After hours
471 Words
The hospital was quieter after 6 PM.
Not silent — hospitals were never silent — but the frantic daytime energy softened into something slower. Footsteps echoed differently in the corridors. Voices dropped. The fluorescent lights hummed louder when everything else settled down.
Adaeze preferred this hour. It was when she caught up on documentation, double-checked results, and had the lab entirely to herself.
Except tonight, she didn't.
She smelled the coffee first.
She looked up from her workstation to find Emeka standing in the doorway holding two paper cups, looking mildly uncertain — which was the most human she had seen him look in two days.
"Chiamaka said you don't leave until seven," he said. "I was passing the canteen."
Adaeze looked at the cups. Then at him. "You got me coffee."
"I got myself coffee. There were two cups." He set one on the edge of her desk and stepped back immediately, as if establishing that this was not a gesture, simply logistics.
Adaeze looked at the cup for a moment. Then she picked it up.
It was the right order. Black, no sugar.
She hadn't told him that.
"Chiamaka," she said flatly.
"She mentioned it, yes."
Adaeze made a mental note to have a conversation with Chiamaka tomorrow. A firm one.
Emeka settled into the chair across from her desk — the same one he had used that afternoon — and opened his notepad. He was still working. At 6:15 PM. In her lab.
"You don't have an office?" she asked.
"I do. It's next to the hospital administrator's. He plays gospel music at full volume until 7 PM." He paused. "It's very loud gospel music."
Adaeze stared at him.
Was that — had he just made a joke?
His expression remained completely neutral. But there was something around his eyes. Just barely.
She turned back to her screen before she could examine it further.
They worked in silence for forty minutes. It should have been strange. It wasn't. He asked two questions — both precise, both relevant — and she answered them without looking up. He thanked her both times. Briefly, but genuinely.
At five minutes to seven, she began shutting down her workstation.
"Same time tomorrow?" he asked, already standing, already gathering his things.
Adaeze considered several responses.
"The canteen closes at six-thirty," she said finally. "So if you're planning to be in this lab after hours, you'll need to sort out your own coffee arrangement."
He looked at her. "Noted."
She picked up her bag and walked to the door. He followed at a professional distance.
In the corridor, they went in opposite directions without discussion — his footsteps fading toward the consultants' wing, hers toward the car park.
Adaeze did not look back.
But she finished the coffee on the drive home. Every last drop.
- Writer
