The visitor
880 Words
She arrived on a Friday.
Adaeze didn't know who she was at first — just a woman standing in the hospital corridor outside the laboratory, well-dressed and composed, with the particular stillness of someone who was used to being waited for.
She was beautiful. Adaeze noticed that the way she noticed everything — clinically, without drama.
She also noticed that the woman was looking at Emeka's name on the laboratory door.
"Can I help you?" Adaeze asked.
The woman turned. She had sharp eyes and a polite smile that didn't quite reach them.
"I'm looking for Emeka Dike," she said. "I was told he works here."
"He does." Adaeze kept her voice neutral. "Can I ask who's asking?"
A pause. Something moved in the woman's expression — something that looked, briefly, like assessment.
"Zara," she said. "We're old friends."
Emeka's reaction when he came around the corridor and saw her was not what Adaeze expected.
He stopped.
Not the normal pause of someone surprised to see an acquaintance. A full stop. Something moving quickly behind his eyes before he controlled it.
"Zara," he said.
"Emeka." Her smile was warmer now — genuinely warmer, the kind that came from shared history. "Your office said you'd be here. I was in Lagos for a conference. I thought I'd surprise you."
"You did," he said quietly.
Adaeze looked between them. She was a scientist. She observed things accurately and without bias.
What she observed was: history. The particular ease of two people who had once known each other well. The way Zara stood slightly closer to him than a friend strictly needed to. The way he was being very careful about something.
"I should finish the cultures," Adaeze said.
"Adaeze—" Emeka started.
"It was nice to meet you," she said to Zara. Steady. Professional. Fine.
She went back into the lab and closed the door.
She did not slam it. She was not the kind of person who slammed doors.
She put on her gloves and she finished the cultures and she was completely fine.
He knocked forty minutes later.
She said come in without turning around.
He came in and closed the door and she could feel him standing there, deciding how to start.
"We were together," he said. "Two years ago. For eight months. It ended because of the Port Harcourt posting."
Adaeze kept her hands moving. "You don't owe me an explanation."
"I know I don't." A pause. "I'm giving you one anyway."
She stopped. Set down her equipment. Turned around.
He was watching her with that careful steady gaze — open in a way she had learned meant he was choosing honesty over comfort.
"She came because she heard about the Abuja posting," he said. "She's based in Abuja. She wanted to—" he stopped. "She wanted to revisit something."
Adaeze held his gaze. "And?"
"And I told her there was nothing to revisit."
The lab was very quiet.
"You didn't have to do that," Adaeze said carefully.
"I know."
"We haven't made any promises to each other Emeka. Eighteen days isn't—"
"Adaeze." His voice was quiet but firm. "I know what eighteen days is. I also know what it isn't." He took one step closer. "What I have with you — whatever this is — is not something I'm willing to set aside for something that already ended once. That's not about promises. That's just the truth."
She looked at him.
This man who had arrived in her lab with a clipboard and had somehow, in fifty-nine days, become the person she thought about when she wasn't thinking about anything.
"She seemed—" Adaeze started.
"She's a good person," he said honestly. "It just wasn't right. It was never quite right." He looked at her steadily. "I didn't understand what right felt like until recently."
Adaeze felt her careful composure do something complicated in her chest.
She looked down at her gloves. Pulled one off slowly.
"She's going to be in Abuja," she said quietly. "When you get there."
"Lagos is also a city," he said. "With airports and roads and a very reliable expressway."
She looked up.
"You've thought about this," she said.
"I've thought about very little else," he said simply.
Outside in the corridor someone was wheeling a trolley past. The normal sounds of the hospital going about its business. Life continuing indifferently.
Adaeze looked at Emeka Dike standing in her laboratory being honest with her again, the way he always was, the way she had come to depend on without meaning to.
"Eighteen days," she said softly.
"Eighteen days," he agreed.
"Don't make me promises you can't keep."
"I don't make promises I can't keep." He looked at her directly. "You know that about me by now."
She did. That was the thing. She did know that.
"Okay," she said quietly.
"Okay," he said.
He picked up his notepad from the desk. Sat down in his chair. Opened his notes.
She pulled her glove back on.
They got back to work.
But something had settled between them — something firmer than before, something that had been tested quietly and held. She could feel it in the air. Solid and warm and real.
Eighteen days.
She wasn't scared anymore.
- Writer
