As she bolted towards her big sister, her entire life flashed in those few seconds of the fastest race she’d ever run. A race against death itself. She knew she wasn’t fast enough to stop that bullet from hitting Kamsi but she was so close. With an outstretched hand Nma ran, doubling her speed regardless of the pain from her wounded stomach. She struggled to reach out hoping to at least push her sister out of harm’s way.
Like a lightning bolt, she valiantly charged in, weeping as she dashed forward, praying to God that she succeeded. The word No had been drawing off her lips as soon as the gun was cocked and pointed at Kamsi. Nma was screaming whilst in motion, whilst she watched her sister even in the face of death beam a beautiful smile at her, a smile that blended with bitterness, tears of sadness, regret and the pain of an untimely passing. Kamsi had accepted her fate. She was going to die and not even Nma could save her this time.
Nma recalled in a blink of an eye, all the good memories they shared together, their time as a family, Kamsi’s smile when she was genuinely in a cheerful mood and she was always in a good mood. She remembered how they used to eat together, and play around the house even as adults. Nma’s tears dropped to the floor with each step she took. Their movie nights flashed in her head. Kamsi’s jokes which she always thought were dry and not at all funny were suddenly the funniest jokes she’d ever had the opportunity to hear.
Her horrible dance moves were now so beautiful as she rewatched the scenes in her head. The nights they spent singing at a karaoke bar, the times Kamsi would dose off during a church service and Nma would fight their big brother Kazie for trying to take mocking pictures of the moment. The times Kamsi would cuddle her in when she was too tired to pull up the duvet over herself against the cold. Memories of all these and more overlapped themselves in her head at the same time.
The last images she recalled of her sister before the shooter pulled the trigger were her best smiling moments. They flashed, arranged in no particular order. She’d always known that Kamsi had the most beautiful, charming, and contiguous smile but in this moment, those smiles were the batteries that charged her tear glands.
The shooter, a man in a gray mask, squeezed the trigger. Nma screamed as the bullet punctured through Kamsi’s chest. She had almost pushed her out of the way when the deafening sound of a gunshot echoed through the emptiness of the room. Nma was able to catch her before she hit the ground.
She gently laid her down and held her head in her arms as she knelt by her side, both of them weeping bitterly that their speeches were choking from the hurt that made breathing difficult.
“No, no, no…”Nma cried, sniffling like a child that had caught a cold as her hand slid down and felt the thickness of her sister’s blood flowing out and gradually forming a puddle around her.
“Nma…” Kamsi’s’s voice was so faint as she fought to hang on a little longer.
“Sshh.” The younger sister’s tears dripped into the pond of blood, splashing with each drop.
“Save your breath,” her voice had become inaudible from the intensity of her cry.
“Listen to me…”Kamsi strained.
“Kam, please stop, “Nma applied more pressure on the wound hoping to ease the bleeding.
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“I need you to promise me you’ll get Nonso back,”she said, struggling to speak. Her voice was weak and shaky, her lips trembled as blood gulped out of her mouth. Nonso was a friend of hers who’d been kidnapped by the same man responsible for this predicament. He’d hired an assassin to take Kamsi as hostage in order to lure Nma out. He needed to remind her of why the name Egede always inflicted fear into the hearer’s mind and body. Nma was his favourite girl, his most expensive killing machine but now she’d decided to turn against him and expose his underground dealings with high ranked government officials.
Egede as he preferred to be called was a ruthless drug baron and human trafficker. In her quest for vengeance after her parents’ passing, Nma somehow got tangled in the sticky web of Egede’s life of violence. He had saved her from a couple of guys who tried to steal her phone in an alleyway. What attracted him was the burning fire in her. He was impressed by the way she took down seven men, most of whom were twice her size. She could take a beating obviously, but she always got back up.
He ordered his boys to step in and as soon as the robbers realized who he was, they fled. That was how he embraced her as his own. Egede taught her the rules of the game and she learned at a fast pace. However, things changed after she witnessed him kill an innocent kid in cold blood. It broke his heart that she left but what angered him was that she burned down all his underground bunkers and destroyed his shipments of cocaine. Now, she’d beaten more than she could chew.
Nma couldn’t talk, she just put her down crying uncontrollably. Her eyes had turned red and were swollen. She couldn’t be strong, no, not this time.
Kamsi held on to her hand so tightly and strained.”Promise me. Promise me you won’t lose Nonso as well.”
The response was a heart breaking silence as they both swam against the current of agony, with neither being the strong one. “Nma, promise me.” Kamsi wheezed.
She nodded, eyes filled with tears, heart so empty.” I promise.”
Kamsi managed to smile, placing her bloody palm on Nma’s face as she looked her in the eyes and said softly, “I love you.”
Ironically, those words used to be the light in her dark, but tonight they were the most heartbreaking elements that left the space in her heart so empty. Her lips trembled, her body was numb and her legs shook in shock. “I can’t lose you.” She wept, her voice drained of strength. “I need you. Please don’t leave me. I can’t do this without you.”
“Yes, you can.” Her white teeth were now stained with blood.”You can.”
Nma wept like she’d never before. She was in desperate need of a miracle, her north star was dying, the one that made her sky blue, her anchor, the light in her dark, all she’d ever needed. She begged God to save her life but he was silent. Maybe it was meant to be, but it hurt so much that her whole body was vibrating.
She watched Kamsi’s eyes slowly shut and her tight grip around Nma’s hand fell out loosely, leaving a trail of blood on her face.
Nma burst into the emergency room with Kamsi in her arms, she was still breathing when they got to the hospital. “Somebody help! I need help here, please!”she hollered and some nurses rushed to her, taking the wounded away in a stretcher.
“She’s losing a lot of blood,”said the doctor in charge as they pushed her into a ward.
Nma wasn’t allowed in so she watched from outside through the glass window. The doctors were trying to the best of their capability to save Kamsi’s life. A series of defibrillation was carried out, increasing the current of the shock plates each time the previous exercise wasn’t successful. This was done after the bullet had been taken out and Kamsi’s body began to react violently. The electrocardiogram at the side of the bed was beeping rapidly and Nma knew that wasn’t a good sign.
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“Charging,… 300,”said the doctor and a nurse checked the readings on the machine and replied. “Clear.”
He rubbed the base of the plates on each other and placed them on strategic points on his patient’s chest in order to depolarize a large amount of the heart muscle so the dysrhythmia might end. Her body rose and bounced back to the operation bed after the shock was administered. The doctor and nurses exchanged glances at this point. He repeated the process, increasing the current again but the same thing happened.
Nma felt her tear glands charging up as she stood outside, observing. She felt useless. Frustration clouded her head and she’d begun to feel excessively hot.
As she saw that white light, bright and blinding, Kamsi breathed her last and the electrocardiogram showed a series of parallel flatlines.
Nma recognized that sound, that low steady tone of the EKG was always bad news, meaning the machine could no longer detect life in the patient.
It hit her differently when she heard the doctor say.”Time of death, 12:58 am.”
Nma watched them close Kamsi’s eyes and cover her body from head to toe with a white sheet. She felt like she was about to run mad, like she was losing her mind. Throwing her hands into her hair in a state of discombobulation, Nma cringed to the wall on the opposite side of the see- through glass window and slid all the way down to the ground where she sat helplessly, cold and alone. She felt pain. Real pain shook her entire nervous system and left her broken. Kamsi was dead. No. It was all a bad dream and she would wake up soon.
She pulled up her legs in front of her and hugged them tightly as painful tears trickled down her cheeks. Right there, she swore to take from Egede what he’d taken from Kamsi, his life. That was a promise she intended to keep, at all cost. Her phone rang in her pocket. It was him calling.
“Now you know what it feels like to have your world crumble before you,”he said on the other line.
She sniffled and dried her tears.
“I only have one word for you, Egede.” She rose to her feet, red with anger. “Run,”Nma said, “run as far as your legs can carry you,…because I’m coming for you.”she ended the call.
Author: Samuel Francis
