Chapter 6: The Weight Of Concrete
800 Words
POV: Elias
The sun in Lagos does not care if you were a billionaire yesterday. It burns everyone the same way.
I stood outside the hospital gates, squinting against the harsh morning light. For fifteen years, I had lived in a climate-controlled bubble. I didn't know what the true humidity of the city felt like because I always had a driver in a bulletproof SUV with the AC on high. I didn't know how loud the street was because my office was soundproof.
Now, the roar of the okadas and the thick smell of exhaust fumes hit me like a physical blow. I had no PA to hold an umbrella over my head. I only had the dusty clothes on my back and a stomach that felt like it was folding in on itself from hunger.
I looked at the pharmacy bill crumpled in my hand. Fifty thousand naira. To the old Elias, fifty thousand was nothing—a tip for a waiter, or the cost of a single bottle of imported water at a gala. To the new Elias, it was a mountain I had to climb. It was the price of Bella’s breath.
I started walking. My Italian leather shoes were built for marble floors and red carpets, not the broken asphalt and open gutters of the mainland. By the time I reached the massive construction site near the Mile 1 market, my heels were raw and bleeding.
I stopped in front of a half-finished skyscraper. A man in a sweat-stained yellow hard hat was barking orders at a line of young men.
"Are you hiring?" I called out, my voice raspy from the dust.
The foreman turned around. He wiped grey grit from his forehead and looked me up and down. He saw the frayed collar of my designer shirt and the way I carried myself. He started to laugh, and the workers around him joined in.
"You?" He chuckled, pointing a calloused finger at me. "You look like a businessman who took a wrong turn at Ikoyi. This is work for men, Mr. Office. Not for butter-clothed weaklings who cry when they break a fingernail."
"I can work," I said. My voice didn't shake. My pride was dead; only my daughter mattered now. "I will carry twice as much as anyone else. Just give me the daily pay."
The workers began to whisper. One man, a boy no older than twenty, squinted at me. "Wait... isn't that him? The CEO from the television? The one who sold the shipping fleet?"
"The King of Oil!" another mocked. "Look at him now! The mighty have fallen to the gutter to play in the dirt with us!"
"Give me a bag," I repeated, ignoring the insults.
I walked to the pile of cement. Each bag looked like a mountain. I bent my knees and gripped the rough, heavy paper. When I pulled, the weight was incredible. It felt like the world was trying to crush my spine. My muscles, soft from years behind a desk, screamed in protest.
But then, I closed my eyes. I saw Bella. I felt her cold, thin hand in mine from this morning.
I heaved the bag onto my shoulder. The grey dust filled my lungs, making me cough, but I didn't let go. I took one step. My knees wobbled. I took another.
By the tenth bag, my shirt was a wet rag of sweat and cement grit. My vision was blurring from the heat, but I wasn't thinking about boardrooms or oil blocks anymore. I was doing a new kind of math in my head:
• One bag equals a bottle of water for Bella.
• Five bags equals one pill.
• Ten bags equals one hour of oxygen.
I worked until the sky turned a bruised purple and the sun finally gave up. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely keep them open. The foreman walked over, looking at the massive pile of concrete I had moved single-handedly. The mockery was gone from his eyes. He reached into his pocket and handed me a small, dirty bundle of crumpled notes.
"You’re crazy, Chief," he said, and for the first time, I heard real respect—not for my bank account, but for my sweat. "Most men would have broken after the third bag. Come back tomorrow at 6 AM."
I gripped the money. It was the hardest fifty thousand naira I had ever earned. As I limped back toward the hospital, I didn't feel like a billionaire, and I didn't feel like a ghost. For the first time in my life, I truly felt like a father.
- Writer
