Julie Iromuanya - Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

“Biko,” please, he said softly. “If you wanted a doctor, I would be a doctor. If you wanted a home, I would build you a home. If you wanted a family,” his eyes rested on hers, “I would build you a family.”

Ifi tried to hold on to the anger, but tears swelled behind her lids. She closed her eyes and turned away. If she looked at Job, she would see Victor, and she could not have Victor clouding her judgment.

“Ifi, darling, anything you want I will do for you whatever way I know how. Is that not true?”

It is true, she thought. Like the wilted clump of twigs and petals that were waiting for Ifi on the table in the lobby, these were his attempts at romance. She glanced uncomfortably at her uniform, at the look of her name stitched on the right pocket, at the slacks that were a little too tight at her hips and the too-long linen shirt, ironed into creases. She allowed her mind to fall away. All she could think was that before her shift ended, she would need to return to this very room to replace the damp, yellowing sheets with bleach-scented ones. She would need to fold triangles into the toilet paper roll and empty the waste receptacle of that single sheet of lined notebook paper with his words.

“Whatever you like. I will build your new dreams for you,” Job said. “I will always do for you the best way I know how.”

Ifi took a deep breath. “What happened?” she asked. Finally, she asked the question that had been on her mind since he stood in the glass doors, his suit covered in dirt and twigs.

Job looked up with a start. He knew that she was not only asking about tonight, she was asking about it all. She was asking about their beginning. She was asking about their middle. She was asking about their ending.

“Job,” she said softly. “What happened to us? I was once a girl who wanted to be a doctor’s nurse. I wanted to open a clinic in Nigeria for my mother’s memory. That was all I wanted. But instead, I am here cleaning sheets and emptying rubbish. Will this be the rest of my life?” Ifi thought back to that first night and all of its possibility and hope as Job, her new husband, stood before her in a white lab coat, a stethoscope protruding from his pocket. Everything but the darkness of his skin had been muted by the whiteness of the snow as it came down around his world. In those moments, the snow had been beautiful, magical, and she had believed anything was possible. When did this feeling leave us? she wondered.

Job had been in America so long; why had he gone on pretending without going after his dreams? Now, more than ever, Ifi understood the need for lies, for the embellishments that cemented the difficulties of each day together. But why hadn’t he gone after his dream anyway, in secret at least? Why weren’t there journals, like her interior design magazines, something to show for his hopes?

And then she understood. It came quietly as she followed the line of his slacks, perfectly creased in spite of the smudges and dirt. “Was there not something you wanted?” she asked.

“I wanted to be a—”

“You did not want to be a doctor,” Ifi said. “No more lies.” She met his eyes, finding their momentary confusion. “Your father sent you to America to become his doctor. You did not fail, Job.”

He bristled. He frowned and backed away slowly.

“You did not become a doctor because it was not your dream.” Ifi came toward him and clasped his hands.

He stilled.

As she said the words, she felt the weight of their certainty and the gentle touch of his pain. “Job, I was not your dream. You must not go on pretending.” Tears soaked her lashes. “You were not my dream. You were Aunty’s dream, and so I married you. And so I followed you to America. And then I had a boy, and I wanted him to be an American. And now he is gone. And now there is nothing left to build new dreams with.” Her voice was a whisper. “So I must find my way back to my old dreams.” Job’s hand trembled in hers, but she couldn’t stop herself. “And you must find your way to yours.”

THROUGH THE TINY GAPS IN THE DRAPES OF ROOM 123, JOB OGBONNAYA could make out the edge of a flaming orange sun just appearing from behind the purple haze of dawn. He rolled over, instinctively feeling the other side of the bed, now suddenly cold and empty, a rumpled mass of sheets. He took a second to inhale the scent of Avon’s Chantilly Lace in the pillows and sighed deeply, allowing the vapor to rise through his body.

A tiny shuffling and a click sounded, drawing his attention to the door. For a moment, he thought it would be Ifi. He begged for it to be her. If it was her, like their first night together in the Presidential Hotel, he’d find out what she needed and he’d be it. That was all he had ever wanted, wasn’t it?

Through the nearsighted blur of his eyes, he could just make out a lone figure stooped in the doorway. Job slipped his plastic-framed glasses over his eyes. The door suddenly swung open, filling the room with remnants of the hot night air and a dangerous sun just beginning to crest.

She paused in the doorway, her shiny blond wig sparkling against the light. The red lipstick, wet and dripping like watermelon, that had been so captivating the night before now smudged across her face, the weariness of a long night showing as she adjusted the collar of her jacket. She gave him a dubious expression and began to shrug her shoulders, but midshrug she seemed to change her mind before lunging for the day.

“Wait.” Job leaned forward, searching through tangles of sheets for his trousers. “I have more. Just wait.”

She rolled her eyes in exasperation. But she remained standing.

He couldn’t be alone. Not now. “More beer is in the fridge.” He pointed to the stackable refrigerator in the corner of the room, already surrounded by a ring of smashed cans. He gave her a smile that he thought looked innocent enough, as if she were just a friend dropping over for a beer. “Help yourself.”

For a second, she seemed to think it over. “Listen, I gotta go,” her mangled attempt at a Swedish accent forgotten. “I got places to be.”

“I know, just wait.” His fingers snagged one of the belt loops in his trousers as he burrowed his hands into the pockets. He finally came up with a wad of cash, extracted from the ATM when their night began. He waved it at her now, suddenly relieved.

She rolled her eyes again, but with less vigor as she swung the door shut behind her and sat on the edge of the bed.

Job smiled, a crooked smile laced with an overdue buzz — the buzz he had been unable to commit himself to after all of those beers. He pulled himself close to her. He gazed into her eyes, remembering the warmth of her skin and the smell of her perfume, the scent of a woman.

He stood up and pulled the tiny chain around the lightbulb, allowing the artificial light to spew over the two of them, the scattered orange deflected by dying flies. Her blond hair, although a wig, was suddenly captivating once more as the strings of synthetic hair caught the light. She was overweight, with flat, saddlebag breasts and varicose veins that shone like purple webs through her ghostly skin. Not at all the twenty-two that the whiskey had convinced Job and Emeka of just the night before. Yet under the orange glow, she was sultry and exotic. He struggled to remind himself of the Swedish girl who had stared down into his face at the bar as she danced, as Emeka introduced them to her one after another, two professional men, an engineer and a doctor, two professionals getting into a little trouble for the night. Job’s lips formed into an uneasy smile. He struggled to remember her face as she handed him her number. Him. The doctor, a man she could respect. A man she could admire. A man she could love and believe in. He smiled again, the smile one gives a patient. “You know,” he said, “the triple bypass surgery is a very complex procedure.”