded through the crowd and to the disgust of many found myself by the side of the man.

‘Don’t touch him. He will die in your hands’, a voice had shouted.

Instantly, I became afraid and gazed around. My eyes stumbled upon Maureen who had started shedding tears and beckoning with her hands for me to come out from the center of attraction. I could not come to terms with that.  I took away my look and concentrated it on the man at my feet. His lifeless state forced me to bend down. I instinctively rested my hand on his chest. His heart was quiet like a cold rock. I looked at the face. He seemed to be angry with the God in the heavens. I ran my left fingers over his eyes. The eyes shut permanently.  My head dropped weakly as if in confirmation of the inevitable. I stood up nearly falling back in the process. I stared at the heavens. The blazing sun returned the glare. I was forced to desist, letting my look fall on the office block. Staffs  members from the other offices on different floors were standing by the rails, watching. My stare finally dropped on the crowd. Some were dispersing while others were still watching, discussing, like the spectators would in a stadium after the final whistle in a football match. I was sapped to my bone marrow.  But Maureen was already by my side. With her help I dizzily climbed the stairs into our office and finally fell into the cushion.

As I sat there receiving warm attention from Maureen who seemed manlier than I was, my mind ran back to my days in the University.

It happened that I was about taking my first-degree examination.  So I was forced to do what I hated doing----going for night preps and studying till dawn. On this particular occasion, students as usual were leaving for the hostel around 5 A.M. Though it was early, it was not dark. The security searchlights illuminated the avenue connecting the classroom and the hostel blocks. As I was conversing with some friends and walking towards the hostel, a male student slumped two poles ahead of us.

When we rushed close, I realized he was too weak to move. The searchlights threw enough light on him. His feeble eyeballs sank into their sockets. His cheeks were limp leaving the check bones as the most prominent feature of his face.  He was neatly dressed but emaciated and ill looking. The laboratory coat and books he was carrying lay scattered on the cemented avenue.

As some of us stood, deliberating on the course of action to take, a student who had initially sighed and left, came back. He picked a hammer and a nail from the few strewn around the fallen student, which I was noticing for the first time, and meant to drive the nail into his head. I shouted and quickly held his hands.

‘This is the best help I can offer him’.

‘No!’ I had shouted again.

‘It’s of no use allowing him to be suffering like this’, he had replied, meaning every bit of his words.

‘What is he suffering from?’ I asked still holding his hands.

‘He has a full blown AIDS’.

This made me weak. I stared at the student lying on the floor. He was stirring his hands. I was moved to assist him.

‘It’s better you allow him to rest. Lifting him up will worsen the stress for him’, said a voice that attracted my attention.

More students by now had crowded. The student with the hammer dropped it together with the nail and left, obviously dissatisfied. I watched him not knowing what to do.

‘Allow him to rest’, came another voice that startled me into obeying the command.

But as I did so, he tried to get up to a sitting position. And I helped him. He sat for a moment to my astonishment and joy.

He rebuffed my offer to help him to his hostel room.

‘I’m alright’, he said looking like a man who had fallen from a mango tree but would not welcome the help from someone who had ran to his rescue, the moment he began regaining consciousness of the reality which had never failed to be shameful.

I was surprised when he began to pick his belongings together; first the nails, then the hammer, books, laboratory coat, and the large measuring rules of different shapes and sizes which I was also noticing for the first time.

‘Let me help you’, I said volunteering to carry those articles for him.

‘No. Thank you. I’m alright now’, he refused putting up a faint smile characteristic of a sick person who was made happy.

He stood on his feet without any help, but walked shakily towards the hostel. I stood gazing at him, apprehensive that he might fall again. He did not. I then set off like a lonely man whose beloved wife had bolted out of his life and married a richer man. I noticed all my companions had left except one, Stephen.

Stephen said he knew the boy who fell down; that his name was Basil. According to him, Basil was studying woodworks as his first-degree programme. I quickly reconciled that with the hammer, nails and the rest. I was shocked to learn that Basil could stay up to two days without food, except for a few crumbs he normally augmented with water; that he had not had an accommodation since he gained admittance into the University. He used to keep a few of his belongings in a classmate’s room. He would go to the hostel in the mornings to wash and dress up after passing the nights in the classroom.

‘Some students who are use to going for night preps and staying till dawn know Basil and others like him’, said Stephen. But the good news about Stephen was that he was working hard academically and in his final year then.

Few years after our graduation, I came across Basil. He was the one who stopped me when I was hopping from one office to the other in search of a job.

Initially I did not recognize him. I was astonished when he recalled the incident to me. I did nothing but shout repeatedly as I hugged him. People around must have thought I was going crazy, you know.

Basil was heavy and healthy. He was into upholstery business and was driving a Mercedes 300 V-boot car. I was amazed he had not died of AIDS.

Now when I think of the man who died today in front of our office block, I remember basil; how people stared at him; how one had tried to drive a nail into his brain to save him the agony of slow painful death; how I had prevented him and helped Basil up.

Perhaps, if I had given this man that same quick attention, that same touch of affection, he would have lived. But for Maureen.

I once read from Tolstoy’s WAR AND PEACE, “…TIE yourself up with a woman and like a convict in irons lose all freedom! And all your aspirations, all the ability you feel within you is only a drag on you…”. Then I didn’t believe it.