ALGORITHM

The Male ICU, where Inspector Bitrus Bako was battling for his life at the Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital, occupied the entire first floor on the south wing of the main building.

The sudden sight of Doris standing at the top of the second flight of stairs triggered a different kind of battle in Musa’s mind as he hit the first landing. Her slender frame, with its distinctive low wide hips, towered above the stairs like a goddess. With one hand on the rail and the other clutching her phone to her ear, the words tumbled over each other as she yelled into the mouthpiece, “No, no, no, Bae, lai, lai, tell them I’m not taking it!”

Even with her back turned to him, her sight caused his heart to skip a beat. Doris made him feel what no woman could make him feel—the tingling sensation of butterflies in the stomach, the constant pounding of his heart, a sensual feeling of joy and excitement; no other woman made him feel this way.

If that was love, then he was in love with Doris!

As he stepped up the first stairs, she turned. As usual, her oval face hid behind a large colourful sunglass that reflected the light in a soft purple hue. Her Brazilian hair flowed down to her shoulder, its jet-black colour contrasting against her fair skin. Jos girls and their wahala! Musa thought as his groin stirred.

Desire.

He took the steps up and stopped one step short of the last, so that his head levelled up with hers. It was then she saw him; or so her reaction showed: she took a step back as though frightened.

“Bae, look, I’ll call you back.” She ended the call. The hint of mint smelled in her breath as she smiled. Doris and gums! She removed her glasses and the intense gaze her from her white milky eyes burned into him like a welder’s torch, taking him captive. With lips parted seductively, she asked, “hey, how far?”

For those few seconds however, Musa stared at her dumbfounded, his heart pounding fast like a child caught in a thieving act. Should he give her a peck? Her rosy cheeks appeared ready, but her full lips were even more deserving of a kiss. He completed the stairs and dragged her to a corner near a window. Instead, he removed from his pocket the small glass of oil perfume and the black case and placed both in her hand.

“You bought something for me from Paris?” She giggled, admiring the case.

“Yeah, it’s nothing much.”

He bought it in Paris when he went for training. She tore the package open and extracted the exotic sunglasses that had cost him a hundred and fifty dollars, then swept into him, clutching him, “Wow, it’s beautiful.” Musa felt the pounding of her heart against him or was it his heart pounding hard against her? “You're a darling,” She screamed.

His phone rang. Doris disengaged from him while he checked who was calling.

Cynthia.

He hissed.

“Don’t you want to answer?”

“It’s not important,” He told her as she replaced her eyeglass with the new one.

“How do I look?” She shot her face forward.

Before he answered, a text message followed: ‘I brought your lunch. Where are you?’ Cynthia won’t kill me! He deleted the message and was about to answer Doris when the crashing sound of her bag startled him.

“Oh sorry,” He said, scrambling after the items on the floor, “What happened?”

“I was trying to get my mirror,” She laughed clumsily.

Musa gathered the items back into the bag, wondering how women could carry so much! Then he came across an old picture. The time stamp read 13th April 1999. He raised it up, loving the connection between daughter and mother, “This is you?”

“Yeah; I was three years old,”

“There’s a connection between you two,” he smiled, enjoying the tingling sensation of pleasure teasing his bowels. The mother had both hands opened, ready to catch the baby floating in the air, their faces beaming in wide smiles, and eyes fixed at each other; the intensity of the connection unimaginable. “This is phenomenal.”

Doris collected the photo and stared at it with some hint of nostalgia colouring her face. “I miss her,” She mumbled, “she was the one looking up at me in the sky, after she threw me up; waiting for me to come back to her. Now I’m the one looking up into the sky wondering if she’s seeing me; knowing she’ll never come back to me. Sometimes I wonder if she sees what I’m going through.”

“I’m sure she sees; and is doing everything to keep you safe.” He brought up the mirror, “Now it’s time to look at how beautiful that face had grown.” He placed the mirror in her hand. Reluctantly, she raised it to check her fresh look. Musa wasn’t sure what she was thinking but he knew he’d scored a point there! While she appeared tough on the outside, Doris was a mass of jelly inside; all he needed to do was find a way through her thick defences. Maybe it was just a front—her strategy for self-preservation.

Maybe he should just tell her...

... Tell her he loved her flowery knee-length school-girl dress and its low wide neck, and her beautiful legs; only, the dress exposed her cleavage, just like in her pictures. Maybe he should just tell her how excited he she made him feel every time he saw her.

Yeah.

He should tell her.

But this wasn’t the right place, ‘You don’t tell a woman you loved her in a hospital.’

Her hand found his. Its fire burned in a hot, pleasing yet not consuming way.

Whether she did it deliberately or not, Musa couldn’t tell, but her soft touch, like feathers in the wind brushing against his skin, released electrifying waves down his body, sending his heart into a fresh round of throbbing frenzy.