The Turbulence?? (#1 in the Our Side of The Dice series)

Christopher
Bonn, Germany

What would anyone expect a grown man to be looking for at a maternity home? What would be that first thing that comes to mind? A man applying for the job of a babysitter? Or just a sweet, loving husband who had offered to go for prenatal advice on his wife's behalf? The latter wasn't very likely but the options irrespective of how moderately reasonable they were, people had it made it look abominable and ridiculous.

Hence, I wasn't expecting the pregnant women and nurses that walked past at the kiddies store to look at me like a normal human being when I made my reason for stopping by known.

"Are you sure you don't have a toddler at home?" the only English-speaking assistant on deck asked me.

"Get me what I asked for so I can pay you your money," I answered very sharply.

It was infuriating to have the same question asked in fifty different ways like I wasn't fully aware of what I was doing and they were no different from nosy and unnecessarily silly Nigerian nurses and assistants who would rather ruminate on your business than theirs.

Quietly after my salty reply, the assistant walked into the storeroom and came back with what I requested. Dropping the dollar bill on the counter, I picked the commodity up and walked away briskly.

It was crazy to what extent inspiration could drive people. Ever since I saw that maternity home afar off from where I sat at the milkshake store, I became a wanderer momentarily, stopping at nothing till I found the store that had what I was looking for.

When I visited the first maternity home I saw and couldn't get what I was searching for, I was discouraged, questioning the smartest of my plan but the motivation to try kept me moving till I was able to find one.

Through the night, I thought endlessly, wondering if my plan was going to work even with how shallow it looked. Even after getting what I was searching for, I still wasn't sure.

All I wanted was to put a smile on her face knowing that I made her bitter. I owed it to myself to make her twice as happy as I had taken away the little crumbs of joy she had.

There was a smile I saw on one of her old Christmas photos. She was only ten or eleven-years-old in the picture with the best smile I had never seen her flash at me nor the kids. At least at me. Not that all of her smiles were fake before I saw that photo but it was nowhere near authentic as the one in that photo.

With my plan, I hoped to recreate that look on her face even if I wasn't worthy of eliciting that expression from her.

I still wanted to try.

After a week of planning and preparations, I sent a couple of texts throughout the week, telling her that I cared and I was sorry for lying to her but got no reply. On the eve of the morrow when I was mentally preparing myself to physically meet with her, I sent another text, letting her know of my intention and I got a reply.

Only that the reply was what I expected from her. I got rejected based on the fact that she didn't want to have any business associating aimlessly with a liar. Instead of taking that as an outright no, I saw it as something because she'd chosen to reply to me after days of consistently trying to get her to reply to me.

The following day, I got dressed in the most casual way possible; not overly confident or arrogant but not as an unimportant entity either. I wasn't sure if she was going to come to the venue I provided in her text because Yemisi was no moody, teenage girl. Most times, her no was no.

Still, I wanted to try but in a different way.

Thankfully, I managed to know her friend, Myron within a short time so I deciphered that stopping at her apartment to drop off my gift with hopes that it would be delivered to Yemisi would be a much better thing.