11/10/2024
FROM MY INBOX
I was a 200 level student of IMSU that year, and it was during the POST-UME period in school. I was going home that fateful day when I heard someone call my name, I turned, and it was a neighbor(Joy), all the way from our street in Port-harcourt. I stopped and exchanged pleasantries with her, and she said she came to the school for POST-UME. She was in the company of another girl who she introduced as her friend. I asked her if they will be going back to Port-harcourt that same day, but she said no, that she's made arrangements to stay with her secondary school classmate who's also a student of IMSU. We exchanged contacts, and they left.
Later that evening, I was warming my left over beans and plantain pottage when my phone rang, I picked it up, and it was my street neighbor, Joy. She said that her secondary school classmate who promised to accommodate her for the night was not picking her calls, and it was already late for them to start going back to Ph. She asked if they can pass the night in my lodge, and I agreed and sent the address to them.
Shortly, they arrived at my lodge, and I made them comfortable the best way I could. I even offered them the beans and plantain pottage I had, and they ate. We gisted about school life till it was around 10 p.m. I picked up my blanket to go and sleep in my friend's room, when I noticed that Joy's friend was acting funny. She became restless and started vomiting. Before we know it, she passed out in my hands, in my room.
I was terrified and scared. In my confusion, I asked Joy where she brought the girl from, but Joy was just crying and screaming, begging her friend to open her eyes. Immediately, I knew that I was finished.
It was our loud screams that drew the attention of other lodge mates who ran into my room to see me holding the almost lifeless girl. One of our lodge mates who was studying a medical related course, placed the girl on my bed, pried her eyes open with his fingers, felt for whatever around her wrists, and said we should take her to the hospital asap.
We rushed her to the nearest hospital, and Joy was able to contact her parents. I just sat down on the floor of the hospital reception thinking about my life, and that of my poor mother who is a secondary school teacher. If anything happens to that girl (I don't even know her name), wetin I go talk? Na so I go take land for prison?
Morning took forever to come, and luckily, her parents also drove down from Port-harcourt to Owerri that early morning. They met me seated on the floor as I was begging God that I will never accommodate any girl in my house again.
Las las, the girl was revived, and the doctors said it was allergy something, and an underlying ailment like that. I left for my lodge, and locked myself up. Honestly, I was traumatized. When Joy later came around to get their hand bags and a few of their stuff, I didn't reply to her greetings or her thank you.
It was the girl's parents that later came with Joy to talk to me. Her father said that the girl has an ailment which they are trying to manage, and that was why they wanted her to school in Port-harcourt where they live, but because she had spent all her life in Ph, she refused and wanted to school in Owerri. They apologized for every inconvenience their daughter must have caused me.
I thanked them before they left. That was the end of that girl's admission. Joy was later admitted in school, but I avoided her like a plague. Once bitten, twice shy.
I don't want to hear stories that touch the heart. Once is enough.
But wetin I for do if that girl had died in my house?
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