That Scare
It was probably about 11 pm or midnight when she called. I don't remember well. All I recall was being woken up by my wife who had picked up the phone. I do not fancy late night calls. They always indicate an emergency or urgency. I braced myself and waited as the lady on the other side talked. My wife clicked the loud speaker button on the phone so that i could hear. The lady on the other side – let us refer
to her as J- was surprisingly very calm and collected. I could however deduce the urgency in her voice. Something which made me twitch - or so I thought. We spoke and my wife
advised that I should drive over to wherever J was and find out what was
wrong
I am unable to detail how I got to J. Thank God it was dead in the night and
so a journey that would have lasted over an hour was accomplished in almost
half the time. Or was it less? I do not recall now. Neither do I recall where I exactly
met her but we did nonetheless. J looked tired and worried. She wore a scarf and sweater over her medium sized body. Did I see tears or smudged lipstick? Anyways, she spoke in a low tone. She had failed to
get in touch with her husband. Let us call him P. His known phones are off. She had just returned from a work trip upcountry and since it was so late, she feared to walk the long eerie path to her home. P normally picked her up from the taxi stage.
We drove to the house in silence. Eerie figures in black quickly running away when touched by the car lights. A drunk man lumbered on, falling into the bushes as our car approached. The home in which J and P lived was located in some sort of valley. It
was more of a reclaimed swamp. This is a common thing in Kampala especially as
the growing population keeps looking for more land to build and live. The neighbourhood
was dead silent. Only the crickets and a few frogs seemed to be awake. We
managed to open the gate and drive in.
We reached the house and tried to knock and
call. Nothing. Their home was part of a collection of four semi-detached houses. It was a weekend and
therefore most people had either travelled or where ‘hanging out’ into the dead
of the night. No vehicles were in the parking yard of the compound.
I tried to look inside the house. I pressed my face to the window, and tried to look through the parting curtain. I shielded my palms on both sides of my face so that a light from the neighbour's shed didn't prevent me from looking inside. Though it was dark, I could see what looked like P's his legs sprayed out on
the carpet facing up. The rest of the body was shielded from my view because of the coffee set. There was trickling of light coming into the room through the
kitchen. My heart started beating, and I feared the worst had happened. I told J what I had seen and as she tried to take a look, I called my wife to brief her. She was surprisingly calm. J was also calm and I
wondered whether I was just fearing for nothing
We somehow managed to work through the back door and open it. Adrenalin rushed
through my veins as I made out the clear form of P splayed out in the
lounge. The light from the kitchen now made it easy for us to see. We rushed to him. Empty pill packages in aluminium blisters were laid on a side table together with empty bottles of local crude gin.
All the movies I had watched came rushing back to me. We tried to wake up P to
no avail. I wondered whether he had already passed on. I do not recall checking
his pulse. We instead decided to take him to a nearby clinic to confirm our fears
I managed another call to my wife. She was still calm and reassuring. ‘He
has simply passed out’ she asserted. I probably said she was not there to tell.
The man looked dead to me. Being a rather heavy man, we heaved and shoved as we
dragged his limp body to the vehicle. It felt like he weighed 200 kgs or more. We must have
been quite a sight. Like criminals trying to take away a body. If any police
man had walked in, since we had not called in for help, prima facie, we were
guilty of whatever.At some point we dragged, at other points we shoved at some point we managed to lift and put him in the vehicle and then drove off to the clinic.
I didn’t hear the toads and tickets any more. Just the pumping
of my heart. I do not recall how we got there… but at some point we were
driving past a police station and I wondered whether we should first inform
them before we sped. What if he passed on as we tried to do paper work? I mean –
what would we say? What questions would be asked and how would we answer them?
I marvelled. The pressed the accelerator. Thank God hardly any traffic on the
road. Time check? I do not know
At the clinic, I drove in asking for help – a wheel chair a bed on
wheels- something… anything. The medics seemed slightly hurried but calm. We
soon heaved P out of the car, onto a wheel chair and as J made attended to the
paperwork, we rushed P to a ward. The elderly nurse in white uniform listened
patiently as we shoved P onto a hospital bed. She then drew the curtains to
avail us some privacy. Another nurse who seemed to have been awaken from her
sleep walked in, and quickly meticulously pushed what looked like a huge grey cannula
into P’s right arm. A part of me begun to calm down. J walked in. She was still
calm. She had said a few words since the whimpers at the window and some cries
of desperation when we found P at sprawled on the floor
The medicine was pumping fast into M’s body. Three four bottled down the
line. The man was back to us. I could have punched him!
The Scare -
….
