When duty meets heart

The answer

He didn't tell her first.

She found out the way she found out most things at St. Luke's — through Chiamaka, who had heard it from the ward administrator, who had overheard a phone call in the corridor outside Dr. Fashola's office.

"He pushed back," Chiamaka said, appearing at Adaeze's elbow at 8 AM with the energy of someone who had been holding information since dawn. "Your consultant. He told his director he needs the full thirty days to complete the handover properly. Said the data integrity would be compromised otherwise."

Adaeze kept her eyes on her microscope. "That's a professional decision."

"Ada."

"It makes sense from a documentation standpoint—"

"He fought for thirty days." Chiamaka's voice was quiet now. Serious. "I'm just telling you what I heard."

Adaeze said nothing.

After Chiamaka left she sat very still for a moment. The microscope in front of her. The morning light coming through the lab window. The familiar sounds of the hospital waking up around her.

Thirty days.

He had fought for thirty days.

He arrived at nine as usual.

Plain shirt. Notepad. Coffee — two cups, one already placed on the edge of her desk facing his chair. He had started doing that last week. She hadn't commented on it.

He sat down. Opened his notes.

"I gave them my answer," he said, without looking up.

"I heard."

A pause. "Chiamaka."

"Chiamaka," she confirmed.

He almost smiled. Almost. "I told them the handover documentation requires the full timeline. Which is true."

"It is true," she agreed.

"It's also—" he stopped. Set his pen down. Looked at her directly in that way he had, steady and unhurried. "It's also not the only reason."

The lab was quiet.

Adaeze looked at him. At this man who had arrived fifty-four days ago with a clipboard and an irritating calmness and had somehow, without asking permission, become the most significant part of her daily life.

"I know," she said softly.

"Thirty days," he said. "I want to use them well."

"How?"

He considered the question seriously, the way he considered everything.

"Honestly," he said finally. "I want to use them honestly."

Adaeze felt something open in her chest. Wide and slightly frightening and entirely without her permission.

"That's all I've ever asked of anyone," she said.

"I know." His voice was quiet. "That's why I'm saying it."

That evening they left the hospital together for the first time.

Not planned. They had simply finished at the same time and walked out the same door and neither of them had suggested otherwise.

The Lagos evening was warm and golden, the kind that made even the traffic look beautiful. They walked to the car park side by side, unhurried, close enough that their arms brushed occasionally.

"Tell me something I don't know about you," he said.

Adaeze thought about it. "I wanted to be a dancer when I was seven."

He looked at her. "Seriously?"

"My mother enrolled me in lessons. I was terrible." A pause. "I knocked over two other children in the first class and my mother never went back."

He laughed — that full warm laugh that she had decided was her favourite sound, not that she would tell him that.

"Your turn," she said.

He was quiet for a moment. "I can't swim."

She stopped walking. "You grew up in Kano and you can't swim."

"There wasn't much opportunity in Kano."

"You've been posted to Port Harcourt. You were near the ocean."

"I was aware of the irony."

She shook her head slowly, smiling despite herself. "A public health consultant who travels all over Nigeria and cannot swim."

"I'm very good at other things."

"Clearly your standards for yourself are very selective."

He smiled at her. Full and warm and completely unguarded. The smile that changed his whole face.

They had reached her car.

She turned to face him. The evening light was behind him. Lagos hummed around them.

"Thirty days," she said quietly.

"Thirty days," he agreed.

He looked at her for a long moment — the kind of look that said everything he hadn't put into words yet. Then he took one small step forward and brushed a strand of hair from her face. Gently. Briefly. Like something he had been wanting to do for a long time and had finally decided to stop not doing.

Her breath stayed completely steady.

She was very proud of herself.

"Goodnight Adaeze," he said softly.

"Goodnight Emeka," she said.

He stepped back. Walked to his own car. She watched him go.

Then she got in her car and sat for a moment in the warm Lagos evening with her hand resting on the steering wheel and something full and terrifying and wonderful sitting quietly in her chest.

Thirty days.

She started the car.

She was smiling all the way home.