Yawn of the Void
Dafe Great
CHARACTERS
Mama Tega
Woman 1
Woman 2
Dr. Adam
Tega
Nurse 1
Nurse 2
Nurse 3
Nurse 4
Dr. Kemi Makanjuola
Miss Kate
Mr. Mark
TIME: PRESENT
ACT ONE
SCENE 1
(The Warri General Hospital. A Junoesque woman picks herself nimbly through the milling crowd that throng the hospital walkway. She is carrying an ailing, ruddy, little boy of five in her hands. Worry is evidently strewn across her face as she settles among a group of women who are equally sick or with sick children. The walkway is a beehive of activity and the woman can barely make out the stern and worried faces milling up and down. She rouses her son from a tired slumber and begs him to live for her. She is called Mama Tega)
MAMA TEGA: (rocks the little boy in her arms while sobbing.) My dear son, please don’t do this to me. Please, live for me, the doctors will soon be here. Please, just hold on – hang in there for me.
WOMAN 1: (presses the back of her right palm against the ailing boy’s neck) What is wrong with him?
MAMA TEGA: (sighs despondently) It is fever. I don’t understand this kind of fever. My son rarely falls sick. Ever since I gave birth to him five years ago, he has been sick only once or twice and I just took him to a local chemist who prescribed some drugs and he recovered. But this particular fever… (cut off by her sobs)
WOMAN 2: (sits close to Woman 1, she has a female child no older than 6 strapped to her back which she rocks intermittently to keep still) Don’t worry madam, he will be fine. The doctors here are up and doing, they….
MAMA TEGA: (cuts in) This particular fever has defied all kinds of medicines. Instead, he has been getting worse. I am confused at this point, so confused (sniffles)
WOMAN 2: (shakes head sadly) ndo, my sister. It is almost the same thing my daughter here has put me through (rocks her baby) . She defied every local treatment. Only for me to get here and the doctors said it was measles. I was surprised but now she is much better.
WOMAN 1: Ehyahhh! The drugs they sell in these local chemists sometimes are also the problem; fake drugs here and there.
WOMAN 2: (hisses and flails her arms in resignation) My sister! I am telling you. But first, do you have an appointment with any of the doctors?
MAMA TEGA: (nods slowly) Yes but I don’t know the particular doctor that will attend to my son.
WOMAN 1: The doctors here are many and they are specialists. You will not have to worry. They will attend to everyone.
WOMAN 2: (claps her hands and raises them in supplication) I pray so oh, my sister.
(A tall, comely man strides towards the three women who are seated on the front row in a column of wooden benches. He is decked out in a blue, long sleeve shirt tucked in a pair of black, palazzo pants and a shiny pair of black loafers to match. He has a stethoscope slung around his neck, with its rubber tubing coiled neatly ready to answer to duty at the man’s notice and a smile creeping across his face like sunrise illuminating the despondent ambience of the hospital walkway. He addresses Mama Tega once he reaches her. He is Dr. Adam)
DR. ADAM: (smiles familiarly and warmly) Mama Tega, what brings you here? (Keenly observes the child in her arms) Is he sick?
MAMA TEGA: (befuddled) Doctor, you know my son and I? I cannot remember your face.
DR. ADAM: Mama Tega, nawa for you o. You gave birth to this little boy in this hospital some years ago; I helped deliver you of your son that very night you were brought in here bleeding.
MAMA TEGA: (suddenly realizing) Oh, oh! Doctor, how are you? It has been a while. You saved my life that night.
WOMAN 1: (whispering to WOMAN 2) Such a fine man.
WOMAN 2: (glares at her mischievously and whispers) You are married, aren’t you?
(WOMAN 1 frowns)
DR. ADAM: (cuts in) Ladies, we shall be attending to you all in a jiffy. (Addressing Mama Tega) yes, it has been a minute. What is wrong with him? Fever? It looks like a fever.
MAMA TEGA: (pouts her mouth in confusion) I cannot tell for sure, he was full of life and suddenly caved in to fever. All treatments have proven useless.
DR. ADAM: It must be typhoid then or malaria plus. We will run some tests on him and whatever we find, we will know what is wrong with him. He should come with me.
MAMA TEGA: (rouses Tega from his febrile somnolence) Wake up this boy. Do you want to die?
(The women laugh; Dr. Adam cackles)
DR. ADAM: For old time’s sake and for the fact that I helped you deliver him, the test bills and hospital bills are on me. You will only pay for the drugs that will be prescribed later on.
MAMA TEGA: (teary-eyed) Thank you doctor. You are such a good man.
DR. ADAM: (waves a hand) It is nothing, ma. Just let him come with me. You can wait here while I run the tests.
MAMA TEGA: (rouses Tega one more time) Wake up this boy.
(Tega opens his eyes and takes one look at the doctor. Fear creeps into his eyes and he grips his mother)
MAMA TEGA: (aggressively) Biko, ya ji vwe wo. Leave me and follow the doctor.
DR. ADAM: (smiles) Children are like that. He is just a child. Take it easy on him, more so, he is sick.
TEGA: (in a low whine) Mummy, I don’t like the doctor; I don’t want to go with him.
DR. ADAM: (reaches out and wrests Tega out of his mother’s hands) You have no reason to fear my dear, I am your friend and you will always be my friend. I promise; no injections. I will buy you some ice cream once we are done.
TEGA: (still apprehensive, manages a wan smile) Ok doctor.
(The women chuckle and mutter something about children accepting bribes at the expense of their bare buttocks and the doctor’s needle)
DR. ADAM: I will return him to you soon.
Exeunt Dr. Adam and Tega
SCENE 2
(Mama Tega has been asleep for close to two hours. She opens her eyes suddenly and clicks on her phone, it’s 2pm – she gasps in fright. The doctor has not returned her son. She looks around her and the other women are no longer with her. They must have gone home, she thinks. She chides herself for not following the doctor when he left with her son. But she trusted him, she thinks and she recognized him. He had even extended his magnanimity to her son which was quite unexpected. Had her son been admitted without her knowledge? She asks herself and rises to her feet immediately, re-knots the wrapper around her waist and begins to approach the ever-busy nurses pacing up and down the wards and walkways. After approaching several other nurses and they say they do not know Dr. Adam, she sees an attractive, swarthy, svelte nurse walking towards her direction and approaches her.)
MAMA TEGA: Have you seen Dr. Adam? He was with a little boy of five, about this height. (She drops her right hand by her side and spreads her palms to buttress Tega’s height)
NURSE 1: (puzzled) There is no Dr. Adam here, at least not to the best of my knowledge.
MAMA TEGA: (taken aback) No Dr. Adam here? A tall, dark, handsome doctor, he wore a blue long sleeve shirt and black pair of trousers.
NURSE 1: (slightly irritated) I have told you madam. There is no such person here and if you don’t mind, I will like to continue with my work.
(Nurse 1 flounces, silver-plated tray with medical samples in her gloved hands. Mama Tega approaches another nurse. This nurse is elderly, light-complexioned and more courteous)
MAMA TEGA: (shakily) Please ma, have you seen any Dr. Adam? He is with my little boy of five. He approached us there and took my boy for some tests. It has been over two hours now and he has not returned with my boy. Please ma – help me.
NURSE 2: (slowly and coolly) There is no Dr. Adam in this hospital as far as I know. Perhaps, he gave you another name by which we do not know him. As for your boy, I did not see him with any doctor and I don’t even know him in the first place.
(Mama Tega is visibly shaken now)
NURSE 2: (observing Mama Tega’s discomfiture) Please madam, take it easy – the hospital is a big one. He might be in some other section with your boy. Let us meet with the medical director since you said you have been asking the other doctors and nurses and they said they do not know any doctor by that name.
MAMA TEGA: (already sobbing) Thank you ma. I am very grateful
(Nurse 2 and Mama Tega walk towards one of the offices, the door is closed and there is a name plate above the door with the name, Dr. Kemi Makanjuola scrawled across it. Written in even smaller letters is her position – MEDICAL DIRECTOR. Nurse 2 raps her knuckles on the door and a feminine voice says “come in.” They go in and meet a bespectacled, smallish but beautiful woman. She wears a red wig which wisps fall across her visage delectably lending her an intense look. Dr. Kemi smiles and asks them to sit)
NURSE 2: (clasping her palms on the table) Thank you ma. This lady here says she came to the hospital with her son, five years old and a certain Dr. Adam attended to her.
DR. KEMI: (attentive) Go ahead.
NURSE 2: Thank you ma, I think she should just tell the remaining part of the story.
(Dr. Kemi motions to Mama Tega to continue the story)
MAMA TEGA: (whimpers) Thank you ma. Dr. Adam took my son for tests and even offered to foot some part of the hospital bills and till now, I can’t find either him or my son – I am confused.
DR. KEMI: Please, describe this Dr. Adam. We don’t have any doctor by that name but he must have another name by which we know him .
NURSE 2: That was what I even told her; that he must have another name. I was thinking we should even summon all the male doctors.
DR. KEMI: (shakes her head aggressively) Let her describe him first. It will be quite disrespectful to just take doctors off their duties for an identification parade.
MAMA TEGA: He is a tall, dark, fine man; he has these small eyes and pointed nose and he is always smiling. In fact, he delivered my son five years ago in this same hospital.
DR. KEMI: (introspectively) How tall is he?
MAMA TEGA: (suddenly calculative) Very tall. About the tallest man I have ever seen, 6’5 or 6’6.
DR. KEMI: (suddenly wide-eyed and shocked) That description fits a certain Seyi Smart who worked here even up till last week, he was a doctor but he is no longer with us.
MAMA TEGA: (flustered) Ma? What do you mean he is no longer with us?
DR. KEMI: (ignores her question and addresses the nurse) Call me Mr. Mark now.
NURSE 2: Ok ma (she jumps to her feet and dashes out of the office and soon returns with Mr. Mark, a wizened man clad in a weather-beaten red shirt, ripped black jeans and a pair of rubber flip-flops to match)
DR. KEMI: (rising to her feet) Take us to the morgue now.
MAMA TEGA: Morgue!
DR. MARK: Ok madam (turns around at once and leads them out of the office)
DR. KEMI: (to Nurse 2) Call two other nurses and my P.A at once.
NURSE 2: (pliant) Ok ma.
Exeunt all
SCENE 3
(Mr. Mark leads Dr. Kemi, Mama Tega and three other nurses through the foyer behind the hospital wards. Dr. Kemi’s P.A, a beautiful young woman joins the group. She is Miss Kate. She walks by Dr. Kemi and whispers in her ears. Mama Tega is trying so hard to put herself together and has made several phone calls to different people; her voice over the phone is harried and tremulous. The other nurses try to calm her down as they approach the morgue. They finally reach the morgue)
DR. MARK: (knocks slowly on the door three times before turning on the door latch) Come in.
MAMA TEGA: (flummoxed, whispers to Nurse 2) Why did he knock three times before opening the door?
NURSE 2: The bodies might just be about having fun; You need to alert them before you go in. That is what the morticians say.
MAMA TEGA: (aloud) Oh!
DR. KEMI: (Addressing Mama Tega) We are here based on my suspicion. There is no proof that your son is alive or dead, it is just to confirm or rebut my suspicions – keep calm. We will find your son.
MAMA TEGA: (sighs heavily) Thank you very much ma.
NURSE 3: (whispering to Nurse 4) I sincerely hope it is not what I am thinking.
NURSE 4: (shakily) I hope so too.
DR. MARK: (strides towards a table, picks up a pair of black gloves and puts them on, then he pulls out a drawer from below the table and pulls out a contraption wrapped in red cloth and strung with cowries and twirls it around his head before stowing it away in his larger-than-life pockets. He mutters to himself and shuts the drawer before striding back to the small group) A little fortification. These souls can be very funny.
DR. KEMI: (in a chilly tone) Mark, you are scaring us. Let us just do what we came here to do.
DR. MARK: (strides over to the body lockers and pulls out one of the drawers, stops dead) Goodness me!
MAMA TEGA: What?
(they rush to Mr. Mark and at once Mama Tega recognizes her son and slumps)
DR. KEMI: Take her to the emergency ward at once.
(Miss Kate and the nurses immediately reach for Mama Tega and bear out of the morgue)
DR. MARK: This is surprising, madam
DR. KEMI: (sobbing) I am speechless. Why did Dr. Seyi have to do this to this innocent lady, what did she do to him? He even gave her a bogus name.
DR. MARK: (reaches for the dead child lying on Dr. Seyi’s chest. The small, fragile frame lies still shrouded in eternal silence. As he picks him up, his fists, frozen in perpetual gesture of innocence, his eyes unseeing but open and gaping in emptiness as though the doctor had strangled him. His delicate features, once bubbly with life are now stilled in eternal repose. The mortician weeps) Dr. Seyi has only been dead for a week and his ghost haunts the hospital every now and then. I told you madam that I saw him under the mango tree that very day he died. He was standing, looking at me smiling and I knew for sure that his body lay dead in here. When I tried to reach him, he faded into thin air.
DR. KEMI: (still sobbing) I have known in my many years of medical practice that some ghosts can be quite stubborn but taking the child of an innocent woman is absolute bonkers.
(Silence)
DR. MARTIN: (looks at Dr. Seyi’s face, shakes his head and shuts the body back in the body locker, then picks up the dead child and swaddles him in a white cloth) Let us leave here, madam. We have to see to it that the boy’s mother is fine. As for this child, we cannot leave him to the unkindness of this place. He deserves better.
DR. KEMI: (already walking towards the exit) You are right. We shall reach out to any of his family members or his mother’s family members. But Mr. Martin, why do you think Dr. Seyi decided to do a wicked thing as this?
DR. MARTIN: (sighs deeply) The young man was fated to go this way and what other way to go other than die in the arms of the man who guided him into this world?
DR. KEMI: That doesn’t make any sense.
DR. MARTIN: Madam, life itself doesn’t make any sense.
Exeunt all
CURTAIN
Dafe Great is a Nigerian writer and lawyer. His debut body of work God Is Not Puzzled was published by Emergence Publishers in 2024 and he is working on his debut novel.
*Image by Nappy on Unsplash
