The Things We Buried

Chapter 1

There are moments that quietly change the course of your life. Mine began with a wave. Not a confession, not some life-altering decision made after hours of careful thought. Just a wave. Two seconds, maybe less.

A small absent-minded lift of my hand to a man I barely knew, a man who should have forgotten me the moment he walked away. If someone had told me that one careless gesture would earn me the attention of the most feared consultant in our teaching hospital, I would have laughed, lowered my eyes, and kept walking but life has an odd sense of humour. And by the end of that morning, Dr. Daniel Adesemoye had made sure I would never make that mistake again.

The shrill sound of my alarm dragged me out of sleep. I reached for my phone without opening my eyes, fully prepared to hit snooze for five more minutes then the time came into focus. 8:45am. For one blissfully ignorant second, my brain refused to process what I was looking at, then panic hit me like a truck.

“Oh my God!”

I bolted upright so fast my blanket wrapped around my legs, nearly sending me crashing on the floor. My phone slipped from my hand and landed on the mattress with a dull thud.

First lecture after resumption and I was already late, not fashionably late, not “the lecturer hasn’t arrived yet” late. The kind of late that guaranteed every eye in the room would turn to stare the moment I walked through the door.

“Perfect,” I muttered, dragging a hand over my face.

This had to be some kind of punishment for enjoying my holiday a little too much. The next ten minutes were pure chaos. I brushed my teeth while searching for my shoes. My ward coat was draped over the arm of the sofa, my notebook was somehow underneath the sofa, and my stethoscope had vanished as though it had grown legs overnight.

By the time I forced my braids into a bun, they had already begun escaping again.

“You’re unbelievable,” I sighed at my reflection.

The girl staring back at me looked just as exhausted as I felt. My ward coat hung loosely over my frame, and braids framing my face had declared independence before the day even started. There was no fixing them now. I grabbed my notebook, slung my bag over my shoulders, and sprinted out of my apartment.

By the time I reached the lecture hall, my lungs burned with every breath. I pulled open the heavy wooden door and stepped inside. Relief flooded me immediately, the lecture hadn’t started yet. Students filled most of the seats, their conversations bouncing around in the hall in overlapping waves. Some laughed loudly from the back row while others compared holiday stories or complained about how cruel it should be to schedule an eight-thirty lecture on the first day back.

For a moment, I simply stood there, catching my breath. The hall was larger than I remembered, with rows stretching toward the back wall. The first two rows were almost completely empty. Typical. No one voluntarily sat close enough to become the lecturer’s first victim. I wasn’t that brave either. I slipped into an empty seat just as the girl beside me looked toward the entrance. The chatter around us stopped so suddenly it felt unnatural. One second the room buzzed with conversation, the next… silence. Complete silence. Curiosity got the better of me and I looked up.

A man walked through the doorway with the kind of composure that couldn’t be taught. He wasn’t trying to command attention, he simply did. His steps were measured, unhurried, as though time itself moved according to his schedule. A neatly pressed white coat rested effortlessly over his broad shoulders, and a stack of textbooks sat securely beneath one arm. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Even the students who had been laughing moments ago sat straighter in their seats. He placed the books on the desk with quiet precision. Someone leaned toward their friend behind me and whispered just loudly enough for me to hear.

“That’s Dr. Daniel Adesemoye.”

My fingers tightened around my notebook. So… This was him. Except, it wasn’t the first time I had seen him.

I’d seen him before. Not in a lecture hall, not in the operating theatre. A bookstore, three months ago. I had wandered into my favourite bookstore with absolutely no intention of buying anything. Medical school had taught me two things; textbooks were painfully expensive, and window shopping was free. I ended up in the romance section instead, it was my guilty pleasure and there was something comforting about love stories that always found their way to happy endings, even when real life rarely did. I was scanning the top shelf when I spotted the book I'd been looking for– Love and other words. Of course it had to be on the highest shelf. I stretched onto my tiptoes, fingertips brushing the spine, but it remained stubbornly out of reach. I sighed.

“So close.”

A hand reached past me, long fingers wrapped around the book with effortless ease before gently pulling it free. I turned.

“Oh.”

He stood at a comfortable distance away, holding the novel towards me.

“You look like you need help,” he said.

“I did. Thank you.”

He handed me the book, and for a brief moment neither of us moved.

“I’ve been meaning to read..”

His phone rang, he glanced at the screen. Something shifted in his expression.

“I’m sorry,” he said, already answering the call. “I have to take this.”

I smiled politely. “No problem.”

He nodded once before walking toward the exit, his attention now completely on whoever was on the other end of the line. I watched him leave and just before the glass doors opened, he paused and turned as though sensing my gaze. Our eyes met. Without thinking, I smiled and lifted my hand in a small wave. For the briefest second, he simply looked at me then he returned the wave almost instinctively. The corners of my mouth lifted into an embarrassed smile, the doors closed behind him and that was the end of it or so I thought.

“Good morning.”

His voice pulled me back to the present. The class greeted him in unison. I stared at him for a moment before gathering enough courage to offer the tiniest wave. Just enough for him to notice. His eyes met mine. Nothing. No smile. No acknowledgement. He simply looked away and began arranging his notes. I swallowed.

Well… that answers that.

He doesn’t remember me. Why would he? It had been months. The lecture began. He introduced the course, outlined his expectations, then called on two students to answer questions. Both answered correctly. I finally relaxed, maybe I escaped his attention after all. He closed the attendance register and looked up.

“You.”

My heart stumbled. He was looking directly at me.

“Stand.”

“What is your name?”

“Melissa Ossai, Sir.”

He held my gaze for a bit longer than necessary then he nodded once.

“Miss Melissa.”

He picked the marker and wrote a single word across the white board– HEART. Without another word he turned to face me.

“Since we’ve already been introduced…”

The lecture hall fell silent and every head turned in my direction.

“...tell the class everything you know about the anatomy of the heart.”