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“Try it for two more days and if you still can’t sleep, we’ll find you something to use more permanently.”

“Okay,” I say. “Also, I’m running out of diazepam.”

“Have you been drinking coffee?”

“Yes, in the mornings.”

“You know you are not allowed that. It’s a stimulant.”

I whine about how he’s taking all the good things in my life away from me. We always do this: I complain about every drug and instruction; he insists I do what is best for me.

“Something is bothering you. That’s why you can’t sleep and that’s why you’re cranky.”

“It’s nothing.”

Honestly, it is nothing. Sometimes this happens. I don’t know there is something, but I’m reacting to it, then I finally figure out what it is hours or days later.

“All of this sucks.”

“What?”

“Living. It gets heavy after a while.”

“Have you thought more about taking a vacation?”

“See, the only reason I like to go to new places is because I like the journey, eating up roads or clouds and moving through the world quickly — it’s just the way I want to live: a flash through life. I wish journeys would last forever. Like I wonder if the plane could just keep flying and never land. So I don’t have to actually live, work, or vacation. I like sitting in a plane or a car with nothing to do but just watch time pass.”

“You know you could make your life a constant journey, right? Be an air hostess or something,” he says.

“No, no. Then I’d be living during the journey. Serving people. I hate interacting with people.”

“Okay.”

He says nothing else for a while and I think the connection has broken. Then, “So, why do you like suspending your life?”

This is the part I hate. Whatever answer I give won’t satisfy him. He’ll try to find some deeper meaning to it and ask me if that’s what I’m masking. That’s why I prefer the phone calls, because it’s easier to get out of the conversations.

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

I hear that little ah sound, but the silence fills the space again, like when someone starts to say something but they change their mind. I hated it when my last boyfriend did that. To have my therapist do the same thing is even more annoying.

“That’s your assignment,” he says after a while. “Write about why you want to suspend living.”

“But I already wrote about why I want to die.”

“So, is the answer to both the same?”

I think for a moment. “No,” I reply.

“If you say no, that means you already know the answer. But I won’t push. We’ll talk about it in our next session, okay? Actually, you need to come in person soon.”

“Okay.”

On my way back to my desk, I walk past Kaz’s office and he calls out for a cup of coffee.

I used to get angry about being asked to perform these menial tasks, but not anymore. I stop at my desk to pick up my purse. Then I make him a cup of coffee. What’s the point of getting angry in this Lagos? I add two cubes of sugar, and two ten-milligram diazepam tablets. No cream. I started adding the tablets last week after his wife came in to drop off his hypotension medication one morning. He didn’t notice when I added one pill; he still hasn’t noticed now that I use two.

After work, I walk past Freedom Park, turn left on Broad Street, and head to the taxi park in front of the hospital. I stop at the makeshift canteen, where a group of men are sitting under a sign that says, No idle sitting — eat your food and go.

“I’m going to Lekki.”

One of them gets up and says, “N3,500, let’s go.”

“E never reach your turn-o.” He yells back that Baba Hafusa has gone to pray, so it’s his turn. The other men grumble and argue.

“Is anyone going?” I ask, tired of their bickering.

“See,” one pipes up, “Baba Hafusa ti n bo.”

The man who wanted N3,500 says to me, “Sorry, sister, the next person has come.”

I turn around and see a limping man. I reach into my mind, trying to figure out why he looks so familiar.

“Sister, where are you going? My car is in front.”

I walk behind him. “Lekki, and I’m only paying N3,000. Will you drive...” I drift off as he lays a hand on his bonnet, rubbing the chipped yellow paint on its dent.

“N3,500, aunty. Traffic go plenty at this time. Where is the address?”

So I sit in the back, listening to the engine rattle and the sound of him hacking up phlegm between coughs, and I wonder if he recognized me too. Probably not, because he’s chattering away about the traffic and the new fuel price, and for the first time I’m happy that I chose to pay the police for a car tint permit that was supposed to be free.

“Now I have to work nights because of this fuel increase,” he’s saying. “Good thing I finished praying and saw you. After evening prayers now I carry one more passenger, then I go home to Iya Hafusa.”

I don’t know what it is about me that invites monologues from stangers, but there’s no point getting angry or saying I don’t want to talk. I just nod, hmm, and eeyah from time to time.

I’m leaning back so the chair is rocking on its hind legs. He flips through my file and then stares at the prescription pad.

“Are you sleeping these days?”

“Not without the diazepam.”

“Did you try breaking the pills in half like I told you to?”

“No.”

“What about the dreams?”

“They’re still there. Very vivid.”

“Still sci-fi themed?”

“Yes, and I still wake with a heavy head.”

The nurse smiles when she sees me on my way out. “You’re adding some weight. That’s very good.”

I smile back at her, but as soon as I get outside I turn to look at my reflection in the glass door. I’ve put on three kilos since I started using epilim, that’s three kilos more than I’ve gained in the last ten years, since I hit my last growth spurt at fourteen. I know I’ll obsess about it again but I tell myself not to panic.

I go to the canteen to eat amala and ewedu before heading to the pharmacy. I’ve developed a rhythm around my visits and I have to do everything in the same order. The last time I came, there was no ewedu soup and I found myself tearing up later at the pharmacy.

Today, to make up for that last time, I order an extra portion and tell my past self that everything will be all right at the end of the day.

I hate waiting, but I find that often I have to wait for others to arrive. So now I’m sitting here nursing a lukewarm bottle of Coke, waiting for the taxi driver to get here. I hate driving to the mainland, but that’s not why I’m waiting for him. I’ve been driving less and less these days, and finding myself at the taxi stand more often. Some days they say he’s out, but I wait for him to come back and drive me home from work. Today, I took a taxi to Yaba from home, then I called and told him to meet me here at three p.m. Yet now it’s 3:32 and I’m still waiting.

Lucy has barely been eating for weeks, and I’m tired of my apartment smelling like dead mice. I moved her cage to the spare bedroom two weeks ago, but I can’t avoid taking her to the vet anymore. I put her in the shift box and latch it.

At work, whenever anyone asks me what’s inside the box, I say that it’s toys for my nephews.

“I didn’t know you had nephews,” Kaz says, grinding his hips into my desk and shifting my papers to make space for himself. “In fact, I thought you were an only child.”