Frankly Told: Slow Down
The air was rancid with the smell of detergents and antiseptics. Outside the door was the sound of people talking, something about a fatal crash coming in within the thirty-minute window.
He sat with his legs subtly swinging to an imagined breeze. The sun shone through slits in the blind but the air conditioner sapped all its warmth before it got the chance to kiss his skin. Across him she sat, cross-legged with her elbow resting on the armrest and her head resting on her fist. Her coils dropped to the side, halfway covering her face.
It had been the first time in a while since he had found himself within four walls such as the ones he sat within and it made him uncomfortably aware of his body and the level of fatigue it carried. His eyes wandered across the cabinets and other bits and bobs around him. Their eyes locked for a second and just as she opened her mouth to say something, the door swung open.
In walked a white coat, clutching a clipboard and studying the leaves on it with great detail.
“So your test results are in,” he said without so much as a glance at the couple he had startled at his entry.
He smacked his lips and looked up from his clipboard.
“You are clean,” the doctor said. “Nothing too out of the ordinary.”
“So I’m good to go?” he asked.
“Well…” the doctor started.
“Wait daktari, are you sure?” she interrupted. “This man just fainted, he complains every day anaumwa, oh headache, oh stomach upset and you are telling me there is nothing wrong with him? Surely… Something is wrong.”
“How is your diet?” the doctor inquired.
“Huyu anakula,” she answered. “Even eight chapati some times.”
“Mh, and fluids?” the doctor prodded.
“I even bought him a new one-litre bottle just the other day,” she jumped in again.
“Have you been under a lot of pressure?” the doctor continued. “Anything with work or just life in general that has been hectic?”
“Ai doc, si you know how this life is,” he finally spoke out.
“He just left campus like a year and a half ago,” she added. “That cannot be it surely daktari.”
“Sometimes, stress can exhibit itself physically and if I am being honest, that would be our best guess,” the doctor explained.
“How can you be having problems of thirty, forty-year-olds at this age,” she turned to him.
“Ah weh, wacha,” he shot back. “Doc, what happens if that is the case? This stress thing?”
“Mh… Well to be quite frank with you, I’d just prescribe sleep and maybe some paracetamol for that headache but that would not solve the problem,” the doctor explained.
“Let me ask again,” the doctor slipped in before there could be anything else said. “Has there been anything?”
The doctor looked over at the lady with a silent gesture to silence then back to the man on the doctor’s table.
“Now that I think about it doc,” he started after a beat of silence. “Maybe you are right.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean, maybe I am stressed,” he repeated. “I read somewhere that sometimes we can mask so much we hide it from ourselves too until it becomes too real.”
She just looked at him, her mouth in a thin line. Her gaze slide over to the doctor who stood there nodding his head without signs of saying anything more.
“Okay,” she said. “So what are we supposed to do about it now?”
“Just a minute,” he said. “I’m thinking… I think I have been putting pressure on myself, I think. Doc, you’ve known me for a while… What do you think?”
“I am not a psychologist so I don’t analyze brain things,” the doctor joked but no one laughed.
“If anything over the period I have known you, you have not been one to show up in the hospital. I mean, except when things were bad like when you fractured the bone in your leg back in school. Beyond that, I just assumed you have been in good health though you juggle a lot.”
“Maybe that could be it?” she said. “I mean, I have watched you do it but you do it seemingly so effortlessly. Do you feel like you are stretching yourself too thin?”
“Maybe I am,” he admitted. “Huh. Never actually thought about it like that. I always thought I am not doing enough.”
“Not doing enough?” she turned in shock. “You do a lot! What do you mean?”
“When was the last time you can say you rested?” The doctor asked.
“Hmm, does sleeping count?” he asked, half-joking.
“No,” the doctor threw back in a deadpan tone.
“I can’t say,” he answered, scratching the scruff on his chin.
The doctor nodded and wrote something down on his clipboard. The room went quiet for a little while. The rush outside the door became the only company to his thoughts. He looked at her. She looked back at him. In her eyes, there was this searching. As if she was looking for the things he did not say. He said nothing and let his eyes glaze over.
In his mind, he found questions waiting. “What have you become?” threw the first stone and it struck him upside the head. “What have you even been doing?” came next and held him against the wall, repeatedly punching his gut. “Who are you now?” looked on like a stranger would an injured man on the street.
The doctor said something more, he saw the lips move but did not hear a thing. His head instinctively nodded and he was sent off with a prescription note. As he stepped into the hallway he looked at the paper in his hand and it read:
“Slow Down.”
He turned to look at his girlfriend but she was gone. He looked around and he was alone. He rubbed his eyes until stars were painted onto the back of his eyelids and when he opened his eyes, he was sitting at his desk. His pen in hand and eyes facing the view outside his office building. He looked down at the cheque he was writing.
“Slow down.” Sat in the place of the zeros.
