Acceptance doesn't mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there's got to be a way through it." —Michael J. Fox

Nadia kneaded a large piece of yeast dough, slamming her fist into it over and over angrily. Wleed min shokria by Eman El-Sharif was playing on the kitchen radio that Nadia's aunt insisted stay in the kitchen while they worked. 

She had barely gotten out of the scrubs she'd gone to work with when she returned back downstairs to pound on a piece of soft yeasty dough until it was for to make pizza. It was the only way to let go of the frustrating day she had had. 

She pounded it much harder and after a few more punches that could probably break a small person into pieces, she felt the dough between her index finger and thumb, feeling it's elasticity, she took a glass bowl and lifted the dough into it, drizzled Olive oil unto all parts of it before covering it tightly to sit for an hour. 

The back door opened and Sarah came in dancing something that looked like a cross between the dabke and the Kabesha surprised when she saw that the dough was sitting already. "That was quick, you sure sounded like you were hitting someone with your grunts and the way that dough was crying in your hands."

"I had a horrible day, nothing went how I wanted it to. I had to come back to bake because I don't have enough patience in me to knit, I'll just spoil it." She shook her head, knowing she had a baby birth set to knit and she'd only gotten halfway on the blanket. 

"What happened?" She started to speak but shut up and went to the sink to wash her hands clean. Sarah suddenly remembered what their mother had reminded them of, the previous day about today being a black day for Nadia, so she wisely shut up and decided to clean the mess in the kitchen. 

Sarah wet a dish rag and began to wipe down the surface Nadia had used, leaving Nadia free to go rest. 

Nadia climbed the stairs, tired to her bones but happy because it would give her room to go straight to bed immediately she got into her room, it would mean all she needed to do was fall in to bed and she'd be dreaming. 

She wanted to never wake up, because today, her parents experienced a humiliation that was bone deep. She should have been married today, her invitations were already printed and shared among family and friends, so they knew.

But in the time that she'd spent getting her life together after the insulting breakup, Ammar had turned around gotten married in a well celebrated wedding and now awaiting a child. 

Even though Nadia managed to turn off her phone after a conversation with her parents, it still didn't take away the humiliation that her ex-fiance went to mete out on her parents. 

Nadia knew Ammar didn't do anything without reason. He was strategic, never predictable, he did everything with precise knowledge, he knew her parents shopped for groceries together, choosing the best fruits, vegetables and home needs together. Lovingly. So he waited for them at the parking lot. 

The sound of her mother's voice trying to be strong broke her when she climbed into her bed and she howled into her fluffy pillow. She cried, for her mother who was taunted with Ammar's wife's pregnancy, and her father who was called the father of a barren woman. 

She cried mostly for herself, the stupid impressionable girl who let herself fall in love with a wicked narcissist. She cried for the days when he dangled affection in front of her like a piece of meat, and she a dog, she cried even more for the diagnosis that shaped her life. 

A few minutes later, her tears subsided into sobs and she exchanged her wet pillow for a dry one, exhaustion caught up to her and she promptly fell asleep. 

\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*

"We have a colonoscopy patient today, I'm so happy, it means I get to learn how the equipment is used." Folake was bouncing with joy when Nadia came into their break room to change her shoes from the sneakers to snug anti-slip Crocs that let her walk around efficiently. 

"When?" Nadia asked as she toed off her second shoe. She placed both shoes into the locker, put the food she brought on the top part and locked it. Pushing the tiny key behind her identity card. 

"Around noon. They said it's CMD's patient but he chose nurses from Dr Shu'aib's group. So we're going." Nadia smiled, it was always a delight to work under people who knew their onions, their Chief Medical Director was one. 

"But before that, let's go work for the tyrant." Nadia looked around before saying with a roll of her eyes. A tiny sigh escaped her as she tucked her hijab into the collar of her scrub shirt. 

"Tyrant huh? Let him hear you." Nadia laughed and walked out if the break room with her friend when her phone rang. 

"Assalamualaikum," She said vaguely, knowing she couldn't take out her phone but she could listen to the caller from her airpods. 

"It's me. Hajarah." Nadia looked around for a corner and went there before greeting her friend with the much needed enthusiasm. 

"Ammar is here, looking for you. He said he wants you to be the one to register his wife for ante-natal." Nadia stopped. She felt her heart beat faster with anger and then some rage. 

"Is he mad? Why's he reaching?" Nadia fumed, asking the obvious but she was angry. Reaching was the word for the madness that had overcome the man. 

"He is obviously not alright in the head. He wants you to beg him or something. I don't know why he's punishing you like this." Nadia knew but she would be late for her shift if she continued to speak so she calmed the equally angry Hajarah and went to her shift. 

"Is everything okay?" Folake asked when she reached her. Nadia nodded, trying to pinch back tears from her lined eyes. She was wearing a surgrical mask so Folake couldn't see her expression much. 

They reached the theatre they needed to be at and began to scrub in for their first surgery. Nurses usually scrubbed in, cleaned the whole place in readiness for the patients and attending surgeon long before they arrived. 

They collected sterilized tools from the department that cleaned them after each surgery and set them on a sterilized tray in preparation for use. 

The patient was wheeled in about thirty minutes later, with her stomach as big as an overblown balloon, Dr Shu'aib waited until the anesthesia fully kicked in before cutting into her like a savage cannibal, incurring the wrath of every woman around him, but they didn't speak because, one word from him and they would lose their hard-worn jobs. 

Instead, they would do everything else to make the patient's life better once surgery was over. There was nothing else they could do. 

"Knife seven returned." Nadia took the knife and set it on a tray to be taken away for sterilization after surgery. The amniotic sac still in it's sack form flowed freely out of the woman, bringing with it, three little babies. 

They awwed as they burst the amniotic fluid and set each baby on a small wheeling table to be washed and cleaned by an obstetrics nurse. 

Soon afterwards, they changed out of their sterilized scrubs and went upstairs where the colonoscopy was to take place. Just as the elevator whirred to a stop, their phones pinged with new information, they looked down and a horrific look came over their faces. 

"Why is it him?" Nadia hissed in her heart, she'd been hoping to learn from someone who knew the job, not an over pompous Buffon who hid his rubbish techniques. 

"Well, my day be damned. Let's go prep the site." The place used was luxurious suite that looked like a comfortable hotel room with it's large windows and curtains. The patient was not there yet, but there were three bodyguards at the door with their buff chests and stern expressions. 

Nadia and Folake looked around uncertainly before confirming that they were at the right room, C4. 

"Why does he need bodyguards?" Nadia whisper asked Folake as the said bodyguards vetted them in, checking their tags and making sure they really worked at the hospital. 

"I'm sure it one of those people who stole government money, they're tech only ones scared of death like this." Nadia said, with a shake of her head. Surgery work gave you a warped sense of death, it made death into something that could happen on the table or while healing with an infection, anything could cause death and it no longer fazed Nadia. 

"It may not be. He could just be a careful man. Who knows." Folake defended, Nadia hissed with excitement as she touched the equipment, she'd only seen videos of it's use, never seen the said equipment in real life. 

"Is this the part they put in the rectum?" Nadia nodded yes in response to Folake's question. Folake brandished the extended end that had a camera, the camera's job was to look into the stomach, as long as everything was okay, the patient was good to go. 

"Should I put it in yours?" Nadia joked when she collected it to scrutinize it, then Dr Shu'aib came in. Nadia, startled, dropped it unto the soft bed and stepped back. 

"Take this key," He took out a key from his pocket, "Check my locker and bring the powdered gloves there to me. Quick!" 

Nadia jumped and ran out quickly, knowing her boss was crazy, he could take her off the team because of a simple thing. She returned in about twenty minutes because she didn't find the said powdered gloves and had to wait for the pharmacy unit to issue another. 

The patient was already on the bed turned over, when Nadia arrived. She wore her own gloves and began to help Dr Shu'aib. They worked in silence for a while minute, until she realized that he put in the wrong equipment. 

"Sir, this is not meant to have a knife attached to it, it's going to drop into the patient's stomach," She whispered to him, feeling a dread in her stomach as the knife plunged on and on in the footage. 

"Don't teach me my job! Infact, scrub out this minute," Nadia didn't try to apologize or stroke his ego, she scrubbed out instead, scrubbing out in this case was just taking off her scrubs and leaving the room. 

"One more thing, once this procedure is over, you are going to stay with the patient until he wakes. Is that clear?" Nadia nodded, carefully removed her scrubs and left the room, shutting the door behind her. 

Nadia waited outside for a few seconds, before deciding to go pick up her knitting bag. Waiting for a patient to wake from anesthesia was a full day's job she intended to take advantage of. 

Once she returned, the procedure was over. They'd turned the patient over, a fifty year old man with a high nose and scruffy beard on his chin. Nadia nodded as Folake informed her of the vital signs to watch out for. Apparently, Dr Shu'aib had nicked a part of the man's stomach and blood had flowed. 

"Just make sure his blood pressure doesn't rise and his heart rate is normal. If it changes, you're to call Dr Shu'aib immediately." Folake patted Nadia as she walked away. She left the room to help with another surgery. 

Nadia checked his vital signs for herself, noted them down before quietly pulling a chair to a place in the room where she could watch the vital signs. 

She sat there knitting, watching the baby wrap blanket form itself in her hands. She'd used the softest meringue wool, imported from Italy to make the blanket that would someday lovingly carry a little child. One that a diagnosis of PCOS denied her so clearly, her period was usually a mess; either too much or too little, her body's weight a mess. It was usually one thing or another with her, and she had no strength to burden another with it. 

"Assalamualaikum." A throaty sleepy sound came from the head of the bed. Nadia jerked out of her reverie, looking down at her where she sat. She pushed the blanket and knitting pin into the bag she brought it in and went to check on the patient. 

His eyes were tired when Nadia reached him, she greeted him with a smile she'd deemed professional and began to check his eyes, asked him to bring out his tongue. 

"I haven't had food since last night. Can I eat something now?" He asked quietly. She shook her head firmly, her smile still on her face. 

"Not right now. I still need to administer a painkiller and antibiotic combination, you'll still have a nutrient drip until then." He sunk back into the bed, breathing tiredly. Nadia turned around moving to the other side of the hospital bed where she adjusted the bed till he was visibly comfortable. 

"What combination is that? What nutrient drip?" Nadia told him without missing a bit. She was supposed to call Dr Shu'aib and she'd just paged him. 

"I don't want that brand." Nadia reeled back looking at him with barely concealed irritation. 

"We do not offer any other brand to patients." Nadia said firmly. She moved the chair she'd been seating back to the patient's front and put her bag outside. If Dr Shu'aib realized she'd had any sort of comfort while watching the patient, he might have an aneurysm. 

"And I said, I don't want that brand. Their nutrient IV has something that is bad for a patient with a bleeding stomach! If you paid attention to the ingredients and at Nursing school maybe, you would know." Nadia's eyes widened with humiliation and then rage, but she suddenly calmed down when he said the name of the ingredient and she realized that he must have known Dr Shu'aib cut him in surgery. 

Just as she was about to respond, Dr Shu'aib blew in with a wide smile on his face, greeting the patient he now called Alhaji Bindawa so genially. Nadia frowned, the lines on her forehead getting deeper. 

"Get your CMD. I don't want to see you here. Nurse? Get my assistant!"

A few minutes later, in a flurry of movement, a few shouts later from the hospital's CMD, Dr Shu'aib was suspended and everyone on his team were sent a query. 

Nadia was still tasked with watching the patient, so she stood at the room's door watching as he interacted differently with a girl young enough to be his daughter, all of the irritation and exasperation from earlier had disappeared. 

Nadia, feeling all of the emotions from the pot that held hers felt the prick of tears at her eyes. It was bad enough that she was bearing her own troubles, patients with irritated emotions brought theirs to the table as well, making her day go bad. 

******
Hey guysssss,

Your babies have met oo, but Alhaji Sha😐🙄.

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Love, TheOmoope.