Ghana Must Go Read Free Page B

Sai.”
    •   •   •
    It was the simplest thing, really, just the littlest slip (
Sai
), speaking aloud as he tapped on the glass, but he’d been teetering already on an edge when it happened, when pointing to the incubator he spoke his own name. And the two put together, like combustible compounds—the sound of his name breathed aloud in the space and the sight of the neonate fighting for breath—suddenly somehow made “Baby Sai” his. It was his.
    She was his.
    And she was perfect.
    And she was
tiny
.
    And she was dying. And he felt
it, felt this dying, in the center of his chest, the force gathered, raw panic, overwhelming his lungs, filling his chest with a tingling, thick, biting, and sharp. He heard himself whisper, “There she is,” or something like it, but with the constriction of his larynx didn’t recognize his voice.
    Neither did Olu, who looked up, alarmed.
    “Dad,” he whispered. Stricken. “Don’t cry.”
    But Kweku couldn’t help it. He was barely even aware of it. The tears came so quickly, fell so quietly.
She was his.
That precious thing there with her toenails like dewdrops, her ten tiny fingers all curled up in hope, little fists of determination, and her petal-thin skin, like a flower that Fola could name by its face. Fola’s favorite already. And she. Waiting, hopeful, still propped up in bed, sweating, bloodied. His, too.
    You have to do something
.
    He had to do something. He wiped his face quickly with the back of his arm. The salt stung the wound there. He squeezed Olu’s shoulder. Reassuring himself.
    “Come on then.”
    •   •   •
    The next ninety-six hours he stayed: in the staff lounge, befriending bleary interns who slept there as well, consulting colleagues, researching treatments, obsessively reading, barely sleeping, until his opponent was defeated. Until the newborn was named. And not
Idowu
, that goat-meat-tough name Fola loved for the long-suffering child born directly after twins. He picked
Sadé
when they brought the child home from the hospital on the grounds that two Folas would become too confusing. His first choice was
Ekua
, like his sister, “born on Wednesday,” but Fola had established sovereignty over naming years back (first name: Nigerian, middle name: Ghanaian, third name: Savage, last name: Sai). Sadé picked
Sadie
when she started junior high on the grounds that her classmates pronounced Sadé like that anyway. But a nurse picked
Folasadé
in the first place, inadvertently, that last night at the Brigham.
    Another accident.
    He was alone in the nursery with the infant after midnight, in the scrubs from the appendectomy at Beth Israel days before, fully aware that some parent passing the Plexiglas window might mistake him for a homeless man and very well should. The bloodshot eyes, the matted hair, that half-crazed look of consuming obsession: he looked like a madman, a madman in scrubs, gone broke trying to win against the odds. (He had no way of knowing he would one day become this.) The nursery was dark, save the lamps in the incubators. He rocked in a chair with the girl in his lap. The girl had been asleep for over an hour at this point but he carried on rocking, too exhausted to stand. The chair was too small, one of those tiny plastic rocking chairs that hospitals put in nurseries, apparently for neonates themselves.
    The Irish-looking nurse with the paunch and the rosacea appeared in the doorway with her clipboard and paused. “You again.” She leaned against the door, frowning-smiling.
    “Me again, yes.”
    “No, no. Please don’t get up.”
    She entered without switching on the overhead fluorescents, kindly sparing them both the sudden violence of light. She made her rounds quietly, scribbling notes on her clipboard. When she reached the little rocking chair she looked down and laughed.
    The infant’s hand, with its five infinitesimal brown fingers, was attached to Kweku’s thumb as if holding on for life.
    “You must