Dial - Season 2 - Episode 3

Episode 4 years ago

Dial - Season 2 - Episode 3

The nurse turned and scowled darkly at me.
“Would you please wait outside?” she asked coldly. “I’m busy at the moment. Will see you when I’m done.”
“Busy?” I asked, still advancing. “Busy discussing fashion when kids are out there needing your care?”
She turned to face me then, her face angry.
“There are nurses with them, mister!” she said curtly. “And no need for you to be so acidic! I attended to the princess right now, and we’re just selecting a design for her big occasion. It’s not what you’re thinking, sir.”

My eyes bored into her relentlessly.
“So, are you done here?” I asked quietly. “There’s something I want to discuss with you.”

“And whatever it is can’t wait?” she asked.

I shook my head as I took off my little bag from around my neck, opened a zipper, and extracted the two letters.
“No, it can’t wait,” I said as I pulled out a chair facing the table and sat down.

The princess was still glaring at me, but she had not uttered a word so far. Her beautiful jaw worked furiously though, and her anger made her huge eyes glow.
“You see, I want to pay for Mr. Tawiah’s daughter to be taken to the hospital in the city,” I said. “I want Nurse Afua Takyiwaa to go with them, and deliver these two letters. One is to an officer at the Ministry of Health. I donated some ambulances to them some time ago, and I want him to send one of them here. I’ve requested for beds too for the health post here.”

“An ambulance?” she whispered, her face lighting up immediately as she pulled out another chair and sat down. “Oh, thank you very much! Please, who are you?”
“I’m Yao Biko,” I said a bit quietly as my anger dissipated.
.

She gasped suddenly and looked at the royal princess sharply.

“Oh, you’re that man!” the nurse said, and I nodded with a smile.
“Yes, I’m that man,” I said without a smile.

“Oh! Then I’ll have to go too! Oh, that’s so grand! Yesu! Oh! Oh!” she said, all excited, the princess absolutely forgotten for the moment. “There are some urgent things we need too. I’ve made requests for them, but they never get approved.”
I nodded.

“You got a copy?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, yes, Mr. Biko,” she said and stood up again.

She walked to an old filing cabinet in the corner behind the princess and began to rummage through.

The princess and I looked at each other again. She was supporting her chin on the back of her left hand, whilst her right hand drummed a soft rhythm on the fashion calendar in front of her.

The nurse came back with a file which she put on the table, opened it, and began to quickly flip through. She made a grunting explanation when she saw a sheet she was looking for, and then carefully unclipped it from the file.
She handed it to me and I quickly glanced through it.

All necessities, nothing I could see that was vain glory. I reached out for a pen and quickly wrote on the sheet, giving it an ‘ATTN’ clause to the Health Minister. I signed and dated it, then handed it to her.

She read it quickly, and her eyes widened with sudden shock and delight.
“He would provide them?” she asked, her voice awed.

“He would,” I said simply and stood up. “Please, hurry up. That little girl needs to be moved.”

“I’ll get on it immediately, Mr. Biko!” she exclaimed, beaming from ear to ear. “Oh, you’re such a darling. My name is Jennifer.”

She hugged me, and then she moved quickly toward the door, and a moment later she went out without so much as a look at the royal princess. It seemed that in her excitement, the principal nurse had totally forgotten the haughty girl.

I smiled at the princess, and it wasn’t a nice smile. When I turned to leave she stood up quickly.

“Wait!” she said, her voice a whiplash. “Don’t leave yet!”
I turned and fixed her with a cool gaze.
“You and I have nothing to say to each other,” I said quietly. “Unless, of course, you want me to lie on the floor in front of you, which I won’t. I hope you were able to get your sheep, and some goats, yesterday.”
She smiled sourly and came round the desk. She walked up to me and stood very close to me. I saw every plane of that beautiful face as her eyes blazed daggers at me.

“You have money, evidently, and you know important people, so you think you can come here and walk on everybody?” she asked acidly. “You think you can come here and corrupt our customs?”
I raised my eyebrows.

“Corrupt your customs? No, Princess. Good customs should be encouraged. But telling people to throw themselves on the ground just because you’re passing is stupid, don’t you think? What if they hurt themselves?”

“I didn’t institute that custom!” she hissed angrily. “It is something we came to meet! Something that was instituted by the gods!”

“Well, that might be true,” I said gently. “Maybe, it had its good uses many years ago, but don’t you think that it has now outlived its usefulness? Customs should enrich the lives of citizens, not degrade them! Customs indeed!”




“So, suddenly you’re wise in the ways of our living, aren’t you, ugly old man!” she shot spitefully.

“We all aspire to greater wisdom, princess,” I told her gently. “But wisdom that borders on the peripheries of stupidity only irks me! For example, how could someone as pretty as you, aiming to be the future Queen Mother, allow men to drive your mother out of the village into the bush, to live all alone in that forest, because of a stupid suspicion that she’s a witch?”
“You don’t understand a thing, because you’re a stupid, senile moron!” she said spitefully. “She is a witch! And she killed my father! And she wants to kill me too!”
“Goodness me!” I said with unfeigned disgust. “A witch? Your mother? The woman who carried you in her womb for nine months, gave birth to you, nursed you at her nipples and cleaned your sh*t? She didn’t kill you so many years ago, but now that you’re old enough, she wants to eat you? Are you that brain-washed?”

“That’s what she wants!” she said viciously. “To plunder and destroy good things!”

I took a step away from her with disgust.
“I don’t have time to stand here and listen to your drivel,” I said acidly. “One day I hope that old man of yours gives you daughters, and I hope your daughters chase you into the forest too for being a witch! Then you’ll feel how it boils down in the soup, princess! Some princess you are!”
“You filthy, stinking bastard!” she said and slapped me across the face with her left hand, quite viciously.