“I know,” Howa replied.
“Just tell me— is he alive?”
The nurse’s mouth tightened barely.
“Yes. But barely.”
Howa closed her eyes.
That night, back in her room, she could not sleep.
Rain hammered the tin roof.
The baby shifted inside her, restless.
Howwa sat up, breathing through the discomfort, her thoughts drifting back to her grandmother’s voice.
“Some illnesses do not come from the body alone,” Mama Rabbi had said.
“Some are sent.”
At the time, Howa had laughed, young and dismissive.
Now the words carried weight.
The next day, Taiw’s condition worsened.
Doctors adjusted medications, ran tests, argued quietly in corners.
Dr. Ephunana Ez, one of the younger physicians, stood over Taiw’s chart with a growing sense of unease.
The symptoms did not align neatly.
There were markers she could not explain.
“This doesn’t behave like a stroke,” she said to a colleague.
“Sometimes the body surprises us,” the older doctor replied.
“Focus on stabilization.”
Ephunana nodded, but doubt lingered.
In the waiting area, Funka sat with her phone pressed to her ear.
“No,” she said firmly.
“We are not releasing any statements yet. And keep Kunlay close. I want him visible.”
Kunlay, standing a few feet away, caught her eye and offered a solemn nod.
By evening, a rumor spread quietly among staff.
Taiwo had stopped responding to stimuli.
In Mushin, Hawwa prepared to leave her room.
She wrapped her scarf tightly and tucked a small cloth bundle into her bag.
Inside were dried leaves she had saved for years—more out of memory than belief.
She did not know what she intended to do.
She only knew she could not stay away.
At the hospital gate, security stopped her.
“I just want to pray,” she said. “I won’t go inside.”
One guard laughed.
“Pray from your house.”
She stepped back, heart pounding, and waited across the street again.
Inside the ICU, alarms began to sound.
Taiw’s heart rate dropped dangerously low.
Doctors rushed in.
Orders flew.
Someone called Funka.
Kunlay appeared at the door moments later, his face etched with concern.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
The lead doctor removed his mask slowly.
“We’re losing him.”
For a long moment, no one spoke.
“Do whatever you must,” Funka said finally.
“Just don’t let him die.”
But medicine, for all its power, has limits.
By midnight, Taiw’s vitals flattened into a fragile, erratic pattern.
The doctors prepared the family for the worst.
Outside, Howa felt it before she heard it.
A heaviness pressed down on her chest, sudden and sharp.
She clutched her belly, gasping.
Tears blurred her vision.
“He’s going,” she whispered.
At that exact moment, Taiw’s heart faltered again.
In the ICU, a doctor called out the time, and somewhere in the hospital, Kunlay Ounlay exhaled just a little too easily.
Long before Logos became a maze of traffic and glass buildings, Hawwa Sadi belonged to quieter sounds.
In her childhood village on the northern edge of Nigeria, mornings began with roosters and the soft scrape of sandals on dry earth.
The air smelled of millet porridge and wood smoke.
Children ran barefoot between compounds.
Women called out greetings in voices that carried across the fields.
Howa had not been born into comfort, but she had been born into presence—into a home where someone always noticed if you coughed twice, if your eyes looked too dull, if your spirit felt heavy.
That someone was her grandmother.
Mama Rabbi Sadi was the kind of old woman who seemed carved from patience.
Her back was bent, her hands rough from years of work, but her eyes stayed sharp—watching, measuring, reading the world the way people read books.
The village women feared her a little and respected her a lot.
They came to her quietly when a child wouldn’t eat, when a husband’s fever wouldn’t break, when nightmares became too frequent.
People called her Mama Rabbi, but Howa called her Nana.
And Nana always smelled like crushed leaves and soap made from ash.
“Come,” Nana would say, beckoning Howa with a finger.
“If you want to survive this world, you must learn what the earth gives.”
Howa learned early that Nana’s medicine was not magic.
It was observation.
It was memory.
It was knowing which leaf cooled a burning stomach and which root steadied trembling hands.
It was knowing when to send someone to the clinic and when the clinic would only take their money and send them back with nothing.
They walked together through bush paths.
Nana’s stick tapping rhythmically as she spoke.
“This one,” Nana said one day, crouching beside a plant with broad green leaves, “is for swelling. But only if you boil it with clean water. Dirty water turns help into harm.”
Howa watched carefully, repeating the words, feeling important—chosen.
But she also learned another truth.
Knowledge could make you a target.
There were people in the village who disliked Nana’s influence.
Men who wanted women to stop seeking answers.
A local shop owner who sold counterfeit pills and hated when Nana’s herbs worked better than his products.
And sometimes there were strangers who came with smooth voices, promising modern solutions, then leaving behind sick children and emptied pockets.
Nana never argued loudly.
She simply did her work.
“Some people don’t hate you,” Nana told Howa one evening as they sat outside sorting dried leaves.
“They hate the fact that you cannot be controlled.”
Howa had been 13 when the incident happened—the day her life first brushed against Taiwo Akini without either of them understanding what it would become.
It was market day.
The sun beat down mercilessly.
Hawwa had been sent to fetch water from a borehole farther than usual because the nearer wells were muddy from recent rain.
She carried two jerry cans, refusing to complain.
Pride was common among village girls.
It was sometimes the only thing they could own.
On her way back, she stopped near the roadside where traders rested.
A man offered her sachet water, smiling kindly.
“You look tired,” he said.
Howa hesitated.
Nana had warned her about accepting things carelessly, but the heat was cruel, and her throat felt like sand.
She drank.
At first, nothing happened.
Then her vision blurred.
Her stomach twisted.
The ground seemed to sway.
Howa dropped one jerry can, water spilling into the dust like wasted life.
She tried to call out, but her tongue felt heavy.
People gathered, murmuring.
Some stepped back, fearful, as if sickness might jump from her skin onto theirs.
A few women shouted for help.
Someone suggested she had been cursed.
Someone else said she was weak.
Then a vehicle pulled over—an ordinary car, not the shiny kind the village boys chased.
A man stepped out wearing a simple shirt with sleeves rolled up.
He was not older than his early 30s then, with calm eyes and a presence that made people quiet down without understanding why.
He pushed through the crowd and knelt beside Howa.
“Can you hear me?” he asked, voice steady.
Howa tried to nod, but her body didn’t obey.
He placed two fingers gently against her wrist, checking her pulse the way a trained person would.
Then he looked up sharply.
“Who gave her that water?”
The man who had offered it was suddenly nowhere to be found.
The stranger swore under his breath softly, not for drama, but from frustration.
He took his own bottle from the car, opened it, and tilted it carefully to Howa’s lips.
“Small sips,” he said.
“Breathe. Stay with me.”
A woman called for the village clinic, but it was far, and everyone knew it had no real equipment.
Another man suggested they wait and see what happens.
The stranger refused.
He lifted Howa gently as if she weighed nothing and carried her to his car.
The crowd gasped.
“Where are you taking her?” someone demanded.
“To a hospital that can actually treat poisoning,” he snapped back.
“Move.”
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