BLACK TEA NO SUGAR

As soon as the kettle started hissing, she grabbed it by the handle from the stove with her bare hands and bent it over the plastic mug layered at the bottom with minced ginger, baking soda, and dried herbs she was thankful her sister brought a week ago. The strong smell stung her nose as it rose into the air, and she resisted the urge to sneeze. She opened the tiny window in the single room, its privacy marked by a pink faded sheet hanging loosely from the rope tied under the rusted roof. The steaming concoction waved from side to side as she swirled the mug to cool the liquid down. She winced silently when she tipped the liquid beyond its edge, and it burnt her fingers, but she continued swirling. Her brain was too distracted to notice the pain.

Samson’s body was under the spell of his churning stomach. He left the house earlier that morning hoping to get an extra shift at the construction site. He turned down the overnight beans she had served for him and told her to leave it for the children. But by lunchtime when he had worked his energy to exhaustion and the hunger stung with vengeance, he sat down with the other workers and bought chicken and rice from the food hawkers gallivanting around the construction site. The innocent plate soon turned into a nightmare. She was surprised to see him back before dusk, and she knew he would not want to be questioned. A feeble sense of anger trickled through her neck thinking of how he had declined her food. But as she watched him lay still, cocooned on the bed then suddenly furrow his brow, shut his eyes, and tightened the grip over his bloated belly, she found herself touching her own belly in pity.

“Drink this,” she offered when the ache subsided. She brought the mug close to his lips. The repugnant smell pierced sharply through his nose. He turned his head away. If he could not stand the smell, how would it go past his throat?

“Did you put in the bitter herbs again?” he groaned repulsively.

 Her silence affirmed his suspicion.

“You could have at least added some honey?”

 “The honey weakened its strength the last time, remember?” she explained. They did remember in their own different ways of the time Samson almost lost his life. His stomach was churning in the same way after drinking some local brew and meat from where he could not say. She sat on the bed and gave him the bitter herbs her own mother swore to cure even a blocked stomach. She gave in when he insisted on some honey to sweeten it, and his body exploded. His gut poured out all it had like a waterfall until his skin stuck to his bones. The water drips, the injections, and the hospital bed punctured a hole through her savings from her teaching job at the nursery. She was humbled by how the account went from thousands to hundreds in days. It was only a matter of time before they began living from hand to mouth.

“Food poisoning,” the doctor announced after he had recovered. Samson’s mother stared at her in spite. When Samson was in her house, he had never looked for food in a neighbor’s house, let alone food hawkers. Therefore, he must have been compelled to seek what he could not find in his own house.

“You will have to come to my house so I can teach you how to cook,” Samson’s mother told her. She simply nodded and helped Samson dress up to leave the hospital. He was still weak and had to lean on her small body. As they walked out, Samson’s mother kept a distance. Although she was talking to herself, everyone heard her clearly,

“It is my son who will bury me, not the other way around.” The couple followed behind with feeble steps. The staring eyes were inevitable.

“What about the white tablets they gave me from the hospital last time to chew when my stomach gets like this?” he remembered.

 “You gave them to the children when you forgot to bring the sweets,” she reminded him bluntly. “Besides, there is no more honey in the house,” she continued, a reminder of the dashing cash flow.

 He remained silent and let her nurse him. She sat on the bed and pillowed his head on her lap. She raised the mug to his lips, and he sipped it wincing every time, taking smaller and smaller sips. The battle between them to take or not to take, to swallow or not to swallow went on until the concoction became cold, and she placed the mug on the floor. She was too tired to fight.

It took a while before the concoction flashed out his stomach, the grip loosened to a soft hold round his belly. His eyes were closed, but he was not asleep. She watched him as she whispered words of gratitude in the air. This time luck was on their side.

Through the old cracked window, she spotted The Blue line as the locals called it. A procession of workers, mostly cleaners and gardeners trickling through the gates of Sir Baron Vasili hospital. The building constructed after a rich traveler came visiting with his pregnant wife, and when the labor pains began, right at the top of the hills where they were camping, there was no way to get her to the nearest town on time. She bled to death. He mourned her for days beyond the seasons. Even his family came all the way from England to take him home; he refused to leave her body buried in a foreign land. As he stayed longer and began blending with the natives, he saw the crisis the women faced and decided to use part of his inheritance to build the hospital. Almost everyone was born there. Samson’s mother even remembered the bed, the sheets, and wooden cabinet she stored the diapers. Rosalinda was, however, born at home because her mother’s legs were too swollen, her blood pressure too high to rush there. They said she would die before she would give birth to her, but here she was. Even after birth, her mother could not afford to walk up the hill; the midwives would come to their house, and so the stories that Rosalinda heard about the hospital were through word of mouth. She wanted to be part of the hospital tribe. Every afternoon after her high school classes, she would only start walking to the shops for groceries when the procession began down the hill, illuminated by the sun setting on the opposite side of the horizon. Her heart welled with joy, and she longed to be part of this tribe. It was easy to spot Samson, the head of the staff. He was the last to leave the hospital, the tallest in line, his uniform was black, and the only one with white gumboots. Everybody wanted to talk to him about something. She never knew he had wanted to talk to her. When he stopped her on the road one day, bought her an ice cream cone, carried her basket filled with vegetables, and escorted her to her mother’s doorstep, waited until she entered the house, she knew she would be his wife. He only allowed her to stay in his two-bedroom house at the hospital when he gathered enough money to buy her mother a sewing machine. She loved how the windows overlooked the makeshift houses down the hill, a reflection of her upgrade in life. Everything would go from good to better, she thought. A teaching job was available at the hospital because Sir Baron Vasili repulsed the sight of the workers’ children running around his courtyard and plucking his roses. Keeping them in class would make keep them out of sight, especially during his mid-morning walks. He did not even ask for a graduate degree. Just make them useful,’ he said.

He noticed her diligence and soon handed her the keys to the nursery as the principal. They laughed and danced the entire night, and Samson held her close and tagged her ear until she giggled with joy.

“Life is like the weather Rosa,” her uncle would say when she was young, “one day it is sunny, full of goodness like milk and honey. You even hide under an umbrella when it shines so brightly. Then we can’t see the sun clearly, and when the clouds start to gather the umbrella, it blinds us, and we are not prepared. The umbrella breaks, and it pours right over our heads, thunder, lightning, and hailstones altogether. You should always be prepared,” She remembered this when it happened to her.

A return trip from her mother’s home greeted them with the news of Sir Baron’s murder. He was found in his car, seatbelt strapped on, his hands on the steering wheel, and a single hole in his temple. The family came and took him away. To Dublin. He would be buried away from his murderers. They were still mourning when the hospital was taken over by the ministry. The changes came too quickly. The mothers needed to pay for deliveries and vaccines. Samson made them clean the wards like they always did even when there were no patients because it was only a handful of mothers who could afford the bill, and the ministry had not paid the workers for months. Samson was their buffer. He fought for them when they threatened to reduce the number of cleaners to cut costs, he took money from his account to pay bills for destitute mothers and drove the ambulance to the bigger hospital in the town in an emergency. This was until he noticed the tiny boxes packed in the middle of the night with unborn, unwanted children. The other workers said these were orders from above. Samson handed back the key, gumboots, and uniform and vacated the hospital with his wife and two children. Now as he casually worked at the construction sites, living in a single room overlooking the hospital, Rosalinda knew her umbrella was broken.

“Ah, my love, what are you thinking about?” he jostled her thoughts without opening his eyes. She hesitated, and he knew she was definitely thinking about something.

“That portion has swept my stomach clean, those food killers want to take your away from me,” he chuckled. “It will never happen because my love will deal with them,” he tagged her ear and waited for her to giggle. When she did not make a sound, he opened his eyes.

He focused all his energy to pull himself up. The pain slicing through his stomach. He looked at her in waiting. He now noticed the changes. Her growing hair puffing through her braided strands, a rip on the shoulder of her dress. The flap was still hanging out. He had the urge to pull it back, but that would not make her smile. His head followed the direction of her eyes. He saw some of his old friends, those who had been under his command, laughing and teasing each other as they descended the hill. He understood it now.

When he touched her hand, she shot up, and the words blurted out of her mouth with the fueled by pure frustration, “I want to go back to our home. This is a pit! Look at the rest of our friends,” she pointed at the window, “they are still in the hospital, and no one has come for their hanging. I am stuck here, no job, no friends, no life,”

 Samson looked away, his face lost all expression.

 Rosalinda steadied her voice. She knelt beside him, “I already talked to the tops Samson,” she confessed, revealing the secret meeting she had two days ago at the ministry. This was something she had never done without Samson’s approval, but she was desperate, “They are willing to give us back the house and your job if you apologize and do what the rest are doing,”

 There was a silence. The words were heavy for both their minds. After a while, with his hand holding his belly, he stood up. The towering figure now frightened her. He did not look at her, and she was tense. He could hear the cleaners, some familiar voices passing his house, their loud voices turning into whispers when they came close by, maybe out of spite rather than respect. His heart sunk. Those he had cared for as his own family and seen them grow to make it on their own could not remember to knock at his door and see if he was still alive.

 Samson was tired, angry, and in pain, but he needed to make a decision, “This is the last time we shall have this talk. I will not be part of the wrong. If you wish to, you can go back to the house and live as you want. My children and I will stay here,”

 He dragged himself to the door, craned his neck on either side as though searching for anyone who had been listening to them. He then opened the door completely and stood behind it granting her at that moment to make a choice and walk out of his pit. When there was no movement and the house remained in submissive silence, he locked the door and placed the key in his pocket. He placed a wooden plank in front of the window and blocked the light from the setting sun. The house felt like a dark hole. He dragged himself back to the bed, loosened his belt, and faced the other side of the wall. Before long, he was snoring.

Rosalinda held the mug with both hands and squeezed it between her fingers. She surprised herself by the serenity of her erratic emotions. She would not cry or storm out of the house in anger. In the dark space, she reached down the bed and pulled out a 400-paged book titled Principles of Nursing. She ran her hands across the edge of the book and took a deep breath.

It was time for Plan B.

Themedyc 2026