We were at the hospital. Only my father knew how I managed to get Naza there. I mean my father in heaven not my daddy.
I had managed to throw a singlet over my body and wore a short that shape had forced me too. I had lifted Naza and was insisting on taking her to the hospital wearing only my boxers.
We kept pacing the hospital hallway, I and Shape. We had been over 1 hour at it before Willie and Chinelo joined us. The tensile atmosphere didn’t stop Shape from rolling her eyes at him and letting out a loud hiss. She then walked far away from where he was.
“What happened?” he asked me, ignoring Shape’s drama. Chinelo was already tugging at my hands. I was tempted to give him the full gist, I was really fucked and in a frantic mode but then, I couldn’t explain that Chinaza fainted when she saw me and Shape on each other, not when Chinelo was there.
“She came into my room and fainted. I don’t know how or why but she just slumped to the floor,” I explained.
“Chim o,” Chinelo gasped and threw her hands on her head. “Where is she now?”
“Inside, the doctor is with her, they said we should stay out.”
“And is she awake yet?” Willie asked me.
“I don’t know, that what they are trying to do I think.”
It was a hell of a situation. Naza had slumped at my former lodge. I had no business being there and she too had no business being there. She had caught me and Shape in a position we had no business being in. The situation was indeed one hell of a situation.
Chinelo called her Mom in an instant and then the pacing continued with me doing the longest milage. Chinelo kept her eyes on Willie and ensured he maintained a certain distance from shape. Not like Shape cared. She wasn’t even going to look at him.
Over 30 minutes later, my folks came. Daddy and mummy and along with Naza’s folks too.
We walked into her ward and she was just there, seated on her bed and was biting the hell out of her lips, her hands on her waist. I was live on Nollywood.
“Maybe she broke her hips on the floor,” I thought to myself. I hadn’t even considered the baby in her belly. How naive of me that was. I wasn’t inconsiderate or insensitive. I was just too small to know any ish about a pregnant woman, forget that I wasn’t too small to put it in there in the first place. Then there was a rumor about an impending labor and then Naza pissed herself. It was so obvious, the water tickling down the bedspread and Naza’s restlessness increasing by the minute. I walked up to her, I was guessing she was in so much pain to bear a malice with me. I held her hand but I was wrong. She brushed my hands off and stood on the floor weakly.
“I’m fucked,” I muttered under my breath and moved back to stare from afar.
It wasn’t a pretty sight and I just stared from a distance with Willie and the two father’s with us. Shape was no where to be found. Naza would scream her head off if she dared come closer.
“She fainted in your room?” My father asked me in a pitiful tone. I nodded.
“Your room?” he repeated and I got the gist too late.
“We were as in. I went to collect some things and she and we.. ” I stammered incoherently and he kept giving me that dehumanizing stare.
“Was the party at your lodge or William’s lodge?” he asked me.
A lot of explanations followed. We didn’t get to conclude before preliminaries were done and Naza was bundled into the labor room. Things dragged on for a long while, a very long space of time in which I said my first prayer for months. I prayed she make it out of that freaking room alive. I wasn’t scared of what her folks would say or do, I was just scared for myself. What I would do should anything happen to her. I was going to jump off the second floor of that hospital building. Yes, that was what I intended doing.
Everyone was on their nerves end. Somehow, a lot of delay had to take place, a lot of technical jargons was involved, jargons which I only understood the part that said my Naza was still alive. Then the doctor and his team disappeared.
Nobody slept into the night. My father and her father had left. Willie was there, Nelo too. I had asked Shape to go home. Her presence there was freaking every one out and would also freak Naza out if she woke up and see her there.
5 am, I was seated at the hospital’s lounge and nodding away. Willie was already sleeping away with Nelo’s head on his laps. He thought the whole place was boring. So many beautiful Chica nurses to look at but no access to them because his other half was there with a leash on him.
6:35 am and we were all brought in to her ward. My mom and her mom taking the lead. My feet dragged from guilt and tiredness as we all flocked into her room. She was lying there on the bed, looking exhausted and the hospital cradle was by her side, the baby cries filling the whole of it. I saw the smile break out on my mother’s face as Naza mom put her hands to her chest in a deep show of emotion. I think she actually cried or was close to. I kept staring at the cradle from a afar like it was my semester result. I couldn’t get closer because my heart was pounding and I didn’t know why.
“Hei, come and see Chinecherem junior o!” Nelo yelled, digging her hands into the cradle. Her mother hushed her.
“Do you want to infect him?” She said and I frowned. A him? Apparently, Naza had won. Willie rushed at the baby and smiled. He turned to me and nodded.
“No dispute bro. This one is yours. Carbon copy.”
I turned to Naza with a pitiful look in my face. I felt like I needed her permission to see the baby. I had hurt her deeply and something was telling me that she would shush me away from the kid. She threw her face to the wall, away from my eyes. Soon, everyone was all over her, congratulating and asking how she was doing. Only Nelo threw a congratulation at me. I took the chance and sneaked up to the cradle.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Clean as crystal and handsome like his father, his mother’s skin. He was a neat ball of human flesh, the most beautiful boy I had ever seen. Maybe it was because he was mine. I didn’t care. He was the most beautiful by his father’s standard, by my own very standard. Yes! I was the father. I fell in love immediately and was nearly moved to tears. I was the lawful owner of a living thing. I am the father to a handsome baby boy. I was the daddy to my sweetheart’s son. I loved the feeling. The thrill was extraordinary.
“I love you,” I murmured.
“Please stay away from him,” Naza said at me. Everyone went quiet for a split second. Then Chinelo asked “Why?”
My heart thumbed.
“Nothing, just stay away from my baby,” she repeated.
My father came in at that instance and her father too. They had been called up the moment we were ushered into the room. You could easily see the happiness in both their faces. The baby was beautiful and I thought giving Naza the unwanted pregnancy was worth it after all. I just thought it, I didn’t say it out.
And then the doctor walked in with the matron, a baby wrapped in a fluffy white towel in her arms and a broad smile on her face. I watched with confusion all over me. So did everyone else except Naza.
“The second one. A beautiful baby girl,” the woman said and my jaw dropped.
“Wait, from where? Did you store them in a warehouse?” My father asked. Everyone laughed and then fell on the baby girl as she was laid near her brother. They were twins. It was like Christmas. Naza and I both got the present we wished for. The girl was an improved version of her brother. I was guessing she would be more beautiful than Naza. Naza was smiling this time around and she didn’t stop even when i stole a glance from her.
“Who came first?” I asked, lost in Joy.
“The boy,” the woman said. I smiled.
“Naza I hope your breast is ready?” Nelo asked and ran to her on the bed. The laughter was in her eyes but not her face.
“Congratulations,” the doctor said, holding his hand out to my father. My father picked it up in a firm handshake. “It wasn’t easy, your wife is really a strong one and your twins are beautiful,” he said. My father snatched his hadn’t away and I took the doctor’s hand without being offered, a broad smile on my face.
“Thank you,” I sang out and everyone laughed.
“Why are you all just looking? Carry them, they don’t have teeth yet and won’t bite,” the doctor said and everyone scampered for the little doves. My mother got the boy and Naza’s mother got the girl. Nelo and Willie were all over them with camera flashes.
Everyone was happy, fully happy except I and Naza. We were happy but not as much as we ought to be. I messed up and the babies were welcomed between two feuding parents. Nevertheless, they were very beautiful and everyone loved them. And then my father drew closer to me. Somehow, I just knew he was going to misyarn.
“So the work is split in two. I buy one pampers and you buy the other one,” he whispered. Everyone heard and everyone laughed. I and Naza inclusive.
“Hmmm hmmm,” Naza’s father cleared his throat and turned to Nelo and Willie. “When are you two having yours?”
“If you try that rubbish eh!” My mom yelled.
My whatsapp dp, my Facebook dp, my twitter dp, my qq dp, my bbm dp, my Screensaver, my world was all a picture of those little cute things. Naza was always trying her best to keep me away but in the end, she will end up asking for me. We loved being around them and so did everybody. It wasn’t much of a public something but few people did come. It was easy for me as I wasn’t footing the bills. Naza looked sweet still but all stressed up. Either she was cuddling them to sleep or she was breast feeding them. It wasn’t easy and she was always taking the stress out on me.
She would never take a minute break to tell me how unreliable I was. How much of a bad father I was going to be and she needed a better role model for our pumpkins, she didn’t need me around them and bla bla bla. I was at a time getting pissed at the constant nagging even though I deserved them to an extent but then, Naza was decorating me with it. But then, whenever I look at those two magnificences she had produced for me, I was always calm with a smile on my face.
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“And this is how you do it,” she said and clipped the diaper. I just crossed my hands and watched. She just needed another argument otherwise, I didn’t see any difference between what she just did and what I had done. The baby girl just lay on the bed in Chinaza’s room giggling gibberish. Chinelo was at the corner, waiting to have a laugh of her life. Chinaza had insisted the babies had no name yet until she is able to sit down and think out a name for them. For now, everybody can only call them baby boy and baby girl. Baby boy was already asleep on the bed.
“So what did I just do?” I asked calmly. She picked the baby and dropped her next to her brother.
“You clipped the diaper too hard. It will feel squeezy on her and will slow down the passage of blood,” she explained slowly. I carved a smile out the corner of my mouth.
“Did she complain?” I asked slowly, moving back to avoid a slap that might spring up.
And we were done for the day. She rarely talks sense to me these days so it’s either she is pummeling me with words or she was iterating how much the babies eyes looked like mine or how they had oval faces like mine, all against her wish.
“I hope they don’t also grow up to be like you too,” she would say and let out a loud hiss.
So I kept staring at the babies. They were real cute and comfy to hold. I had to wake the girl up again. I wanted to carry her to my fulfillment. Chinaza had gone to take her bath so it was all convenient for me. She let out a baby cry and I picked her from the bed into my arms. She stopped crying and I kept taking in the fresh baby scent from her body. I love the way new born babies smell. We were at our father and daughter business when Naza walked in, all wet with just a towel to cover her sexy body.
“Who woke her up?” she asked, accusing me with her eyes already.
“I was on my way out when she started crying,” I defended.
“Then what happened?” she asked rhetorically and took her from me.
“I don’t know, maybe the diaper was squeezy on her,” I said with a mock smile. She rolled her eyes and dropped the baby on the bed. She cackled and we smiled, individually. They were our new bond, the kids and we loved them as much as we loved each other. Chinaza wouldn’t admit it but I knew, we both wished we could just come to terms and tell each other how much happy we were together with two beautiful ones in between us.
“Naza can we talk?” I asked her. She sat on the bed, sharing her powder between her and the giggling baby.
“About what?”
“Us, you and me.” I said, sitting on the bed and grabbing the baby’s finger.
“Ok. Talk,” she said in a voice portraying no emotion.
“You know my love for you is taller than this building?” I asked.
“Yes, I know but your fvck up is taller than our church tower,” she replied. I ceased the urge to laugh, I wanted to be serious this time around.
“Yes. I am sorry for those things. I just love you and now that we have these babies, I want us to be closer like we used to be, even more closer than we used to be,” I preached. She sat on the bed beside me.
“You want us to be closer, now that we have these babies? Do you want to have another one?” she asked, trying to act like she misunderstood me.
“Yes,” I said and nodded with a grin.
“And who will now marry me after I must have given birth to 1 million children for you?”
“I am here, I am not going into the seminary,” I said.
“Me, marry you?” she asked.
“Yes, was that not the plan before?”
“No, I have changed my mind. I won’t even trust you with my daughter when she grows up.”
“So you are now saying that I will be running after my own daughter?” I asked, getting angry all of a sudden.
“Who knows?” she replied nonchalantly and that was it. I vexed. Stood up and brushed my trouser.
“I am going,” I said and started walking for the door, hoping she would call me back like she always did the other days. She did no such thing. I walked back to the bed. My daughter was sleeping already, peacefully and calmly. I bent low and pecked her cheek, she woke up, much to Chinaza’s annoyance. She snapped at me and my boy woke up too. Good, if she was going to break my heart like that then she deserved a little punishment. She gave me her killer frown but I was too angry to care. She once told me that one of the reasons she loved me was because of my capacity to do absolutely stupid things, sleeping with her friend was not one of them though. I bade my goodbyes and headed for the door. She needed all the space she can get, her boobs were about to get busy.
And the days that followed were just like that. She was punishing me for what I did and I was even too ashamed to complain. So I bought her a flower. A very big bouquet and a teddy too. Though it cost me much more than I had expected. Never knew silly things like that cost much, that comes from having a girl like Chinaza that demands only for love and nothing else. It pained me paying that much, like a stuffed teddy going for 4k. I had argued with the dealer that I was buying a teddy bear and not a baby. I eventually got a red one. Red was the color of love and a red bouquet matched it. If she rejects it, I was going to give the teddy to the boy and the flowers to the girl. At least if I wasn’t a good boyfriend, I would be a good father.
I was busy with the wrapping of the gifts in the confines of my room. Youtube was teaching me the job. Then Naza banged in. She rarely knocked. I hid the ribbon behind me, too clumsy that she noticed.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I bought things, for the babies,” I stammered. “And you.”
She came for them. Flipping them around recklessly. Like she couldn’t give a shït, breaking my heart while at it.
“Which one is mine?” She asked.
“All of them, then decide the one you will dash out to the babes,” I replied. She smiled. A lovely smile.
“Will you forgive me and accept me and my gift?” I asked.
“I am cursed with you,” she replied and sat beside me.
“I love you very much,” I confessed.
“I know, let’s go and change baby diapers first.”
