Chapter One
Kemi woke up with a severe headache. She reached across the bed and swapped her right hand across the bedside stool, hoping to find the culprit that had cut short her sleep. These days she hardly had any. Her brain tried to grasp the events of the previous evening.
She had gone out in the company of friends, hoping to find some excitement. But the evening ended as it always did – in disappointment…
The ebony dark twenty-five year old Kemi who strode determinedly into the Legal Chambers of Oluwole & Oluwole every morning was nothing like the Kemi who grovelled along back allies at night, looking for substances to abuse.
There was nothing in those brown eyes that hinted of pain, loss, and a deep-seated lack of enthusiasm. The tall elegant frame belied the many nights of sleeplessness and the endless visits to physicians. The grace of her gait exuded the confidence and self esteem she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Her friends knew her as the happy career driven lady she once was. Not anymore…
“Gbriiinnn! Gbriiinnn!” The alarm clock shrilled again.
This time Kemi found it, and knocked it off the stool with a vengeance.
“Gbriiinnn! Gbriiinnn!” It shrilled defiantly from its new location under the bed.
Kemi had to get up then. Her face was smeared in the residue of wasted makeup. There was a trickle of saliva running from the left side of her mouth down to her neck. Her night clothes hung onto her frame in disgrace. Her stilettos lay abandoned just by the bedroom door, in her generally disordered room.
As Kemi struggled to get into the bathroom, she knew she had to see a doctor again. She needed help. She was determined to get some…
Kemi sat in the waiting room swarming with people. She had rushed in straight from the Appeal Court. It hadn’t been too difficult to get the Judge to adjourn her case, after brief preliminary hearings.
“Miss Kemi?”
Kemi looked up and smiled at the poker-faced nurse. “Yes please.”
“The Doctor will see you now.”
Kemi stood up and straightened her black gown at the edges, to rid it of the creases it had sustained from having to sit on one of the iron chairs in the waiting room.
“This way please”, the nurse said curtly, moving away.
Kemi followed the lanky lady into the doctor’s office…
To be continued…
© Oselumhense ANETOR, 2019.
Image Credit @PIXABAY
