by Nana Prah
Her ears perked up when she heard a familiar deep masculine voice come from the middle of the huddle.
“In my experience, that’s how you get the best lay of skin while doing a suture.”
“Thank you, Doctor, for the applicable instruction,” Rhonke commented.
“No problem. Are we ready for ward rounds?” he asked.
Ora braced her hand on the wall to keep from falling. Her heart beat too fast as her mind spun. It couldn’t be him. But she knew better. The way the rich timbre of his lilting South African-tinted voice made her stomach flip told her the identity of the new ED doctor. No Ghanaian could roll their r the way a South African does. She slipped into an isolation patient’s cubicle and leaned her forehead against the cool wall.
“Pull yourself together, Aurora,” she mumbled, trying to embrace denial like an old friend. “It can’t be him. The world is just not that small, and your luck isn’t that bad. Now calm down, go over there, and meet the new doctor.”
She turned her head a little to the left and saw a patient staring at her as if she belonged in Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital. She smiled in embarrassment and went to join the group to review the first patient.
Ora focused on putting one foot in front of the other as if she were a one-year-old learning how to walk. After turning the corner and seeing the back of his head, she froze. She would know that head anywhere. He’d grown his hair out a little, but his adorable, Will Smith ears gave him away. Initiating the process of pivoting and sprinting out of the ED unnoticed sprang to mind when he turned around and his gaze caught hers.
The air became charged with tension and neither of them moved. Her heart threatened to pop out of her chest with the force of each beat. The nurses stood between them, looking back and forth as if they watched a tennis match. They didn’t bother to hide their expressions of curiosity.
They’d never seen Ora behave in such a manner. Not cool as a cucumber super nurse. Like herself, they kept looking at the new doctor just because of his tall, broad-shouldered, gorgeous stature. The past three years had matured him, adding a few lines around his eyes and the new feature of a goatee with a moustache changed his countenance a little. But otherwise, the same man she’d met three years ago, at least in the physical sense, stood before her.
After an eternity, Ora snapped back to attention. “Akwaaba, Dr. Lartey. Welcome to the ward.” Madam Professional stuck out her hand for a handshake.
Her words seemed to drag him out of his own stupor. “Uh….”
She had rendered the man speechless. Ora’s gracious nature—that’s what she blamed it on, anyway—took pity on him and she touched his shoulder. The contact sent sensual awareness through her and she recoiled her hand.
“Hello, Aurora. Please forgive me. It’s just that I’m a little surprised to see you.”
“Not as much as I am,” she muttered attempting to squash both the joy bubbling up inside of her at seeing him again and the overwhelming sadness of what she’d been missing for so long.
“Pardon me?” he asked.
“I didn’t expect to see you here. It’s a surprise to me, too.” She tried to smile, but it came out contorted, as if she’d been able to have a painful, rocky bowel movement after being constipated for seven days.
“Are you okay?”
“Sure, I’m fine. Why?”
“No reason.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated to reassure herself. The slack-jawed expressions of the nurses told her this encounter would be all over the hospital by the end of the shift. “Shall we continue with the ward rounds?”
She squeezed some hand sanitizer onto her palm to try to gain control of both herself and the situation. Please, let’s get on with everything as if we’re perfect strangers. She tried to project her thoughts to him. She could never, not even when they met three years ago, consider him to be anything but known to her.
“Sure,” he said, but his tone sounded hesitant. He must want to discuss the encounter with her, but it would have to wait. If she had her way, it would never happen.
When Rhonke gave an audible groan of displeasure, Ora sent her a look that would have made a snail move like a gecko.
Clara held onto her neck and winced in pain.
“Are you all right?” Grace asked her.
“I think I got whiplash from going back and forth between them. Oh my goodness, did you get all of that?” Clara whispered to Grace who nodded instead of speaking, probably out of fear of getting one of Ora’s seething looks.
She ignored the exchange, not wanting to draw any more attention to herself.
As they reviewed the first patient, Ora became enthralled by Dr. Lartey’s hands. She remembered the first time he’d ever touched her. Where there should have been pain at her injured wrist, there’d been an unfamiliar tingling warmth that rose up her arm and spread though her body. For a brief moment, she would have given anything to be the lucky patient being touched by the man with the magic hands. She smiled to herself.
“Send Mrs. Quaye to the female surgical ward,” Dr. Lartey said as he wrote in the patient’s folder.
Ora snapped back to attention at the sound of his voice. She smoothed down the fine hairs at the back of her neck, sure they were standing on end. She needed to stay in the present and focus on her patients. Their lives depended on her paying attention to the details.
They moved to Mrs. Ampa’s bed, a feisty, seventy-year-old woman suffering from severe malaria.
“Send me home, Doctor. I’m ready. My family won’t feed me fufu while I’m in here. You know how those of us from the Ashanti region need at least one meal of fufu a day,” Mrs. Ampa said in the Accan language, Twi, making the nurses laugh.
Ora wondered if Jason knew fufu consisted of boiled unripened plantain pounded with boiled cassava until it became a smooth gelatinous texture, eaten with soup. Always swallowed in chunks, never chewed.
Ora translated for him, knowing he understood the rudiments of the most spoken language in the country, second to English. She’d learned all those years ago that his father had been born in the Northern Region of Ghana where it was impossible to keep track of all the languages, but Twi wasn’t amongst them. When she finished interpreting, he laughed.
The sound ricocheted though her and almost made her grab Clara for support. His laugh had been one of the things she— No, she would not go there. She had her chance to have him and lost it. She’d continue to look forward and not backward.
She’d been telling herself this for the past three years. Three years of repeating that she didn’t miss him, although she had random occasions of feeling her heart wrench from the pain of not having him in her life, knowing she’d caused her own pain.
She sometimes wondered why she’d had to be so rigid and commitment-centred instead of love-bound. At the time, she hadn’t wanted another relationship in her life to fail. She’d needed to prove she could commit to someone and stick with him. In hindsight, she realized she let her fear of loving someone bind her into making a mistake she had regretted since she told him goodbye.
What the hell is he doing here? He’s supposed to be over a thousand miles away where I left him. Damn it.
When he’d finished examining Mrs. Ampa, Ora translated what he’d said. “We’re sending you to the female medical ward to treat you for at least another day.”
Mrs. Ampa frowned.
“Don’t worry, I’ll talk to your family and tell them it’s okay to bring you fufu,” Ora added.
The smile lit up the old woman’s face.
As they moved from patient to patient, Ora became more aware of his gaze flowing over her although she tried to ignore it. He would smile at her and though she tried to stop it from happening, her traitorous mouth would curve upward before she averted her eyes.
The ward rounds were never ending that morning. Her thought’s kept ping ponging from the past to the present. Hyper-aware of the man who owned her heart, she realized their connection hadn’t be
en severed when she left him. Damn, damn, and triple damn.
When they’d finished and were back at the nurses’ station, he turned to her. “Can we go for a walk and talk for a few minutes?”
She didn’t want to go anywhere with him; she just wanted to continue on with the life she knew. The miserable, loveless, regret-filled life she had grown accustomed to.
At that moment, casualties from a multiple car accident were rushed through the Emergency Department’s double doors. She gave him a shrug and escaped to work.
By the time things were settled with the accident patients, Dr. Lartey had to go to the consulting room in the outpatient department.
“We’ll talk later,” he said to her as she put the finishing touches on a wound dressing.
But she heard the underlying meaning in his words. “You can run, but you can’t hide. I’ve found you and we will talk.”
His right foot had stepped out of the ED when the women pounced on her, their friend and co-worker and not the boss, all of a sudden.
“Oh my.” Rhonke took a patient’s folder and fanned herself in her typical drama queen way. “Dr. Lartey is fine!”
The phrase sounded odd considering Rhonke was almost old enough to be her mother.
“Give us the dirt, Ora. How do you know him?” Clara asked.
“What makes you think we know each other?” She tried in a vain attempt to outskirt the question in order to stall for time.
“Other than us not being stupid, you mean?” Clara rolled her eyes.
These women were vultures when it came to getting the information they sought, but Ora tried once more to swerve them. “We have work to do.”
“We always have work to do.” Clara’s voice rang indignant. “What never happens in the ED is the drama that went on between you and that hunk of a man. Ward rounds should have gone on for a few more hours. I’ve never watched a telenovella episode live and in person before. Now spill it.”
Grace’s eyebrows almost reached her hairline as her gaze held her prisoner, waiting to hear about the man Ora had never expected to see again in her life. She sighed knowing these women were tenacious and would never let her off the hook. “We met a few years ago in South Africa when I took my vacation.” And we fell deeply and amazingly in love.
“Oh. I remember that. When you came back, you weren’t your usual self. You seemed so sad even thought you kept denying it,” Clara commented as she retold of how despondent Ora had been when she returned to work. Try as they might, no one could get her to reveal what had been bothering her. They were all glad when she started behaving like her old self again.
“What happened? Did he break your heart?” Grace asked. “That one there looks like a heartbreaker. A player for sure!” She nodded with so much force, her bun came loose.
“No, he didn’t.” Ora stacked the patients’ folders to keep her hands busy, but the memory of Jason’s heartbreaking expression as she told him she would go back to Ghana to continue on with her life, a life that didn’t include him, popped into her mind. She forced herself to take a deep breath to release the sudden tightness in her chest.
“Well, then what happened?” Rhonke breathed out a sigh of frustration. “You know we do have work to do and you’re giving us this story in piecemeal. Tell us everything already!”
“Fine. While visiting South Africa, my heel got stuck in a crack on the sidewalk and I fell, injuring my wrist.” Ora rotated her left wrist, remembering the pain. “I went to the Emergency Department where Dr. Lartey treated me. We got along very well and when he found out I had travelled alone, he decided to be my tour guide. He gave me a wonderful tour of Cape Town. And then I came home.”
Clara squinted at Ora as if trying to look into her brain to see the complete truth. “Something’s missing. The sadness you displayed when you came back could have been due to missing him, yes. But your reaction today seemed as if you never wanted to see him again even though you share a distinct attraction. I’m sure you left out a big chunk of the story.”
Grace snorted. “The attraction between you two made me want to go find my husband, if you know what I mean. Ward rounds were hot.”
Ora laughed with the others. “I didn’t leave out anything. That’s the story. He saved me from a vacation of shopping by showing me his city.”
Creating a happy mask to hide her pain from others, had taken almost six months to cultivate. Every day, she’d fought with herself to get out of bed instead of falling back into the bliss of sleep. The wretched pain of losing Jason had taken all of her strength and determination to overcome.
No, she had never lost him. She’d thrown him away.
Grace shook her head. “I don’t buy it.”
Rhonke nodded and pointed her index finger at Ora. “There’s more to the story than you’re telling us.”
“That’s it.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. “Now that I’ve told you, let’s get some work done.”
The group disbanded to take care of the patients, but Ora half focused on her job. Thoughts about Dr. Jason Kobina Lartey that she’d tried to repress for the past three years roamed freely through her mind. The split focus could be dangerous, not just to herself, but to the patients who relied on her to help ensure they avoided a permanent visit to the mortuary.
Chapter Two
Jason would have kicked his own ass if he could reach it. You went to school for almost a billion years and all you could think to say was “Uh?” He looked at the last number he’d made on his cell phone and hit call. “Hi. Are you busy?”
“No. What’s up?”
Jason lowered his voice. “I think I botched things up with Ora.”
“Already? What happened?”
“Let’s meet after work. I have to consult in the OPD now. I’d like to see a few patients so they don’t go wild in the waiting room.”
“No problem. I have back-to-back cases in the theatre, but I’ll be finished by five or so.”
“That’s good. Let’s meet at Charters Restaurant at Circle.”
“See you later.”
“Later.”
His mind reeled from the meeting with Ora. If he’d had surgeries scheduled for today, he would have cancelled them in order to save lives. The reputation he’d striven so hard to build would be shattered if he botched up a surgery.
A sense of surreal disbelief consumed him and he groaned out loud. The encounter had been a disaster. He’d been dumbstruck with her beauty and the attraction between them had immobilized him almost as effectively as a stun gun would have.
While he’d been pining away for her in South Africa, he could have sworn he’d exaggerated her features, but he hadn’t. She could have been a model with her striking looks. Skin so smooth, it rivalled silk. Her hazel eyes were so unique to a black African, it had caused him to question her heritage.
He couldn’t return to the ED so he could sweep her up into his arms and carry her away. Not only because the act would drive her further way and get him arrested, but because the OPD had its usual madhouse of wall-to-wall sick people waiting to be treated.
When the first patient sat in front of him, he turned his attention to his work, but his heart remained in the ED.
***
Jason looked up as Dr. Adam Quarshie slid into the booth.
“Sorry I’m late. The second case turned out to be more intensive than I had anticipated. Nine-year-old with typhoid perforation and the abdominal cavity loaded with faeces. As usual, the parents waited way too long to get her into the hospital, preferring herbal treatments and the pray-and-see method instead. The bacteria created three holes in her intestines. As long as the nurses don’t kill her, I think she’ll survive.” He shook his head. “After years of practice, I still don’t understand why people wait so long to get their asses to the hospital. We have to be miracle workers and clean up the shit they create.” He paused. “You look miserable.” And then he chuckled.
Every once in a while, Jason had difficulty rememberin
g why they were friends. He’d first met Adam years ago when they were children, during one of his visits to his father’s homeland, Ghana, but they’d gotten to know each other better when they did their surgical residency together in South Africa. They’d been tight ever since.
“It’s not funny.”
His comment provoked Adam to laugh a little harder. Jason’s scowl sobered him. “Sorry, man. You look like a lost little puppy.”
The waitress came to the booth and they put their orders in. Adam flirted with the woman, who responded to his charm.
After Adam’s extensive perusal of the waitress’s behind as she sashayed away from the table, he turned to his friend. “I wonder if my hand would bounce off if I smacked her ass. You look horrible, Chale,” he said, using the Ghanaian slang word for friend.
Jason snorted. “You’ve already established that. I’m glad I didn’t have to grow a pair of breasts for you to notice.”
Adam laughed. “You know how I love the ladies, man. Now, what happened between you and that woman?”
“You always call her ‘that woman.’ You know her name is Ora.”
“Yeah, but I also know she slammed you down hard and for that, she became a no name to me.”
“She’d been engaged at the time. I don’t blame her. Well, I wouldn’t blame her if she hadn’t said she loved me but still intended to marry the other guy instead.”
Adam pointed his index finger and shook it. “She was playing you, man.”
Jason shook his head. “I don’t think so. I may not be as well versed with them as you are, but women are my forte, too, and I know when I’m being played. She’d been genuine.”
“If you say so, but I still think you should be careful, unless you’re going to reel her in and then dump her.”
“That’s your style, not mine.”