I stretched tiredly in the back seat of my Lincoln Navigator, lulled by the movement of the car. I closed my eyes and tried to get some sleep. Just ten minutes would do, at least for now. As I closed my them, I was plagued with visions of a pain-filled Aretha. She had not been able to sleep at all last night. She had tossed and turned, holding her stomach and groaning in pain. Even the strong pain killers given to her by the doctor had not worked. I felt helpless as I had sat beside her. I couldn't even hold her close anymore as her body temperature was through the roof.

Her fever had broken sometime in the early hours of the morning and she had finally stopped clutching her stomach, but the worst was not over. As doe-eyed as I was and as much as I wanted it to be so, I couldn't hide away from the fact anymore.

My wife was dying.

The truth grabbed me by the hair and slapped me in the face. That was when the hysteria came. I lurched out of our room, the same room we had spent many nights making love and planning for the future. I didn't know when I stumbled into junior's room, a room that had never housed a child. A child that was killing my wife.

I knew what rage meant at that moment, or maybe for one hour. I started with the wooden cot fit for a king's child. It sat grand and majestic, mocking me with its emptiness. I didn''t know where I got a hammer from, but I rammed it into it until it was but a wooden pile of crap on the carpeted floor. Next, I went for the fittings on the wall and wrenched all of them off. Nothing escaped my wrath, nothing was spared. By the time I was done, the room was in a mess, and that eased my heart, but only for a few minutes.

After that, the pain came back in full force. Worse than before.

The car jerked to a stop, breaking me out of my reverie.

"Boss, we have a situation upfront."

I groaned and opened my eyes to see chaos. A short distance ahead of us a crowd of people had gathered, but try as much as I craned my neck, I couldn't see anything. I checked my time. I only had ten minutes to spare. I couldn't not make the meeting on time.

"Stay!" I said to Eric, and got down from the car.

I had only gone four paces forward when I stopped and looked down at the clothes I was wearing. Blue tailored pinstriped trouser suit with gold cufflinks worn with pure leather crocodile loafers. I looked around the neighborhood we had stopped and thought better of my hair-brained idea of going to check out what the problem was.

As I still stood, pondering over what to do, an ambulance arrived and the crowd opened up to allow them carry the stretcher through. I caught a glimpse of a woman lying on the ground, her head twisted in an awkward angle, and then blood, so much blood, it put Aretha's problem to shame. And then the crowd was closing in on her once again.

It didn't take long before the police came next, blaring their sirens to my consternation. They cordoned off the area around the woman.

I waited. I don't know why. It wasn't like I hadn't seen blood before, but just watching that woman lying inert on the ground brought something to life inside of me. To my left was a long haulage trailer. All the huge containers on it were on the ground and their contents had been spilled all over the ground. Oil. That made passing this route impossible.

I turned and walked back to my car, but something caught my attention and I stopped and turned back. Underneath the trailer, a woman's purse lay. A few meters beside it lay some other items scattered in the dirt, obviously spilled from it. I knew the purse belonged to the woman who was lying bleeding out on the ground.

I didn't want to think about it because if I did, I probably wouldn't have rushed towards the trailer. I saw a part where the police hadn't cordoned off, and I slid underneath. I knelt down and assessed what lay scattered around on the dirt. A lipstick, her social security card and a few other knick knacks women put in their purses. I picked them all up and put them back into her purse.

As I turned, ready to walk away with her purse, something else caught my eyes, something that lay a few paces away. A picture. I bent and crawled towards it, intent on just picking it and shoving it inside the purse when I froze. Within the lines and pixels of the picture, lay a familiar face that stared back up at me.

My face.

I looked in wonder and shock at it.

How did my picture get here?

What was it doing lying in the dirt beneath a trailer?

Unless. . .

The wheels in my mind began to spin. I spun round and looked over to where the crowd had begun to thin out around the woman. The paramedics had put her on a stretcher and had her neck supported by a brace.The fact that she wasn't dead didn't mean she was going to last till the next morning.

I shook my head to rid it of my morbid thoughts and began the calculations from the distance where she lay to where the trailer stood.

Once I was done, I came to the conclusion that my picture was inside the woman's purse and because of the impact of the collision with the trailer, it flew out and landed a few meters from it.

That was the only plausible reason I could see and think of.

I knew what I had to do.

I pocketed my picture, grabbed her purse from the ground where I had dropped it, and got out from under the trailer. I intercepted the ambulance as they were about closing the door.

"Hi! My name is Alexander Moore." I brought out my company ID card and showed it to the woman. "She's my secretary." I pointed to the woman on the stretcher.

The lie had jumped easily to my lips.

The woman glanced briefly at me from top to bottom and then she looked at me again, this time slower. "What did you say your name was?"

My brows squeezed together. "Moore. Alex Moore."

The woman took a step back and looked behind me. "Where are your bodyguards?"

"My who?" What was she mouthing off about?

"You mean you don't move around with bodyguards?" She looked at my ID card still in her hands and then looked up at me. A look of reverence jumped into her eyes. "It's really you, Mr. Alexander Moore of Raften pharmaceuticals. I'm so pleased to meet you, you don't know how much of an honor it is to see you in the flesh, and you're such a simple man as well."

I didn't know what I would do if she continued her blabbering.

Her colleague joined us, his brows squeezed together. "What's the hold up about?"

I collected my ID card back from the woman and faced the man. "My secretary." I bobbed my head towards the back of the ambulance.

I saw the respect instantly jump into his eyes as he looked me up and down. "You can follow us behind, sir, we're going to Almond hospital on 23, Creek road, it's actually not far from here."

I nodded. I briefly remembered seeing a hospital on the drive here.

I fast-walked to my car. "Change of plans, Eric, follow that ambulance."

"But, boss, what about your meeting?" Eric glanced at me from the rear view mirror. I could see the shock lining his eyes.

"I'll call Kelly to cancel. This is important."

I saw the struggle in his eyes to continue arguing, but he chose the wise route and didn't. "As you wish, boss."

I nodded to myself and sank back into the plush leather seats as Eric made a U-turn and began following the ambulance closely. I had begun to feel the effect of not sleeping at all.

Aretha always said. . .

I shook my head to stop myself from thinking of her. Instead, I focused on why a recent picture of mine, the one that had been taken during the Tokyo seminar of the scientists, was doing in the purse of a woman I had never set my eyes on before.

I had a very good memory, one that helped me get to the level I was at today. I racked my brain to see if she had been among the protocol team that welcomed us last year, but I came up empty.

Then maybe an overzealous woman that came for an interview as a lab assistant a month ago?

Naah! Couldn't be. How could she even have gotten my picture in the first place?

From one of the many magazines in the lobby on which my face was splayed on. Yeah, but the picture I currently had in my possession was a real picture, not cut out from a magazine.

I gave up when all of the options I thought off fell through.

After about twenty minutes of moving behind the ambulance, the hospital loomed ahead, big and daunting. I gritted my teeth in frustration. I had enough of hospitals to last me a lifetime. I watched as the two men came down from the ambulance and opened the door at the back. Three nurses poured out through the hospital doors to assist them, and they wheeled the unresponsive woman on the stretcher inside.

I gave them ten minutes to find her an available room, hook her up to the IV and take her vitals before I came down from the car. I stretched, arching my back and sighing in pleasure as a bone popped into place in my waist.

It was show time.

I strolled to the front desk and pasted on my 'showman' smile. The lady behind it blushed and immediately directed me to the emergency ward. There, I encountered another administrative officer who seemed immune to my smile. She, however, directed me to a doctor who explained to me the situation with the woman that had just been brought in.

"You say she's your staff, Mr. . ."

"Moore, Alexander Moore, CEO of Raften Pharmaceuticals."

Once again, respect danced into his eyes and he became more aware of his words.

"I'm afraid your staff doesn't look to be in good health. She's got blunt head trauma caused by the head-on collision when she hit the ground. The reason why she's not yet dead is because she was wearing a helmet. The accident would definitely have caused her other bodily harm which I haven't yet ascertained. For now, she's not yet out of the woods so we're observing her."

"Please, see you give her an all-around-the-clock observation. I'll pay for all and any bills accrued. Matter of fact, I'll leave a check before I go that will cover all the expenses, and if there's any more, this is my card, don't hesitate to call me."

The doctor took the card from me and nodded. I didn't know why I did it, I didn't know the woman from Adam but I was curious about how she had gotten my picture.

Call it fate or stupidity, but I didn't want her to die.

The doctor said he would call and update me in the evening about her situation, if anything changed.

I left the hospital feeling better than I had felt ever since Aretha was diagnosed with womb cancer.

The call came in the night while I was fast asleep holding Aretha. It was one of those rare moments where she had not thrashed all through the night. I checked that she was still breathing and quietly slipped out of bed making sure not to wake her. It wasn't everyday I got to have the luxury of holding her close, so naturally I was upset when once I got into junior's bedroom, I picked the call.

"Hello, is this Mr. Moore?" The strange clinical voice asked.

After revealing my identity to the caller, he introduced himself as doctor Rogers from Almond hospital. I had a flash back of a medium sized man in a blue scrub underneath a white lab coat.

"I'm afraid the diagnosis doesn't look too encouraging, sir. Your secretary has blunt head trauma, five cracked ribs a fractured hip and a punctured lung. She might not last tonight. Even if she does, it will be extensive work to make her whole again; she will need physiotherapy to learn how to work again, she might or might not have breathing problems, and she will definitely not remember who she was before this whole accident, that is if she even recovers from this at the end of the day."

Something about the doctor's tone made me think he preferred her dead.

"Is she on life support?" I asked curtly.

"No, but-"

"Then she still has a good chance of making it out alive." There was silence on the other line, confirming my suspicions. "Let me reiterate this doctor, I will cover all the expenses there, and I want her to have a fighting chance. There might even be a bonus for you if she makes it out alive, but . . .if I found out there has been any hanky panky, however small, then. . ."

I left him to figure out what I could do if he decided to misbehave.

"Yes, sir, alright, sir, I will do all in my power to help her get a quick recovery." He blabbered on.

"See that you do." And I cut the call. Fatigue flooded my veins. I was tired, tired of having to fight off greedy people.

I knew for a fact there was a cabal of doctors that sold the parts of people who were on the verge of dying, or those it seemed that didn't have a chance at life. I also knew there were those doctors, the more cut-throat one's, who didn't mind going the extra mile to exterminate their patients in a bid to become rich. They sold these parts to people who were terminally ill and didn't mind paying through their teeth to get good health.

It was a hot dirty business, getting rich at the expense of people's lives, and I hated the thought of it.

I walked back to my room, ready to snuggle behind Aretha, when her body jerked and she began to moan. I checked her temperature and found out she was burning up. Peace was short lived. The saga had started once again. I sighed as I walked into the bathroom to get a wash clothe.

*

I was about ready to keel over when I walked into the meeting an hour late. With little time to spare after tending to Aretha, I hadn't had time to even open my wardrobe to pick a suit. The clothes I wore the day before beckoned to me from the chair where I had hastily thrown them, so in my haste I had donned them. Looking at the disapproving faces of the ten men seated before me now, that was obviously a big mistake.

"Mr. Moore." Mr. Hendricks pulled his bifocal glasses down the length of his nose and fixed his steely gaze on me. "Your behavior recently has been very disgraceful. You waltz in here looking like you spent the night with a harlot, you stink of alcohol, and worse still, you act like you own the damn building."

I smirked on hearing this. "I do own this building."

He visibly swallowed and looked away, but not before I saw the disgusted look he gave me.

"What Mr. Hendricks is trying to say is, you lack feelings, Mr. Moore, how do you expect us to endorse your drug when you can't even get your life in check?"

"And who are you?" I removed the dark glasses from my face and squinted at him.

"Preposterous!" Another of the suit-wearing men exclaimed.

As if in planned sync, they all got up one by one, grumbling at the top of their voices and headed towards the door. One of them huffed as he passed me.

"You're not welcome." I shouted once they had left the board room.

I slumped into the seat Mr. Hendricks had just vacated and stared balefully at the table. The unopened water bottles were the only audience to how stupid I had just been.

Clap, clap, clap, clap!

The sound of someone clapping were like gunshots to my ears, and I held my hands over them. Kelly came into view. She stood with her hands akimbo watching me. The expression 'she could murder me with her eyes,' swam into my head, and I blinked rapidly to focus on her face.

"I do hope you're happy now, Mr. Moore. All the years of planning and you just messed it up in only a few minutes. You should be very pleased with yourself right now."

Never in all the ten years Kelly had worked for me had she called me Mister Moore. Matter of fact, I had insisted she call me by my name as well as the rest of my staff.

For her to use mister and my surname in the same sentence to address me, that meant she was pretty upset with me.

I should have said something, but all I did was stare at her, trying to figure out how I was going to solve the shit I had steeped myself into. No one knew about Aretha's illness, neither did I want to make it public. I was a very private man and I also hated pity. That was why I had never gotten a nurse to look after her. I paid the housekeeper extra to do the job, but even she had other duties to attend to, so for six months, I had been cutting back on work and going home to be with her.

Yes, Yes, work suffered, it suffered terribly, but my wife came first. Last night had been the worst of it all, Aretha had groaned all through, and not even the morphine had helped dull the pain she was in. When I couldn't take her rising screams any longer, I had drowned out the noise by taking a shot of vodka. One shot turned into two, and then three. I later found myself downing the whole bottle.

Later on I drove Aretha to the hospital and had her checked into the ICU, like doctor Perry had initially advised. After she had been somewhat stabilized, I had driven like a madman to the office because Kelly called reminding me the representatives from the Department of Justice's drug enforcement administration had already assembled and were getting impatient.

It was only when I had driven halfway there that I forgot I had sent Eric to buy me some coffee and I had forgotten to alert him I was leaving the hospital.

I wouldn't even have come into work today had Kelly not called to remind me. I noticed she was staring at me like I was a wild animal from the zoo. I also knew she had been waiting for a response from me, but when I said nothing, she shook her head the same way someone would when they're disappointed.

"Well then, since you don't think you owe me an explanation, get ready to hire another assistant because I quit."

And she flounced out of the boardroom, heels clacking on the tiled floor.

That's right, Kelly, walk away like the others just did, like Aretha is eventually going to.

Everyone walks away from me eventually.

I wallowed in self pity as I slumped further into the chair.

Aretha's condition took a turn for the worse and I was called in by the specialist. One look at her and I knew she wasn't going to last the night. He left me alone by her bedside but all I could do was stand and stare.

She was all skin and bones having stopped eating over a month ago. She lay asleep looking deceptively peaceful, but I knew that was only a ruse, for when the pain came, it was like an avalanche. I didn't know when my feet moved me forward and I knelt in front of her and caressed her balding head.

She opened her eyes and in a moment of clarity, smiled at me. "I love you, Alex."

I smiled through the tears in my eyes, happy she had recognized me, but a few seconds later, she closed her eyes and drew her last breath.

"No, no, no, no, you can't leave me, you can't." I got a hold of her and shook her hoping she would wake and tell me 'surprise' like she used to do when she was hale and hearty.

Unfortunately, that never happened.

I broke down completely, sobbing and begging her to wake up and talk to me. That's how the nurses met me, cradling my wife's lifeless body in my arms. After awhile, they eventually had to beg me to release her so they could put her in the morgue.

That night I drove all the staff away from the house and locked myself up. I was inconsolable on Aretha's passing. For the next three days, I couldn't eat, neither could I sleep. I drowned myself in vodka and thereafter went about shattering things in the house. I knew what I was doing was wrong but I just couldn't help myself even if I tried.

A week later, Kelly broke into the house and tidied things up. I was like a dummy as I stared at her. She spoke but I could not hear her. She threatened but I was past caring. The pain was so sharp, so rife, I might as well have committed suicide and gone to be with Aretha.

Nothing Kelly did made sense to me. A part of me wandered how she had gotten into the house and even known about Aretha's passing in the first place, but I was too befuddled to ponder on it for long. She brought me food but I couldn't even look at it. I was too hurt, too pained, and too empty to think or function.

The love of my life had left me and all I wanted to do was die.

Kelly became my shadow. She didn't let me out of her sight. I guess she was scared I would kill myself. I almost did.

One day she coerced me to shave, because, and in her own words; I looked like a cave man. But when I stood in front of the mirror with the shaving stick in my hand, I had this sudden urge to put it to my throat and draw it across my skin from one end to another.

And I did.

Till this day, I have a red puckered scar right underneath my throat as a testament to that day.

Perhaps, Kelly couldn't stand my moping any longer because she sat me down one day to talk to me about Aretha's burial, at least she tried to. All I did was stare straight ahead into space. I didn't hear a lick of what she said. The only thing I remembered was her sigh and her telling me to nod if it was okay.

Funny, I don't remember the question she asked, still, I nodded.

And that's how days later, I found myself staring down at the yawning black hole a few paces in front of me with an already prepared speech in my hand.

As I read, my mind began to play out scenes from years before.

"I had just come from school, tired and hungry, coupled with the fact that my baseball game hadn't gone well. I was about opening the wicket gate to walk into the house when from the corner of my eyes I saw you. A sun kissed goddess with long legs and short kinky Afro hair. My hunger was forgotten momentarily as I trailed you with my eyes. You walked into the house directly opposite mine, blissfully unaware that Cupid had just shot me with his love arrow.

I trailed you everywhere and found out you were in the same high school as mine. You were actually a new student. I summoned the courage to approach you and begged you to tell me your name. You smiled, that lop-sided smile of yours that showcased your dimples to perfection. I knew that day I would make you my wife."

Tears filled my eyes and I struggled to blink them away. I looked up at the blinding sun and gathered the strength I needed. I felt Aretha's spirit was near, urging me and giving me the courage to continue so I went on reading.

"With nothing but a few cents to my name and a big dream, we walked down the aisle a few years later. When I saw you strutting towards me in your peacock yellow wedding dress, defying the norm of wearing a white wedding dress, it had cracked me up. I knew I had made the right decision to marry you."

"Baby, you brought me luck. After graduating with double honors in physiology and pharmacology, you coerced me to get a lab as a startup for my dream. Even then, you believed in me. You said I had stumbled on a cure, a cure to save the world and rid it once and for all of the debilitating cancer disease. You even went out on a limb for me by giving me your hard-earned savings. Savings you had judiciously amassed by working day and night jobs. And when I finally got a patent for the drug, you were beyond proud of me. Heck, you were even more proud of me than my own mother."

I was silent once again as I remembered how I had come home late to see the devastating report that changed everything. I felt my bodyguards behind me move back respectfully as they tried to give me some privacy.

I looked down at the paper and sighed because I still had some more to say to her.

"I just never knew that one day you would fall under this same disease I was trying to get rid of. If only you had fought hard, baby. If only you had fought and waited for me to actualize the last chemicals. If only you could have just held on, but it was too late. Too late for you."

"Someone once said we all have a six feet hole waiting for us in the ground. That person hit the nail on the head."

I shook my head in misery as tears filled my eyes.

"You weren't supposed to die, at least not just yet. You weren't supposed to go at such a tender age of just twenty eight. You were supposed to stay and give birth to our kids. You were supposed to stay so I could love and cherish you like I had always done, up till the very last minute. You were meant to grow old with me, to watch our kids grow into adults and let them do the looking after of us."

"Alas! You've gone to a place where I can't reach you, can't hold you, can't be with you, can't love you like I desperately want to."

My knees buckled and I found myself slumping. Had it not been for strong hands of my bodyguards that held me on either side, I probably would have joined Aretha in the ground they were presently lowering her body into.

A flash suddenly went off in my face, momentarily blinding me. I looked up to see several camera men jostling for space. My heart sank. I knew my face would be splashed all over the newspapers the next day.

I looked to my two trusted bodyguards standing alert beside me. "Get me out of here."

"Yes, boss." They guided me towards where my car was parked, but I was shocked to see it was already surrounded by paparazzi. I would never make it inside without virtually being eaten alive by them.

"Change of plans, boss, please follow me." Hugo, the one on the right said to me.

He removed the baseball hat on his head and put it on mine. I understood it was to disguise me, and it did the trick when I was told to walk way from them and past my car.

I did just that and the paparazzi did not follow me.

Once I settled inside a cab, a sob caught in my throat and despair crawled into my chest.

My wife was gone and I would never see her again in this life.

Loneliness and despair took their turn on me as I wept.