When duty meets heart

The rain

The Lagos rain arrived without warning.

One moment the sky was heavy and grey, the next it was pouring — the kind of rain that didn't ease into itself but committed fully, immediately, flooding gutters and drumming against rooftops with serious intent.

Adaeze was halfway to the car park when it started.

She stopped under the narrow overhang outside the hospital's side exit, bag held uselessly over her head, watching the rain turn the compound into a small river. Her car was thirty metres away. Thirty metres had never looked so far.

"You didn't check the forecast."

She didn't turn around. She already knew the voice.

"Neither did you apparently," she said.

Emeka came to stand beside her under the overhang. There wasn't much space. Their shoulders were almost touching.

They stood watching the rain in silence.

"It'll pass in twenty minutes," he said. "Lagos rain always does."

"You've spent enough time in Lagos to know that?"

"I've spent enough time in Nigeria to know that." A pause. "I was posted to Port Harcourt for eight months, two years ago. The rain there is personal. It has opinions."

Adaeze smiled despite herself. "Port Harcourt rain is aggressive."

"It rained for eleven days straight in March. I started to think it was specifically targeting me."

She laughed. Properly this time — not the short surprised sound from before but a real one, warm and unguarded. She felt him look at her when she laughed and she let him, just for a moment, before looking back at the rain.

"Where else have you been posted?" she asked.

"Kano, obviously. Jos. Maiduguri for six weeks — that was difficult. Port Harcourt. Now Lagos." He paused. "After this, Abuja. Permanently."

The word settled between them.

Permanently.

"You chose that?" she asked. "The Abuja posting?"

"It made sense. Career progression. Better resources." He was quiet for a moment. "It made sense when I accepted it."

Adaeze looked at him then. He was staring at the rain, jaw slightly tight, expression unreadable in the way she had come to recognise meant he was thinking about something he hadn't decided to share yet.

"And now?" she asked quietly.

He turned to look at her.

They were close — closer than they had been before, the narrow overhang doing what forty days of professional distance had tried to prevent. She could see the rain reflected in his eyes. She could see him deciding something.

"Now," he said slowly, "I think some things look different depending on where you're standing."

The rain hammered the compound.

Neither of them moved.

Then his phone rang. He looked at the screen, jaw tightening slightly. "It's the team. I have to—"

"Go," she said. Steady. Normal. Good.

He looked at her for one more second.

Then he stepped back into the hospital, phone to his ear, and was gone.

Adaeze stood alone under the overhang and watched the rain.

Twenty minutes, he had said.

She waited the full twenty minutes.

And she thought about a man who had accepted a life that made sense before he came here. And she thought about fifty days that were now forty-three. And she thought about the way he had looked at her just before his phone rang, like he was standing at the edge of something and hadn't yet decided whether to step forward.

She walked to her car in the last of the rain.

She didn't mind getting wet.