Pardon me if you don’t like today’s article.
I don’t feel like writing today, or tomorrow and maybe forever. I lost my sanity today and I think I would be more thankful now if it were my mental sanity I lost. Mobile phones are such hypocrites. How can one device be playing Pharrell’s ‘Happy’ and then next minute, it’s welcoming the most terrible phone call ever.
I was at the office party when the call came in today. All the guys were mimicking how girls behave on snapchat and they were doing a terribly funny job. I remember that I was laughing on my seat and typing into my system. ‘The party will come and go but the work will stay. Work is bae.’ I told my cubicle partner; Martins. Some guys had come over to my seat and offered me a cup of alcohol-spiked Sprite to which I had jokingly declined saying, ‘Try harder. I don’t mix my alcohol.’ But in truth, I wanted to tell them that alcohol made me queasy and anxious and on this wonderful week of my life, I wanted nothing to do with queasiness and anxiety.
In fact, the real reason I was working during the office party was because I had planned on going to request for a break from work for the rest of the week from my boss. Angela (my wife) was going to be due tomorrow and it was/is our first kid. I just wanted to be there for her. As she had requested saying, ‘Babe, please find a way to be away for this week so we can join clueless heads together as we try to figure out how to live with a tiny human in our house… for at least the first few days’
But as I tried to secure my one week break, little did I know that cosmos had planned a longer break for me. Punching away at my system, I heard my phone ring (Pharrell’s Happy) and picked it up.
‘Good day sir. Am I speaking with Mr Kenneth Okoli?’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes sir, I’m calling from Mother Nature Hospital, your wife’s registered maternity hospital. You are registered as the next of…’
‘I know! What happened? Is my wife okay? How is she? Has she given birth? Talk to me’
‘You wife is okay sir. She entered into emergency labor and was rushed here around 10am. She’s okay and fine. We will, however, need you to here to be with her.’ *Short pause* ‘The baby did not make it’
You know it’s funny how some words, although heavy, do not break the lips of the speaker. I don’t know what I was angry at, the way she said those words in one breath or the words themselves. I’m sitting here in my wife’s room, listening to the short beeps coming from one of the machines here, watching my wife sleep and I’m still angry. I feel like I need someone to talk to because the thoughts that are passing through my head are scary. I don’t know if I can even type them, because then, I’ll be admitting these thoughts. Oh God… help me.
*****
Sorry, I have to just say what I’m thinking: I’m hating my wife. I’m hating her because I believe that somehow she had the power to stop this from happening. Oh God… do you realize how horrible and pathetic that sounds. But I’m hating her and I don’t know why.
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