Let Us Pray - A Short Story

In this gripping tale, a hospital stay becomes the stuff of nightmares thanks to a sinister nurse. Want to be published on the ZODML blog? Send your fiction, poetry, non-fiction/opinion, and book review pitches to editorial@zodml.org. She roams the lonely corridors, her fangs bared, her core boiling with insatiable desire. She hunts another unsuspecting soul, searching for the fear in your heart, the terror that paralyzes you. When she finds you, she says a quick prayer and devours you mercilessly, ridding you of the essence that is your life, smacking her lips greedily. Or so it seems. I heard many stories when I was a little boy; stories of war and famine, stories of vampires that stalked people and lapped up every drop of their blood, stories of mothers who ate their children… but none about nurses. I was enamoured with them. Mother was a nurse, and very kind. She pampered me silly, she made me laugh. Mother was an angel. So, I imagined all nurses to be sponges soaked with pure and living compassion, pampering patients to blossoming health, radiating nothing but the warmth of unconditional love. I hadn’t met Nurse Uju yet.
Though I dream of nurses every night (and sometimes wet my pants), I have never liked the hospitals where they work. Hospitals are frightening. They reek of pain and death, swallowing up all who enter, baptizing them in the nauseating odours of decaying flesh and  rotten body fluids, potent medicines and pungent antiseptic. I am most terrified by that characteristic universal smell they have, the smell of mischief and conspiracy. However, when heart trouble brought me here, to the only hospital in Dekina town, I was helpless. “Must I stay here?” I asked the  doctor, looking at the walls with worn-out, peeling paint, the wall clock that no longer worked, the ceiling fan that looked like it could fall without a moment’s notice. “It’s not like I’m dying,” I added, petrified. “Go home and you soon will,” he replied curtly, indifferent to my discomfort. I was a miserable patient,  hopelessly battling the evil hospital smell that wrapped its long, bony hands around me, clinging to me like a baby to its mother, when I saw Nurse Uju for the first time. I noticed the way she glided into the male ward; it seemed as if her feet were not touching the floor. She was graceful and smart and funny, all the things I had imagined a nurse to be. I liked her instantly, and when she came to speak with me, it didn’t take long before I told her about my dead wife (I emphasized “dead”), my estranged son, and my compulsive smoking habit. She listened with rapt attention, devouring every bit of information I divulged. She even laughed at my jokes. She was real and compassionate. How I loved her! “I beseech Him every day for you,” she told me, on her third visit. “Who?” “The One I beseech,” she said, laughing. “What religion do you practise?” I inquired, fascinated by the enchanting nurse and the purity of her spirit. Her eyes narrowed; the smile quickly vanished. “You won’t understand. They never do,” she answered, looking up. “They?” “Never mind,” she said, then got up and moved over to another patient. It was all Greek to me but I didn’t mind. After all, she was a nurse. The nurses have all the answers. She began to disturb me by the second week with an incessant plea for corporate prayer in the ward every morning. She said she had a mandate from God. I wasn’t particularly approving, maybe because I was never raised to be religious, but she pleaded and pleaded, and nurses should never plead for anything. I gave in, and so did the others. She promised not to make any noise and that she wouldn’t take long, so nobody cared to inform the hospital management. Do the sick refuse prayer? “Prayer never hurt anyone,” she would often say. How could I disagree with a nurse?     “Let us pray.” I opened my eyes and looked at the wall clock: 6:30am. Thiswas the third morning in a row. Couldn’t she at least wait for everyone to wake up? There was no use going back to bed so I sat up. It struck me that the nurse didn’t seem cheerful. I looked around and discovered I was the only one who seemed to care, so I let it rest. The enthusiasm for her daily ritual had waned, and hardly anybody paid attention to her now, most just rolling over in bed and pulling the sheets over their heads. “Most merciful One,” she began, and that was all we heard before she began to sob violently. In between sobs she muttered what sounded to me like curses in some incomprehensible language, grunting and hissing and groaning too. Then she sat on the floor, holding her head in her small hands. I stared in confusion. “Terrible One…” I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing, and the other patients gladly joined in. A deity that was at once merciful and terrible? I laughed till I was weak and my head began to ache but she seemed not to care. As if to reprimand us, she began to speak very authoritatively in her prayer, asking “Most merciful One” to smite her enemies, slice their tongues with lightning and make them imbeciles. “May their tongue cleave to the roof of their mouth! Hallowed fire, burn them!” The laughter ceased in a flash. Fifteen minutes later, the nurse was still going strong. I rolled my eyes in disbelief and played games on my mobile phone, occasionally glancing in her direction and wondering what kind of nurse she was and whether or not to report her to the authorities. I had never imagined nurses to be erratic and unrefined. Didn’t she understand this was a hospital? A short while later, she got up from the floor, walked to the middle of the room and gave us all a hard, penetrating stare, moving from bed to bed, patient to patient without a word.  She turned her back, walked out of the ward and closed the door with a soft click, as if to say, “I will be back.” Of course she would be back. Who else would tend to the weak patients and nurse them to flourishing health?We all laughed again. The rest of the day was drab and uneventful. I was bored of all the games on my phone. I didn’t like the slices of boiled yam I had for lunch. I thought they were a little too salty; the accompanying tomato sauce too spicy. Sometime later I fell asleep while reading a dreary novel the hospital provided. I hadn’t slept for long before I was rudely awakened to the greatest shock of my life: Mr Okoro was dead! Mr Okoro had been admitted into the hospital six days after me, barely able to keep his eyelids open, with his deathly thin frame and ashen face. The doctor said it was a mutant case of malaria but word had it that people from his mother’s village were using black magic – juju, they called it – against him. I believed them. Nurse Uju nursed him to recovery with her kind words, her radiant smile, her gentle touch, her charming persona. He even whispered her name in his sleep many times. The rest of us would eye one another mischievously with suppressed giggles. He was cheerful and likable, and even helped me laugh the strange nurse to scorn earlier when my jaw and diaphragm gave up on me. He had seemed happy, and well on his way to full recovery. The sudden turn of events was staggering. Dead? Mr Okoro? How? When Nurse Uju first asked us to pray together every morning, Mr Okoro tried to dissuade her, calling it a childish display of religious excitement. She persisted, much to his dislike. They grew steadily distant, until he no longer warmed up to her when she came around to check up on him and give him his daily shots, until he no longer whispered her name softly in his sleep, until he died suddenly. It was Nurse Uju who discovered him when she came around to administer his drugs, and the entire hospital was now agog with speculation that she had bewitched him. They said she had called down lightning from the sky, that she had been referring to him in her prayer that morning. Some said she had magical powers in her eyes. Others said she was a queen from the sea. I didn’t believe them. Nurses cannot be diabolical. After his body was removed, we tried to assume some semblance of normalcy but I couldn’t get my mind off what had happened and I don’t think anybody could either. To think the nurse had really bewitched him would be absurd. Yes, she was a little idiosyncratic, but how could she kill her favourite patient? She had loved him like a child and he had loved her too, even if they hadn’t always agreed. She would have to be devilish to kill him and nurses just cannot be devilish, not even the queer ones like Uju. I looked into her eyes when she came in at night to administer my drugs. Plastered on her face was her grief and I felt sorry for her. The next morning I heard three words that got me wide awake in a split second. “Let us pray.” This time, there was no laughter. No rolling of eyes nor playing of games nor reading of magazines. This was serious business. Everyone joined in this time, stumbling over the lyrics of songs that were clearly unknown, clapping rhythmically, and saying amen again and again until we looked stupid. She started a chant. We tried our best to join her. Nurse Uju was approving of this display, waving her hands, a smile fixed on her face like a toddler who had been served ice cream. Talk about enthusiasm! It was in the ward and we were determined to give the nurse a good measure. “We pray for beloved Mr Okoro. You have taken him like You promised to. We know he is with You.” Her deity was now promising to take people, and Nurse Uju happened to be His confidante? “Take these ones whenever You deem fit. Your will is all we seek…” Take? Take us where? I opened my eyes to discover I wasn’t the only one greatly disturbed by her prayer of consecration. We didn’t even know who she was praying to, and now she wanted His will to be done; a will that wanted to take us where we didn’t want to go. We struggled through her prayer, anticipating its end so we could thunder a final amen. When she finished, she marched out triumphantly, beaming with smiles, only to return almost immediately, wearing the meanest frown I had ever seen. She shut the door behind her and strutted to the middle of the room like she did the day before. “You people need to fear God. Your life is but a vapour quickly vanishing in the wind. You are here today; you may be gone tomorrow. Mr Okoro was here yesterday. Is he here today? Live today like it is your last. Who knows? It may very well be your last.” Then she turned and walked away, again closing the door with a soft click like she did the day before. “She’s gone bonkers,” Mr Yakov said and hissed. There aren’t many things that make me afraid. This one did. Someone called her a witch. Many nodded in agreement. I wanted to side in with them but somehow, I didn’t. I defended her instead. “She was just exhorting us,” I said, struggling to believe the very words I had spoken. Mr Yakov sniggered. Another person looked at me and nodded in mock agreement. Nobody said anything. That afternoon, nobody died. When bedtime came, nobody had died. “I told you guys not to be superstitious. The lady was only exhorting. She’s concerned for our souls,” I said before going to bed. When I woke up the next morning, Mr Yakov was dead. Nurse Uju discovered him. I laughed so that I wouldn’t cry. His body was rushed out of the ward. The nurse didn’t lead us in prayer that morning. She explained to us, sombrely, that she was grieving and wanted to be “away with God.” I thought “away with the devil” was more appropriate. Another patient complained to the doctor that he felt the nurse was responsible for the sudden deaths. Doctor Thomas looked at him, snickered, and told him it was just his sickness causing these hallucinations. “You will get over it soon,” the doctor told him, unmoved. I wept for Mr Yakov. He had undergone an appendectomy the day Mr Okoro died, and though the incision had become infected, was making excellent recovery. Mr Yakov with his witty jokes and toothless grin was dead! Nurse Uju killed him, I was sure. She killed him with the magical powers in her eyes. She killed him because she was truly a queen from the sea. I went to bed that night angry and determined to wake up early, welcome the nurse, and then challenge her. The witch beat me to it. When I opened my eyes, she was just beginning to sing one of her favourite songs, her eyes shut in reverence, her long limbs raised. As I watched, tears began to flow freely from her eyes as she was caught up into an ethereal experience of some sort. I became ashamed to have thought the nurse a murderer of any degree. She looked so harmless. We all joined her again, whether out of respect or fear for our lives, I cannot tell. She prayed enthusiastically, as usual, covering everything with the “precious blanket of God’s goodness,” calling down fire from the sky to burn all our enemies, and asking Him to heal us all. She ended with a prayer for Mr Yakov, asking her deity to forgive him of whatever sins he might have committed and receive him into His bosom “that he might be ever at peace with Thee.” I couldn’t agree more. We needed some peace. When she finished, she didn’t linger long enough to pierce our already wounded souls with her penetrating stare. She also didn’t bother to walk out of the ward and return with a message of hope or a stern warning for us this time. She left quickly and quietly, and didn’t come back that afternoon. She hadn’t returned by bedtime. Maybe all the talk about her being a sorceress was finally getting to her. She wasn’t impenetrable after all. She was a real human being with feelings, not some emotionless enchantress with fangs. Another nurse came in to do her rounds. She didn’t smile like Nurse Uju. She wasn’t as patient or as kind, and she didn’t ask us to pray together, yet Mr Adewumi died later that night. They said it was arrhythmia. Mr Adewumi’s heart had suddenly stopped sometime in the night. His pale, stiff corpse was taken away in the same fashion as Mr Okoro’s and Mr Yakov’s – quickly. It wasn’t sensible to blame Nurse Uju. She hadn’t come around all day. The other nurse was as terrified as us. She said she believed Nurse Uju had come in at night, inserted her long proboscis in Mr Adewumi's vein, and completely drained his body of all its blood. When the nurse didn’t return by afternoon, we learnt that she too had died, having been knocked down by an unwatchful female motorist when she went out briefly to buy recharge cards for her mobile phone. I almost kissed Dr Thomas’s feet, begging him to discharge me from this evil place. He refused, his reason being that I wasn’t fit yet. I told him if he didn’t discharge me fast, I would never be fit – I would be dead. The old man didn’t budge. “You just need more rest,” he said matter-of-factly, patting my shoulder as I gazed at him unbelievingly. This is a conspiracy, I thought. Over the next few days, four more people died. Mr Joe, the young man who had typhoid fever, died the day he was discharged from hospital. His bags were packed and we had already said our farewells, revelling in our first triumph over the terrible sea queen when, all of a sudden, he said he had the urge to pee. He went to the bathroom and didn’t come out. They said he slipped and fell, cracking his skull. Mr Onyekachi was next. He had undergone surgery for his hernia but something went terribly wrong. They rushed him into the operating room but he too didn’t come out alive. The day before, he told us he had seen the evil nurse in his dream, laughing at him, mocking him to his face. “Her feet were not touching the floor and she was dressed in a white flowing gown, her long hair cascading in waves over her shoulders,” he remarked, visibly terrified. We told him not to worry, and that everything would be alright. Nurse Uju made everything alright for sure. Hadn’t she always done? Though we hadn’t seen her since that afternoon many days ago, she was still working wonders in our midst. I asked another nurse about her and she said Nurse Uju had suddenly taken ill and it was contagious, so she had been given a week off work to recuperate. Ill? The she-goat from the Abyss took ill? Mr Ebube and Mr Shima died on the same day, two days after Mr Onyekachi. There was a look of horror on both of their faces as they rushed them out of the ward. Whatever visited them must have been terrifying. The new nurse, Nurse Thelma, said there was nothing to all these happenings. “Don’t be superstitious. It was their time,” she said, unfazed. “When your time comes, you will go too,” she added with finality. I pretended not to hear her, repeating the word “time” throughout the day, shaking my head in disbelief. I was determined to escape from the hospital the following morning. I had seen enough. I didn’t inform anyone of my intentions, lest they snitched and informed the dreadful man-eater. Discreetly, I packed my things that night, ignoring my irregular heartbeat, the shortness of my breath and the sharp pains I felt in both knees.     “Did you think I wouldn’t return? Did you believe I wouldn’t find you?” I tried to speak but no words came out. She had arisen from the sea and now she was floating over it, coming to me, her fangs exposed, her eyes ablaze with hunger for my soul. I ran but she caught me around the neck and began to squeeze hard. I wriggled and squirmed, fought and kicked, but she didn’t yield. My eyes began to close as I felt my life slowly ebb. Somebody tapped me. I opened my eyes. “Wake up sleepy head! You look like you had a nightmare.” The witch had me wide awake in an instant. My eyes grew as large as saucers. “Why am I alone? Where’s everybody?” I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. “You were moved in here yesterday, sedated. Doctor’s orders. Now that you’re awake, let me get him for you.” “Don’t bother. I feel fine,” I heard myself say, unconvincingly. She looked at me for a while, then shook her head and laughed. “Funny you,” she said. “I heard you were sick. I thought you were to be away for a week?” “Oh, yes, but you know how I am. I love to take care of people. Besides, it wasn’t really serious,” she answered, looking straight into my eyes. Take care of people. My mouth went instantly dry. Nurse Uju checked my vital signs, took my temperature and asked a few questions about how I was feeling. She told me she would have to give me one more injection. I didn’t complain. The prick of the needle did not compare, even remotely, to the realization that I was helpless before the enemy. “Make sure you eat your food and take these capsules,” she instructed, placing the drugs on the small bedside cupboard. Then she turned to go. As soon as she got to the door, she paused, then turned around and walked back to my bed, grinning from ear to ear. I was frightened stiff. “I almost forgot. Let us pray.” I began to cry.  Image via Wikimedia Commons