Writers 
CHAPTER SEVEN: Dr. Obi's Interest
Ada went to work the next evening with three hours of sleep and a grandmother who had not said one word to her since morning.
Mama Folasade had left for Itamerin market before dawn. She had not knocked on Ada's door. She had not left the usual bowl of pap covered on the table. Ada found only the smell of firewood smoke and a silence so heavy she could feel it pressing on her back all the way to the hospital gate.
Give her time, she told herself. Wounds like that don't close in one night.
But she was a nurse. She knew some wounds never closed. They only learned to be carried.
"Nurse Fashina."
Ada had barely tied her apron when the ward clerk stopped her at the nurses' station, holding a slip of paper.
"Dr. Obi wants you. His office. Now-now."
Ada glanced down the corridor toward Bed 6, where Similoluwa lay curled around the hospital's borrowed oxygen line, her baby's tiny chest rising and falling in the plastic cot beside her.
"Tell him I'll come after my rounds."
"E say now, ma." The clerk lowered her voice. "E dey smile o."
That was the part that made Ada's stomach tighten. Dr. Emeka Obi did not smile at nurses. He smiled at donors, at politicians, at the Medical Director's wife. When he smiled at you, he was measuring you for something.
His office smelled of air freshener and expensive cologne, the only room in the whole hospital where the AC actually worked. A framed photograph of his wife and three children sat on the desk, angled slightly toward the visitor's chair. Ada had always wondered whether that was for her benefit or his.
"Ada. Sit, sit." He gestured at the leather chair. "Water? Minerals?"
"I'm fine, sir."
"You're always fine." He laughed, leaning back. Forty-six, broad-shouldered, a man who had learned early that a good suit and a confident voice could carry him further than talent. "That is what I like about you. You don't complain. You just work."
Ada folded her hands in her lap and waited.
"Do you know the Ministry of Health is finalizing the new Senior Nursing Officer positions?" he said. "Only four slots for the whole zone. Four."
"I heard something about it."
"The panel will ask for my recommendation." He let that sit for a moment. "You have the experience. You have the discipline. You even have that night course, what is it, the midwifery upgrade?"
"Yes, sir."
"Ambitious girl." He smiled again. "I have also heard you are saving to open a clinic one day. Quietly. Very quietly."
Ada's spine went rigid. She had told no one at the hospital about the clinic. Not one person.
"Small town," Dr. Obi said gently, reading her face. "People talk. It is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, it is exactly the kind of vision I want to support."
"Thank you, sir. I'm grateful."
"Are you?"
He rose and came around the desk, unhurried. He did not sit. He leaned against the front of it, close enough that his knee almost touched hers. Ada kept her eyes on the framed photograph of his wife, because it was the only safe place to look.
"I am a man who takes care of his people, Ada. Those who are loyal to me, I make sure they rise." His voice dropped, warm and low. "Some Friday, we should discuss your future properly. Somewhere quieter than this place. There is a nice hotel in Sagamu. Very discreet. Good food."
The air in the room changed. Ada felt it the way she felt a patient's pressure drop before the monitor confirmed it.
She stood. Slowly, so it would not look like fleeing.
"Sir, I appreciate your confidence in me." Her voice came out level, polite, and hard as a closed door. "But anything about my career, I would prefer to discuss here. In this office, during working hours. With the door open."
His smile stayed exactly where it was. Only his eyes changed, going flat and thoughtful.
"You are a very careful woman."
"My grandmother raised me to be, sir."
"Ah. Mama Folasade." He nodded, as if filing the name. "A strong woman. A market woman, yes? Itamerin?"
Ada said nothing. Every instinct she owned had gone cold and alert.
"Nobody is forcing you, Ada," Dr. Obi said, returning to his chair, spreading his hands. "I only offer opportunities. What a person does with them is her own business."
"Yes, sir. May I go? The ward is short-staffed."
"Of course, of course." He picked up a pen, already looking at his papers. "Oh, one small thing."
She paused at the door.
"The records office keeps a log of who opens which patient file." He did not look up. "Very boring system. Nobody checks it. Except when I do." Now he raised his eyes, pleasant and almost kind. "Two nights ago, at 2:14 a.m., someone pulled the file of the girl in Bed 6. Similoluwa. The one from Epe junction."
Ada's fingers tightened on the door handle until the metal bit into her palm.
"A nurse from the day shift would have no reason to be in that room at two in the morning," he continued. "And a nurse on the night shift would have no reason to open a file for a patient who was not officially assigned to her." He smiled again. "I am sure there is an innocent explanation."
"There is," Ada heard herself say. Her mouth had moved without permission. "I was checking her allergy history."
"Of course you were." He returned to his papers. "Think about Friday, Ada. No pressure."
She walked out of the office with her back straight and her face arranged, past the clerk, past the pharmacy window, past the corridor where two junior nurses were whispering and pretending not to watch her.
She made it as far as the staff toilet before her legs gave out.
She locked the door, sat down hard on the closed lid, and pressed both hands against her mouth to keep the sound in.
Dr. Obi didn't know what she had done ten years ago. He couldn't. But he knew she had been in that file at 2:14 in the morning. He knew where Mama Folasade sold pepper. He knew about the clinic savings she had told no one about.
And for the first time in her career, Ada Fashina understood that a man who wanted something from her had just discovered what she was afraid of.
Through the thin toilet door, she heard a nurse's shoes hurrying down the corridor, and then the ward clerk's voice, sharp with alarm.
"Nurse Fashina? Nurse Fashina, come quick! It's the baby in Bed 6. E don stop breathing!"
