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.

I woke the following morning wondering how I had gotten into my bed. Memories of the day before assailed me and despair hit me all over again like a flower in full bloom.

I closed my eyes as tears filled them. I was too damn emotional for a man. I squeezed my eyelids, feeling the pain flare up behind them. I sighed and opened them again. All around me, traces of Aretha had all but vanished. The matching golden filigree bedside lamps she bought, the two gilt high backed chairs in front of the bed, the pure cotton bedsheets she favored over the silk one's I preferred. Even her clothes, shoes and all of her ornaments, every single item, I had given to charity.

They were a painful reminder of what was meant to be, but wasn't.

My eyes widened when they fell on the curtains.

Who in their right mind would agree to have sunshiny yellow curtains?

Aretha, that's who.

She had always loved the colour yellow. Not just any shade of yellow. It had to be the exact shade of the sun - yellow with strains of burnt orange mixed into it.

I groaned and shut my eyes, once more willing the memories to stop. The strain of squeezing my eyes shut caused a headache to flare up. I opened them once again and they settled on the backdrop behind the curtains. Leaves, green and vibrant with dewy drops on each one, gaped at me. The quintessential evergreen forest.

Aretha's choice, yet again.

That had to go.

I clapped my hands and I heard the whir of the gears as it flipped, changing to another backdrop. I smiled as I saw the replacement. Snow-capped mountains topped with high peaks and sleek mounds.

That's better.

But the feeling only lasted for a few minutes, and it was back to the clawing despair in my chest.

"Wake up, Aretha."

"Good morning, Alex, what can I get you?" She came into view. A humanoid robot with a weight of eighty pounds of steel, Aluminium and Kevlar, equipped to carry on a conversation of human intelligence in three different languages. It was also equipped to carry and fetch things.

Believe me when I say it didn't come cheap.

"Go get my morning tea from the cook, and don't spill it."

"I will try not to, Alex." She replied before walking away.

I lay on my bed and tried not to think of Aretha. When I first got the robot, it was actually a gift for her. She would spend hours talking to it about anything and everything. When she asked me what name we should call it, I told her it was entirely in her hands.

I came back from work one day to see her referring to herself in the third person. I was shocked to know she had given the robot her own name. In order not to confuse them, she named it Aretha 2.

"I am sorry for your loss, Alex." The robot appeared by my bedside, a few minutes later, startling me.

When had it become this silent?

I realized I must have been too deep in thought to notice her arrival. It held a tea cup in it's hand and a newspaper in the other.

I collected the cup filed with tea and put it on the bedside table, then I snatched the newspaper from it's hand and threw it to the other side of the bed. I didn't need to see my face splashed all over the front page. I had already seen it all over the news on four different channels. That was enough for me.

"Does it hurt?"

I looked up to see the robot still standing by my bedside and looking at me. "Does what hurt?"

It blinked, those human look-alike eyes that seemed to see straight into my soul. "The death of Aretha1, my best friend."

I sighed, resisting the urge to tell it to go to hell. "I don't want to talk about it, please let me be."

"But you need to talk about it, Alex, bottling up your feelings will only make things worse for you."

Anger surged through me as I raised my forefinger in the air, but then it dropped limply to the bed. It was only a robot made to converse. It was just doing what it was meant to do. After all, it had watched me tending to Aretha all the while she was sick.

But I couldn't deal with any more talk of Aretha and her passing. What I needed was peace. I also needed to be left alone. I got up and opened up a section of its head where all the information lay in a microchip, and switched it off.

"Goodbye, Alex." It said before shutting down.

"Goodbye." I replied, already exhausted from talking too much.

I stared balefully at the tea cup I had placed on the bedside table. I didn't feel like drinking its contents anymore.

I took a shower and got dressed. Then I called Eric and told him to bring the car to the front. I had a business that needed me now more than ever.

*

As I walked into the employee's work area, slack jaws and open mouths assailed me. Most of them stood halfway and followed me with their eyes.

I walked to the middle and turned, anger surging through me. "Is there no one here who has manners? Did you all forget them at home?"

"I. . . I beg your pardon, Mr. Moore." A man standing close to me started. "We weren't expecting to see you at the office."

"And why is that?" I knew exactly why he had said it but I still wanted him to say it out loud.

That was if he dared to.

I think common sense took over them all, because choruses of good morning filled the air. I nodded and walked off towards my office. Hardly had I gotten inside when the door opened and a gasp echoed.

"So it's true?"

I walked to my chair, removed my jacket and draped it on it before addressing the person. "Good morning to you, Kelly."

"What are you doing here? You should be at home mourning your wife who was buried just two days ago."

"I thought you quit? What are you still doing hanging around and giving me motivational speeches?" I fired back.

"People are talking, by you know, they say it's not right for you to be here so soon after your wife's death."

The number of times I had gotten angry this morning, sailed through my mind, but I couldn't help the emotion when it came once again. "Exceva is literally the only thing that can save thousands of people from an untimely death, so I need to make sure it's perfected and up to standard. Aretha is already dead and buried, I don't need to moon around for the dead." I opened a file on my desk and began flipping through it. "Now go make yourself useful and get some work done. Oh, and em. . . tell Eric to get ready to take me to the lab."

I knew my words sounded cold and indifferent, but no one except me knew how much I suffered from Aretha's death.

A steely gaze took over her soft features. "This is not you. You've become a cold, unfeeling bastard, Mr. Moore."

She turned on her heels and walked out of my office, banging the door in the process.

Some time later, I found myself at my lab and the same shocked looks from my employees there. I was already over it. I walked through security, nodding curtly as they stammered out greetings. Luckily, no paparazzi had assailed me at the gate. That's probably because I gave Hugo some of my clothes to wear in order for him to paint the town red by visiting different bars.

So the tabloids were going crazy, painting me as a reckless, heartless bastard with no morals whatsoever.

That suited me just fine.

I placed my key card against the door and it beeped me in.

All around, employees, hard at work in various postures, stopped what they were doing and gaped at me, shock lining every corner of their faces. No doubt, the news must have gotten to them as well.

Simon broke away from his post and approached me. "Good morning, Mr. Moore, please accept my condo-"

"What's the progress with Exceva?" I cut him shut with a wave of my hand as I kept walking towards the section of the lab where I knew the solution that would eventually become Exceva was.

He jogged to catch up with me. From the corner of my eyes, I noticed a splash of red had risen on his checks but it quickly faded. "As you know, we changed the other compound which was unstable to thymoquinone because we found out it had hepatoprotective, anti-inflammatory, and -"

"Antioxidant properties. Yes, I know. Tell me something I don't know." I stopped directly in front of the shelves where the final solution was bottled.

If this thymoquinone remained stable with the other compounds in the solution, then I had on my hands a miracle working drug that would beat cancer in the early stages without causing any long or short term effect to the human body.

The solution had first been injected into rabbits with early stage cancer and it had stopped the growth. Next, we tried it out on monkeys who had been injected with cancers cells, and the solution had also stopped the growth.

We had yet to try it out on any human being, but I was informed by the team yesterday that we already had ten men willing to be injected with the solution. They had been diagnosed with cancer and it was still in its early stages. I already knew without a doubt, it would work.

As Simon reeled off the other reasons, I looked round at the lab.

This is it, Aretha, it's coming to life. We did this, baby, yet you're not even here to see it take shape.

"- Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore, can you hear me?"

As if from far away, I heard Simon call my name. I blinked and his face came into view. "Yeah. . . yes, I heard you, I just. . .good work, Simon. So when do you think we can send it to the manufacturing section?"

He squinted his eyes in thought. "All things being equal, if Thymoquinone keeps behaving itself, two weeks, tops, and in a month's time, we would have Exceva ready for the world."

He beamed proudly and I managed a smile. I was happy I had hired him. His expertise as head molecular biologist was invaluable. Infact, my whole team was highly invaluable.

My joy was however tainted when I remembered how I had messed up last week with the Department of justice's drug enforcement administration.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, startling me out of my thoughts. "Yes, Kelly, what is it?"

"I just got off the phone with Mr. Hendricks. He said the DEA will give you a second chance. In his exact words - Don't fuck it up this time around."

"Good job, Kelly, you'll get a raise at the end of the month." But she had already cut the call.

Bitch!