"When I became Health Prefect there were cases I could handle by myself. But there were also cases that I couldn't. It's true. The saddest, saddest one was that of Haruna. He was asthmatic and had an attack in the middle of the night. By the time I got to him, he had slumped. I closed his nostrils and breathed into his open mouth. Then, I pumped his chest. Nothing. His hands did not feel like human flesh. They felt like cold rubber.
Did I not tell you? This was why I was made a School Prefect, because, even though I was holding Haruna's hands and they were as cold as rubber, I found myself very, very calm. So, I said to the students who were standing over me; "Go and call the Senior Boarding House Master! Tell him that we have to take Haruna to the hospital now!"
Then I, along with some other boys, lifted Haruna up to our shoulders and ran with him to the school gate. The Senior Boarding House Master was already waiting, with the engine of his car running. It was past midnight and a full moon was shining down. As we laid Haruna in the back seat, his head fell back and his eyes rolled upwards. In the silver light, I saw a bit of water trickle down from the side of his mouth. My heart fell at that moment.
At the hospital, they just shook their heads. They did not even allow us to bring him in. They just said; "Take him to the morgue. There is nothing we can do."
His parents came the next day. They wanted to speak with me, ask me what happened. His mother cried, but his father just nodded. "Insha Allah", he said. "It is the Will of God." Then, he looked at me, into my eyes, and, maybe, at that moment he understood the trauma of a child that had watched another child die. Because he pulled me into his arms and said; "Thank you."
It is not easy to be an angel in this world that can be so dark and dismal. But sometimes all it takes is opening your hand to the little boy pleading with a conductor that he has no money to pay the bus fare, or coming out to check that the children passing by your broken window on their way to fetch water are not being maltreated, or ignoring your own pain when you see that the child in front of you is suffering terribly under the burden of growing up. Because this journey always ends in death, and only angels have wings to fly. It is true.
I am talking like this because I am now in form six. It is all part of growing up. Please, bear with me…."
Ah. That was the voice of Pips McQueen, in a small excerpt from my novel, 'URICHINDERE'. But, you see, this particular story is a true one. One night in K.C, I watched a boy die. I did everything I knew, everything I had been taught, to save his life. But he still died. And I knew it the moment we put him in the back seat and I saw his face in the moonlight. There was no light that night. There was no clinic in school we could take him to. There was nothing – just us, teenage boys, and the Senior Boarding House Master's broken down car. It was just the way Secondary School was. But, somehow, we came through with our spirits still shining bright. Let it be.
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