The last time I visited a hospital was in 2013, not as a visitor but as a student who had to undergo mild surgery on his right big toe. I had suffered a whitlow after playing football the previous week with a pair of tight boots.
It was two days before Easter. Perhaps, the only not-too-good- Easter I'll ever have. The nurse smiled and said, "you will not feel any pain. Relax". She had just given me anesthesia by injection. She was carefully watching me; I saw her eyes journey from my knee to my foot. I smiled, my back rested on the frail Mouka foam. The clanging sound from the bed's metal spring was disorienting but I was more concerned with the events of the next few minutes.
Everywhere smelled of something poignant and acidic — it was overwhelming. I dreamt of stories whilst the pulse was being pushed out of my big toe. I would leave the hospital to write two short stories with scenes set in a hospital. I hated a hospital's environs but I had to write about it, set my characters there.
The pictures here were from a visit in April 2021 to the University College Hospital, Ibadan. I had gone on a visit to a relative. I had my mother take me some pictures with her dreamy hands. I did the same for her.
As I walked out of that huge gate with its bulging logo, UCH, I left with several stories, unfamiliar poems, each of them begging for a page in my heart and on my laptop PC. I caught my mother's smile — she reminded me again why I needed to go back to photography, and the shape of her Little Angel's smile.
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Kehinde Badiru is a Nigerian writer, editor, visual artist, and book designer. Author of much-acclaimed poetry collection, I Know Why Your Mother Cries, his work has recently appeared in Oyez Review, Visual Verse, and forthcoming elsewhere. Kehinde is the Founding Editor of Write Now Lit — a contemporary lit mag that is home to vivid writing and Nigeria’s foremost Creative Writing Non-profit.
His new book, An Assortment of Poetry Genres was co-edited with British writer, Angie Andrews published by Infinty Books, Europe (2021).
