The waiting-room was antiseptically smelling of old biscuits.
Emeka was sitting on one of the blue plastic chairs that were placed on the wall of Lagos General Hospital, and his left leg was bouncing against the floor without him intending to do so. Two hours had passed, and he had been sitting there. The tile of the ceiling over his head was cracked the same. The ceiling fan was rotating slowly, rendering practically no service to the heat.
He was six other people in the room. A low-tied headscarved old woman. A young couple who do not talk but are holding hands. A danshiki-reading man with a folded newspaper, but his eyes were not in twenty minutes.
Emeka's phone buzzed.
"Where are you sitting?"
It was his sister, Ngozi. He raised his eyes and caught a glimpse of her standing at the doorway and looking around the room. He raised his hand. She walked down, her handbag clenched close to her arm, her face doing what it always did when it had something therein - jaw slightly jutted, eyes too even.
She sat down beside him without embracing him.
"How long has he been inside?" she asked.
"Since twelve. So almost three hours now."
Ngozi nodded slowly. She stared at the door leading to the wards, the one of the small square window you could not see through. "Did they say anything else? Besides the bypass?"
The doctor told me it was normal. Emeka paused. "He said that word three times. Routine."
"Routine." She said it in the same uninflected manner.
A pause followed, during which they sat quietly. One of the nurses passed by with a tray and did not pay attention to them. The ceiling fan went on its interminable spineless motion.
You need not have come, Emeka said.
Ngozi turned to look at him. "Neither did you."
"I know."
"And yet here we both are." She pulled her handbag and grabbed a little bottle of water and drank it and put it back on the top. "I'm not here for him, Emeka. I want you to know that. I am here because in case something goes wrong and I was not here, I would never forgive myself. That is the only reason."
Emeka peeped at his hands. "I understand."
"Do you?"
"Ngozi"
"He didn't come when Mama died." Her voice did not change but her hold on the water bottle tightened. He did not come to graduate you. He had sent me five thousand naira to attend my wedding, and failed to appear. And this is where we sit in blue plastic chairs in this heat and wait.
Emeka did not argue. He could not. Every word she said was true.
I know all that, he said to himself. "But he called me himself. From the hospital. He said, he said he did not want to die so people would think he did not care.
Ngozi was quiet for a moment. "What did you say to him?"
"I said I was coming."
She looked away. Beyond the little window at the entrance a yellow danfo bus clanked by, and its conductor was shouting somewhere he was bound to. Normal Lagos afternoon. All the things outside kept on going as though nothing of significance was going on in here.
"He has a new wife," Ngozi said. "Did you know that?"
"I heard."
"She didn't come."
Emeka stopped and looked about the room. It was true. Nobody was present to attend to their father. Just the two of them.
"Ngozi." He looked round and faced her. Today I am not asking you to forgive him. I am not requesting you to do anything. I only — I did not want to sit here by myself.
She stared at him some time. Something in her countenance changed, only a little, the jaw becoming soft.
Why did you not tell me that on the phone? she said.
"I know."
She returned to her handbag and took out a small piece of wrap of groundnuts. She snatched it open and presented it to him.
He took a handful.
They were sitting there, and their food was groundnuts in the blue plastic chairs, and the ceiling fan was running down over them. The elderly lady on the opposite side had gone to sleep. The pair embracing with hands held together were now conversing in a low voice. The newspaper man had at last turned a page.
It was between a quarter and four when the door with the little square window opened.
A green-coated doctor passed as he pulled down his face mask. He glanced about the room, and saw them, two persons seated side by side, with their heads somewhat bent in towards one another.
"Family of Mr. Chukwuemeka Obi?"
At the same time Emeka and Ngozi rose.
