Despite Onyeka’s reassurances to Chidinma that Nurse Yetunde couldn’t be the mystery woman in Nonso’s life, he had briefly considered the possibility.
The nurse had been more than willing to flirt heavily with him when he was doing it to get under Chidinma’s skin, and he had noticed she had been flirting similarly with other males in the hospital; the nurse had seemed a bit too open to anything. He couldn’t help but wonder if she had taken it a step too far and chosen to tease the teenage son of a doctor until it led to something deeper.
But he was careful not to limit the scope of the investigation he had just started. There was a large pool of suspects to wade through and he would have some serious checking to do. He would be cautiously investigating a lot of the clinic’s female staff. The woman had to be found and stopped.
Chidinma’s teenage son had to be saved from the woman’s influence, even if he didn’t know it.
After that was taken care of, he could turn his attention back to making sure what he had started with Chidinma Ude grew into something real. She was too awesome to just give up without a fight.
He was done running from his problems. This one, he would face.
**
The days after Chidinma discovered her son on Skype with his adult lover were hard for her. Tensions between her teenage son and herself continued to skyrocket. There were no smiles or laughter to be heard in the house anymore. She had enforced the strictest of restrictions on her son. She dropped him off at school and picked him up, after which he was restricted to the house, cut off from his friends and the internet. Chidinma seized his phone and searched his room to make sure he had no other means of communicating with anyone, so she could monitor his calls. The boy naturally protested the invasion of his privacy and liberty, but only expressed his angst in tight-lipped silence and a refusal to eat with her. It was the loneliest Chidinma had been since the period when she had just left her ex-husband. She was also miserable, but determined to stick to the great lengths she had gone to ensure her son could not contact anyone without her knowledge.
While her son sulked in his room, she spent her time thinking furiously about how she was going to handle the matter. They could not remain in that state of lockdown forever; something had to give. There was pressure from her ex-husband, who kept calling her incessantly and asking to speak with Nonso. She had monitored the calls, but had been unable to stop Nonso from telling his father what had happened.
As expected, Ben had been furious and demanded that she lift the sanctions on their son, but she was adamant about sticking to her guns despite his renewed threats to take Nonso from her. Despite her discreet enquiries at the clinic, she was yet to find out who the woman who was involved in an illegal affair with her son was. But she was not giving up; she would bear the pressure that came from the displeasure of her ex-husband and her teenage son for as long as she could. She was as much a prisoner in her own house as her son was, but she was willing to be miserable for a little longer.
She would not shift her ground till she knew just who the mystery woman was.
**
Onyeka was positive he was close to finding out just who the mystery woman was.
He was also glad he was close to finishing the clinical audit, despite the lack of enthusiasm Chidinma had recently been putting into the job. He was almost done and would be glad to be done with crunching numbers all day as the antiseptic smells of the clinic settled into his clothes and clung to him all the way home. The smell of drugs made him feel vaguely nauseous, so he would not miss the way the hospital and everyone in it smelled. But he was also not looking forward to finishing the job without settling things with Chidinma, and he couldn’t do that with Nonso’s situation hanging over their heads. So he had put extra effort into his search for the mystery woman.
And his efforts had been rewarded.
It had involved resuming some level of flirtation with some of the clinic’s female staff, but it had paid off, as he hoped. The women were more eager to gossip about their colleagues when they had been mellowed by tonnes of insincere compliments.
He kept a straight face as he listened to the woman before him chatter. They were seated in the hospital canteen, where he had offered to buy her lunch. He kept his gaze averted from her mouth as she chewed noisily, but listened intently to what she was saying. He couldn’t even remember her name anymore, but he was too smart to let her know- an occasional bright smile was enough to keep her happy, as she shovelled food into her mouth, talking simultaneously. She called herself a Nurse, but strictly speaking, was a cleaner. Onyeka did not let her know he was aware of her true status and kept buttering her up with the title of Nurse or as she called it ‘Norsuuu’.
“No mind all this nurse them for here o.” she was saying, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Them go dey form innocentee, but their eye don tear finish. All the doctor don sleep with them finish.”
“You mean it?” Onyeka murmured, feigning amazement.
“Yes o. See that one there?” she gestured with her chin towards a nurse who was sitting by herself, busy with a cold bottle of coke. “That one, MD don sleep with am, I sure. She go dey behave like deeper life, but na him office be her second house.”
Onyeka swallowed his impatience. He needed to prod her in the direction he wanted.
“So any of them dey carry boyfriend come here?” he asked slyly. “Maybe any young boys wey don deceive them?”
The woman laughed loudly around the morsel of food in her mouth and Onyeka cringed inwardly at the sight.
“Yes na. Them they sneak men into their common room. All these yeye nurses. Na to carry shoulder up, but na so all of them be.”
“Including you? You no be nurse?”
“Em…yes na, but I different.”
A nurse walked past them and waved at Onyeka. He smiled back at her till she passed by.
“Even that one. Her leg never even strong for ground, she don dey do nonsense.”
Onyeka was startled. “She just resume work her some weeks ago na.”
“So?” the woman scoffed. “She be dey form holy holy, but I see her dey do nonsense the other day.” She looked around furtively and lowered her voice. “And na with one small boy o.”
Onyeka hid his excitement. “You know the boy?”
“Yes na.” the ‘Norsuu’ nodded. After a pause to finally swallow, she added gleefully. “Imagine! Na one doctor son o. Secondary school boy. Rubbish!”
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