When duty meets heart

Forty days left

It was Chiamaka who pointed it out.

"Fifty days," she said, leaning against the lab counter with her arms folded, watching Adaeze label sample tubes with the focused intensity of someone who was absolutely not thinking about anything else.

Adaeze didn't look up. "Fifty days until what?"

"Until your consultant leaves." Chiamaka tilted her head. "I counted."

"Why would you count that?"

"Because someone in this lab should be paying attention to the calendar." Chiamaka picked up a pen and put it down again. "He's been here forty days already, Ada. That means fifty left."

Adaeze set down her tube carefully.

Forty days. She hadn't counted. She had specifically, deliberately, not counted.

"He's here to work," she said. "When the work is done, he goes back to Abuja. That's the arrangement."

"Mm." Chiamaka sounded unconvinced.

"It's not complicated, Chiamaka."

"You finished his coffee yesterday."

"He left it on my desk."

"He leaves it on your desk every evening."

Adaeze picked up another tube. "We work late. It's practical."

Chiamaka was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that was worse than talking.

"Ada," she said finally, gently. "I'm not saying anything bad. I'm just saying — fifty days goes fast."

That evening, Adaeze stayed late again.

The data they were building together was the most compelling public health work she had done since graduating. Emeka had a way of asking questions that made her see things differently — not because he was smarter, but because he approached problems from angles she hadn't considered. Federal policy. Regional patterns. The bigger picture behind the individual cases.

She had started looking forward to the evenings in a way she didn't examine too closely.

At half past six, Emeka set a cup on her desk and sat down.

"Can I ask you something personal?" he said.

Adaeze looked up slowly. "That depends on the question."

"Why lab science?"

She relaxed slightly. "I wanted to find answers. Doctors see symptoms. I wanted to see what was actually causing them." She paused. "Why public health?"

He was quiet for a moment. "I grew up in Kano. There was a cholera outbreak when I was nine. Our neighbour's daughter died. She was six years old." He looked at the data on the table. "They said it was preventable."

Adaeze said nothing. Some things didn't need a response.

"So." He picked up his pen. "We're similar, in that way."

"In what way?"

"We both chose our work because of something we couldn't fix." He looked up. "And we've spent our careers trying to fix it anyway."

The lab was very quiet.

Adaeze looked at him — really looked, the way she had been careful not to for forty days — and felt something loosen in her chest. Small and quiet and slightly terrifying.

"The Q4 projections," she said, looking back at her screen.

"Yes," he said, looking back at his notes.

But the air between them had shifted. And they both knew it.

Fifty days, she thought.

It wasn't enough. And it was far too much.