Julie Iromuanya - Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

Ifi made a move for the cone in his hand. “That is not yours.”

“Boys,” the man said to Ifi, putting his hands up to stop her. “Listen, don’t sweat the small stuff, huh? They’re only being boys. I fought with my brother too, every chance I could. For no reason at all.”

By then the girl had turned around. “That’s not his brother,” she said, screwing up her face. “He’s my brother.”

Only then did Ifi see it, the striking similarity of the two boys with their identical bulbous heads, their wide, flat noses, full lips, and chestnut-brown complexions. Really, the only difference was that the other boy was slightly smaller, perhaps no more than a year younger. Openmouthed for a few moments, she gazed at the boy. “They could be brothers,” she finally said.

“Yeah, I guess so,” the girl said. “Come on, let’s find Mom and show her your ribbon.” She took the boy’s hand and trotted away with him.

Just then Job reemerged from the toilet. Halfway through telling Job about the small boy, Ifi abandoned the tale, remembering the confusion that big bones had caused earlier. Instead, they stood in line for a turn at the dunking booth.

As the new school year approached, Victor spent his afternoons furiously pedaling through the neighborhood streets on his red Big Wheel. Only after dusk began to settle did he traipse home, ragged and damp with sweat, his stomach hissing in hunger. By now, his parents had relented. No longer did his father stand on the porch steps eyeing the neighborhood boys — the Mexican Americans and black Americans who, frankly, didn’t particularly like Victor. In fact, he was the neighborhood boy parents warily eyed as they watered their plants, plucked their weeds, and checked their mailboxes. Postal workers were in the habit of ducking and stepping aside or widening their legs so he could pass through. Trees retreated when he approached. Dogs that once barked without abandon withdrew just as they heard the grinding and swishing of his tires.

One night, Victor did not return home for dinner. Ifi and Job exchanged glances across the table, but continued slowly swallowing garri. After all, they both remembered the Sudanese boy who had disappeared just months earlier. His mother had called 9-1-1 to report him missing. When he turned up playing basketball on the other side of town, she’d wept openly. Not because she had found her boy, but because the authorities made the boy’s single mother pay the expenses for the fire trucks, ambulance, and police cars; because they charged her for being an abusive mother— after all, what kind of mother doesn’t know where her boy is? ; because they raided her home and, seeing that her three small children shared one mattress at night, fined her for negligence. Job and Ifi had agreed then, as they did now, that in Nigeria, there was nothing wrong with a boy being a boy, sef.

After their slow swallows had digested, Victor still hadn’t turned up. Their minds raced to all the things that could have happened to the boy. Most frightening was the thought of the men they had read about in the newspaper. Yes, they had heard of that sort of thing happening to girls, but a boy? Only in America. Ifi called in late to work, and she and Job staggered through neighborhood after neighborhood, mixing Victor’s name with threats.

“Victor, boy, you come home at once!”

“This is your father, Victor! I am not playing games!”

“I will beat you, oh!”

When the houses along the streets were nothing more than outlines, their threats were whimpers. “Victor,” his mother pleaded, “I will buy you candy.”

On the way home, Job and Ifi turned on one another.

Job said, “You see? Let the boy play in the house in peace!”

Ifi said, “Why did you buy that foolish toy?”

Just as they made a final loop around the block, heading for home, a girl hurrying past jostled Job. It wasn’t until they were halfway down the block, shaded by the tilt of trees, that Job looked back, suddenly putting the pieces together. Something about the girl’s lean, something about the whimper in her breath.

“Hey!” he shouted at her back. “You come here!”

She stopped short and turned to face them. She was no more than a girl, a teenager, pale wispy bangs dripping around her glasses frames. Suddenly he was struck with the image of a gleaming metal smile, the girl on their porch steps, grinning as she demonstrated an arpeggio on her clarinet not even two weeks before. She had been selling boxes of candy for a trip to band camp. By the time she had left, Job had succumbed to her entreaties, purchasing three boxes of overpriced gummy bears, which Victor had gleefully dissolved in a matter of minutes while Ifi complained that Job should never have opened the door to begin with.

The girl was shaking, and Ifi was shrieking, “Where is he? What has happened?” But the girl quietly trembled as she gestured up the street.

Then he was in a full sprint, running as fast as he could. Two blocks from them, he could already make out the frame of the silver Camaro and the glow of headlights bracketing the street. A burning climbed up Job’s sides as he sprinted past the lit windows, the faces of strangers gaping from their porches. He hadn’t the time to think of what could be wrong. He hadn’t the time to even catch his breath. The red Big Wheel, torn into pieces, was in one direction, and in the other, a small crowd had begun to form, leaning over what Job could only guess was his Victor. He pried apart the shoulders and thrust his way into the commotion.

He let out a sigh of relief. No blood, he thought. The legs are even moving. If Victor’s legs were moving, then he was surely conscious. He was fine. There would be a broken bone that could easily be set and wrapped in a cast. He would hug his arms around his boy, scold him gently, and remind him of the danger in the world.

“Victor!” he shouted.

Just the bare whisper of movement in the boy’s chest was the only reply. Perhaps he was in need of CPR.

“I’m the boy’s father,” he said to whomever would listen.

“Please, you have to stand back,” someone said. “We called an ambulance. They’re on their way.”

“No, no,” Job said. “There isn’t enough time.” Five minutes? Ten minutes? Twenty minutes? he wondered. Regardless, it would be too late.

He made a move for Victor, but the man restrained him. Then another and another came, each securing Job’s arms behind his back, keeping him from his only child, his only son. “It’ll be okay,” a voice gently whispered. “An ambulance is on the way.”

“Let me go, you idiots!” Job hurled in fury. “I am a doctor, damnit!”

They let go, eyebrows raised in surprise. One by one they stepped aside, parting the crowd. Job was close now, so close he could see the trickles of blood coming from Victor’s eyes, nose, and mouth. His legs will be broken, he thought, but those can be reset. His arms too perhaps. But it will be okay. He looked up. He found Ifi among the crowd, shivering, her eyes wide in alarm and fear. He exchanged a glance with her, a glance that said, “It will be fine. Trust in me.” For once, the hard look in her eyes softened, acknowledged, agreed. It will be fine, they said, together.

After all, his legs were moving. There was the slight murmur that echoed up to Victor’s chest. Job crouched and lifted Victor’s neck toward him. “I am here,” he whispered. He parted Victor’s lips, cleared his mouth so that he could swallow his father’s breath. But there was blood, so much blood, and it would not stop. He turned him on his side. Victor’s legs were trembling. It will be okay. Sirens were sounding in the distance. But they were so far away. Job lifted Victor’s chest off the pavement. A ring of blood marked the concrete.