Chapter 5
1383 Words
“I got here as soon as I could.” Tyrek said with panting breaths to his mom, as he ran towards his apartment.
His mom, Azara looked at him with accusations in her gaze, “Really, Tyrek? You kept me waiting for 30 minutes and that’s all the excuse you’ve got?”
“I’m sorry, ma. I lost track of time trying to save a boy that was drowning.” Tyrek explained.
“Oh my baby! Always trying to be a hero to everybody.” She said touching his cheeks, “are you okay though?”
“I’m fine, mom. C’mon let’s go inside.”
They walked into the little apartment, but with how clean it was, one would probably not notice the size of the apartment.
“I brought dinner.” Azara announced, and he grinned from ear to ear.
“Let me take a quick shower and I’ll join you in ten minutes.”
“While you do that, I’m just going to heat it up and serve it.”
“Sounds like a deal.”
With that, he disappeared into the bathroom, towel slung over his shoulders.
Azara brought out the food, heated it up and got plates.
She was serving it when Tyrek rejoined her, shirtless.
“Hmm, it smells nice in here” Tyrek relished in the aroma that made his taste buds salivate.
“Stir fry chicken!”, he paused, “and of course, vegetables”.
Azara sat across from Tyrek, “dig in!”
Tyrek ate like it was his first meal, after being starved for a decade.
Azara looked at him, worry-filled her eyes, “You look like you haven’t eaten properly in weeks! Or is it the stress?”
Tyrek paused mid-meal, “It’s nothing, mom.”
“Nothing? Yet you look like if we get a strong wind now, you’d be blown off the ground.”
Tyrek’s chest was on full display and it looked like she could count his ribs if she wanted to.
“C’mon mom, it’s not that bad. I promise.”
“Pfft! You can’t convince me otherwise. When I’m not around, you look after yourself like you’re some scrappy car engine, and that’s why I keep suggesting that you get married to Elira. At least you would have someone else to look after you.” Her voice softened.
“Here we go again.” Tyrek said, rolling his eyes.
“How is she doing?” Tyrek raised his brow in confusion before she added, “Elira, I mean?”
Tyrek hadn’t informed her about Elira’s betrayal and he couldn’t do it now, because she was already worried about him.
So he did the next best thing he could think of, telling half-truths.
“She’s good and thriving in her fashion classes”, he paused and looked at her.
She was examining his features, and she could read him like an open book, but before she could come to a conclusion, he added,
“I’m also good and I’m trying and working so hard to thrive in my medical career before I could think of starting a family, ma.”
He drifted off, and seemed lost in a distant thought. She noticed and asked, “How are you really doing?”
He let out a frustrated sigh, ran his fingers through his head and said, “I’m not entirely good, ma. I just got demoted at work, I’m on the verge of losing my scholarship, and…”
He was rabbling and he almost told her about the system that suddenly appeared in his subconscious, and even helped him embarrass Darius, but he didn’t understand the whole system thingy yet, so he decided to keep it from her for a bit.
“And?” She raised her brows, her eyes trained on him.
“And I’m starting all over as a caretaker again.” His face fell.
Azara remembered how hard he worked to move from caretaker duties to almost working with the head surgeon.
She knew that he must’ve felt weighed down and his spirits dampened, so she stood up, went close to where he was seated and held his shoulders, “I know how you must feel, and I can’t promise you that you wouldn’t face more difficulties, but what matters more is how you rise from these situations, not allowing circumstances keep you down, okay?”
He looked up, and gave her a slight smile, “I needed to hear that, ma.”
She ruffled his hair and announced, “Okay, okay. Dinner is over. I’ll handle the dishes. You should go to bed. You don’t want to be late for work tomorrow.”
“True, but you handled dinner, so the least I could do is handle the dishes, while you relax.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he was already clearing the dishes, “no arguments, ma.”
She smiled and went to settle in for the night.
He handled the dishes and in no time he was in bed, drifting off to dreamland.
***
Tyrek got to work the next day and went directly to the nurse assistant he was assigned, but he wasn’t in his office.
While he waited, he heard loud complaints coming from a patient’s room.
He went there to check that everything was okay, but as he got closer, he noticed that there were nurses, assistants, a student doctor that happened to be Darius, and a professional doctor in there with the lady, so he turned to go back to his duty post, when Aurelian saw him and said,
“You were told to maintain your post as the caretaker, only doing what the nurse assistant tells you to do, but here you are, out of line!” Aurelian looked at him condescendingly, as Tyrek bent his head.
“Since you’re so eager to get in there, let’s do it this way. You go in there and handle the patient alone, relieving the doctors and nurses. It is not like you have any other thing doing.” Aurelian smirked.
[He thinks this is a punishment?]
Leo said at the back of Tyrek’s mind,
[let’s show them how it’s done.]
Tyrek just raised his head as Aurelian led him into the patient’s ward and relieved the other hospital staff.
Tyrek’s eyes widened as he got into the ward.
He wasn’t expecting to see a lady in her early 20s, staring at him with those green eyes that seemed to be staring into his soul. She was breathtakingly beautiful.
She was seated at the side of the hospital bed.
But he decided to keep it professional. He went to the bedside table beside her and picked up her reports to look at it, and her eyes followed his every movement.
She had an injury on her leg and it didn’t seem to be healing up.
“I’ve never seen you in here before”. She observed,
“I’m guessing you’re the reinforcement. Nice to meet you.” She leaned forward to give him a handshake, and her boobs came into full view, as she wore a low-cut blouse.
Tyrek’s eyes lingered a bit before he met her eyes and she winked at him. He felt a blush creeping up when he said,
“Excuse me, I think I forgot to bring in the sphygmomanometer to check your blood pressure.”
His footsteps were fast but steadied, as he practically almost ran out of the ward.
He steadied his breathing and Leo said,
[You’re going to have to get back in there. You’ve got a job to do.]
“There’s that, but she looked like if I stayed in there for a moment longer, she was going to devour me.”
[What if she’s trying to see just how professional the staff of this hospital is?] Leo reasoned.
Tyrek let out a frustrated sigh, “To add to that, Aurelian would be so angry with me that he could make me lose my scholarship or demote me again.”
“Might as well put on my big boy pants and handle this as professionally as possible.”
With that, he went back to the ward, opened the door and smiled,
“Now, where were we?”
- Writer
