By Prisca
If I did not have exams on Monday, I would not have gone to Jaja that evening. For about a week, I had been struggling with fever and constant headaches, feeding myself with Paracetamol tablets as often as possible, but I did not get any better. My roommate actually volunteered to bring me here (he is the most uncaring person I had ever met), that is to show how serious the illness was.
I got to the clinic some minutes past 4pm and as I walked in, I was grateful that the smell of drugs there was not evident as it was in hospitals back home. I met three patients at the reception and I breathed I sigh of relief knowing I would not be there for long. I walked to the counter and wrote my name and card number, then took a seat. I brought out my phone, clicked on the Instagram icon, ignored my banging head and got lost in the lives of other people.
Soon after, I got tired and the headache became too unbearable. I felt like my head was going to fall off my neck. I shook my legs nervously then began to crack my knuckles. I longed for my Paracetamol pills but I had left them in my room. I looked around me and saw faces which were probably how mine looked, dull and sick.
An old woman walked in limping and the nurse’s expression changed. She had been talking to one of those men who brought out patients’ files and informed them that the doctor was ready for them and they had both been laughing. She grudgingly said to the woman, “Mama?”. It sounded like she wanted to know what the old lady was looking for there.
The woman began to rant. She complained that she had been here three times and she had not seen the doctor. “Na the test result I wan show am na. Im say make I bring am today.”
“Okay ma, just sit down first.” The nurse said, not politely.
“No, I don dey wait since morning. I no dey wait again oo. I no dey sit anything. “
The man brought in some files, placed them on the nurse’s table and picked up the ones that were on it. “Mary Okoro,” he called out and the old lady’s hand went up almost immediately. “Na me oo.”
Almost everyone laughed but I just shook my head in pity, imagining my grandmother in that situation. I expected to hear my name too but I was not called. It was then it occurred to me that I had not been called for the blood pressure and body temperature check up. What could have gone wrong? All the people I met there and those who came after me were called and they went with Mama to see the doctor.
My best friend, BJ, came some minutes later. I was happy to see him because I was so bored and had been sitting there for over two hours. I checked the time and it read, 6:24pm.
“Guy, wetin you still dey do here?” He asked.
“I don’t know oo. I don’t understand these people sef.”
Two girls rushed in trying to support another girl who looked like she was going to drop dead soon enough. One of them rushed to write her friend’s name in the register and I saw that she dropped her Jaja card in a little box just below the television, in front of an open window (which I believed was where the files were kept). I had not dropped my card in any box, it was still in my pocket.
I turned to ask the girl who sat at my back and she told me I had to drop my card in that box or my name would not be called. “What?!” I exclaimed. I had been there for two hours unknowing that I had been wasting my time.
“Can you imagine?” BJ said and helped me drop my card in the box. We caught the nurse’s attention and she looked at us suspiciously.
“Who amongst you is the patient?” she asked and I lifted a finger to indicate that I was the one.
She eyed BJ and asked him what then he was doing there. “Go and wait for him in the waiting room. This place is for only patients.” He nodded his head, told me he was leaving then, he left.
I sat there boiling in anger. The nurse had been there when I arrived. She knew when I arrived. She knew how long I had been there. I felt that she should have cared enough to ask me why I was still there, why my name had not been called but, she did not! Somebody should have told me to drop my card in that box since it was a new practice. The last time I had been there, there was no such thing. I began to shake my legs impatiently once again. I wanted to leave but then, my two hours of waiting would go to waste.
The drop-dead-soon girl’s name was called for her blood pressure and body temperature check up and the nurse ignorantly told her friends, “Go and pour water on her body. Go there,” she pointed towards the right direction. Soon after, I was called to check mine and I was so relieved that I would see the doctor soon. Thankfully, I was not asked to pour water on my body. I guessed that meant I was not so ill.
Another shift began and another nurse arrived. She looked nicer but she was worse. She had an iPhone and she was on it for the longest time without looking up.
I was starving. The hunger in my belly competed strongly with the banging in my head and I did not know which was winning. I wished the television could be switched off because the same program played over and over again. The drop-dead-soon girl looked like she was dead already. She was hardly breathing and her friends were all over her. I imagined if the other nurse was still on duty, she would have sent her friends away like she did BJ. The girl was wearing two thick cardigans, a jogger trouser, socks and a head warmer, and, she was still shivering.
I looked to the nurse and looked back at the girl. Was the nurse blind? Could she not see that the girl’s case was critical? I had been there way longer than the girl but I wanted them to attend to her very quickly.
“Ma, please my friend…” one of the girls rushed to the nurse’s table.
“She will soon go and see the doctor.” The nurse said calmly. “Besides, you people are too much here. Only one person should stay with her.”
I shook my head feeling pity for the girl more than I did for myself. She got up, I did not know for what reason, but she got up and before she moved one step, she fell to the ground.
The nurse’s head came up immediately and she rushed up from her seat to the girls who were already screaming. If I could use a word to describe the environment in the clinic as soon as she fainted, it would be pandemonium. She was carried away and her friends could still be heard screaming. I wondered where she was taken to. If a doctor was attending to her of if she still had to wait for her “turn”. So, it had to take her to faint for her to be attended to.
I felt the urge to fall to the ground too but it was so silly and I laughed. I had to wait even longer because of what had happened with the girl and I finally left the clinic by 8:02pm with Paracetamol and Vitamin C tablets as the medications prescribed by the doctor.
I had tried to argue with the pharmacist that Paracetamol was not what I needed but she said she could only give me what was prescribed by the doctor. I left there with the banging in my head way worse than it was when I arrived there and tears in my eyes from the pain I felt in my head, my belly and for the hours I wasted there.
