Chapter One

 

September 30, 2008

Kano, Nigeria

07:15pm

 

His father left him in the doctor’s common room some minutes ago after helping him to a bar of chocolate before leaving to attend to an emergency in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the hospital. He had been told to remain seated and enjoy his chocolate while watching television.

His father Dr. Umar Musa was a medical doctor at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH) and his mother Maryam Musa was a nurse currently working at a private clinic. AKTH was the largest hospital in Kano and one of the best health facility in the country.

Thirty minutes ago his father and he were both watching the national geographic station in their living room after his mother who was working a night shift left for work when his dad got an urgent call from the hospital notifying him that one of his patients was having a seizure and without wasting a minute his father grabbed him and drove to the hospital.

After sitting in the doctor’s common room and getting bored staring at the screen of the television, he decided to explore the hospital. Immediately he stepped into the corridor linking to the patient’s rooms in the accident and emergency unit, he found the corridor busy with nurses and doctors rushing in and out of rooms. Patients were being rushed to and fro on gurneys and no one paid attention to him.

Finally he arrived at a door that was ajar and he saw an old man lying on a bed with a nurse examining him. The man looked ill and he asked the nurse if she had been able to alert his attorney about his current condition. “Sir, some minutes ago we got through to your attorney and he promised to take the next available flight from New York. All you need to do is relax and hang in there because you are in good hands and we are trying our best to make sure you are back to normal in no time,” the nurse assured the old man.

The old man looked like a foreigner and he appeared pale obviously due to his illness. The old man appeared not to be satisfied with the words of assurance the nurse had given him as he still remained restless. There was an intravenous connected to his vein infusing fluids into his system. The old man was sweating profusely while he shook his head restlessly and he kept repeating the words, “Please get me my attorney.” The nurse tried calming him down to no avail.

The nurse jotted something down on her notepad and rushed out of the room probably to get a doctor because the situation seems to be out of her hands. In her haste, she didn’t notice the boy standing by the door and staring at the old man on the bed. Although he was young, he knew that apart from being a place for healing, a hospital was also a venue for death. The old man was beginning to sound hysterical as he continued shaking his head and murmuring words that were barely audible.

The boy felt sorry for the old man even though he knew there was nothing he could do to help. The boy stepped into the room and walked up to the bedside of the dying man. The dying man turned his head towards the boy noticing his presence for the first time. At that moment he stopped shaking his head and murmuring. “How old are you son?” he asked the little boy. “I am eight years old Sir,” the little boy replied. “Can you keep a secret that is as priceless as life?” the man asked. “I will try my best Sir,” the boy replied. “Son you have to promise,” the man insisted and the boy nodded before saying “I swear on the life of my parents I will keep your secret safe.” He felt very sorry for the sick man that was the reason he was ready to do anything the dying man asked of him.

The man raised his palm up and extended it towards the boy. The boy put his little hand inside the sweaty palm of the sick man. The man smiled at the boy and said, “The feel of your hand interprets innocence and I hope your soul and future are flooded with it. Listen carefully to what I am about to say and do everything the way I ask you to do it,” the old man said to the boy who nodded. The old man gave the boy a faint smile before he said, “Look at the clock on the wall and ignore everything around you including me and open your mind and soul to emptiness with nothing but an IMPOSSIBLE DESTINATION on your consciousness. Whatever you do my young friend, keep your focus on the clock and it hands.” The man was not making much sense to the boy who did everything he was told to do, the way he was told to do it. The old man kept repeating the words.

The boy who had the words of the sick man tattooed to his mind kept doing his best to ignore the world around him by focusing on the large analogue clock on the wall and finding an Impossible Destination even though he couldn’t quite understand the sanity of what he was doing. “It’s all about being the master of your mind and exploiting the full potential of your nature as a human being. Bond with the clock as one and see beyond its full potential in order to get there,” the man stuttered out in pain. The little boy started counting on his mind with his eyes fixed on the clock. When he got to eighty-five he felt dizzy and by the time he got to one hundred he could no longer feel his legs. The boy finally fell to the ground and fainted.