THIS LIFE

On one of those summer evenings when you wish a Tuesday were Friday, Dave was sitting in the garden of his modest home nursing a glass of wine and reminiscing events of the day which has not gone favorably the way he expected. If wishes were horses, Dave would have wanted the day to play back again, perhaps, he would have done a thing or two differently and would not be as sad as he was now. Whatever he was thinking was very deep that he did not hear nor notice that his phone was ringing. It took the barking of his dog Lemon to jolt him out of his thoughts, startled but relieved.

He stood up abruptly, the voice on the other end of the phone was frantic. “Hello Dave, this is Emma, been trying to reach you” “I know it is you” quipped Dave, “Why are you sounding alarmed?” “There is an emergency, Kent has been rushed to the ER” “Please can you come to the Southwest Hospital?” Dave was literally flying into his house to grab his car keys as he spoke, “calm down ok, I will be there in a jiffy” as fear and uncertainty took over his thoughts once more.

Kent was Emma’s childhood sweetheart and had just proposed to her. Dave in turn, was Kent’s best friend since elementary school and the would-be best man. As Dave hit the road, he could only but think of his best friend.

Kent was all you could ask for in a friend, extremely intelligent, urbane and not to say the least humane. They sowed wild oats together as youngsters and even though they were mates, Dave had deep respect and love for Kent and saw him as a mentor. In high school, he it was who taught Dave how to knot a tie and sometimes make ends meet without having to go to their parents for money.

Kent was a great dancer and could keep people for hours admiring his dance steps. Little wonder he chose dancing as a career, to the chagrin of his late parents and Dave who was yet to reconcile the fact that the best graduating engineering student in their class would abandon that to be a dancer. A decision that still baffles him till date. Only Emma stood behind Kent because as far as she was concerned, she was all for whatever made Kent happy.

Dancing had not brought success the way Kent had imagined and was always running short of money. Proposing to Emma was his own way of crowning his undying love on one hand and pushing back on other suitors who kept swarming around her because Emma if truth be told, was a drop-dead beauty. Due to lack of money, Kent was considering dusting his professional degree and making dancing a side hustle if that would fetch more money to cover their wedding and begin life as a couple. An idea Dave more than agreed with.

Dave was still buried in his thoughts when he reached the Southwest hospital and saw Emma waiting for him. “Oh Dave” “The doctor said Kent had SCAD and it was never diagnosed” “What’s that?” Dave half asked and half queried.

“Never heard of it” said Emma. “The doctor said it is Spontaneous coronary artery dissection, simply referred as SCAD” Dave recalled having come across the name and remembered that it was an uncommon emergency condition that occurs when a tear forms in a blood vessel in the heart and can slow or block blood flow to the heart, causing a heart attack, abnormalities in heart rhythm or sudden death. This he kept from Emma when she told him that Kent fainted suddenly while they were eating.

Dave spoke with the doctors and they assured him they contacted a renowned expert who would be flying in the next day to handle the situation, all they had done was stabilize him and keep him breathing until a major surgery is carried out immediately. This they said would cost a fortune and a minimum deposit had to be made since Kent had no insurance coverage.

That night, Dave made a withdrawal that made him get a call from his bank. Made the minimum deposit required and drove Emma home. It was a day he would rather forget easily; he had just emptied his account and thoughts of how he would recoup the money destabilized him a bit, but then, anything to keep his best friend alive was worth doing.

When he dropped Emma off, he walked her to the house. Kent and Emma had been live-in-lovers since he proposed, in a house Kent inherited from his parents who had died in a ghastly motor accident. Inside the house, Dave assured Emma that everything will be fine and that he will always be there for them. Only that he wished there were enough fund to pay whatever balance remained after the surgery. He convinced her to start up a Go-fund me page just in case.

As they spoke, Dave looked at the portrait of Kent’s mother on the wall and noticed a spider crawling on it. He took off his trainers and gently hit it when the portrait fell off the wall. What they saw on the spot where the portrait was hanging, left them with their mouths wide open. On the spot was a hole covered with a little bit of colored bits of shredded papers. “We never ever noticed that” was all Emma could whisper as Dave gently took out the shreds and brought out a little black book. They looked quizzingly at each other as Emma gave him the nod to go ahead. Dave dusted the book that smelled like almonds, as he sat down to open the pages of the book.

On the first page was an inscription boldly written, ‘READ THE LAST PAGE FIRST’. Dave quickly turned to the last page of the book where they noticed a key taped to the page and below it read, “this key was given to me by my father your grandfather, it opens the little door attached to the bath in the master bedroom.”

They practically ran to Kent and Emma’s bathroom and noticed the bathtub had a little door that would remind you of the dwarfs in the book Snow white and the dwarfs. Dave opened the door and pulled out another little black book that had “break the top of the bathtub to fully access me.”

Dave got a hammer and broke the top of the bathtub and before them was a box filled with one-hundred-dollar bills, a fortune. By the time they finished counting, it was twenty-five million dollars and a note that said, “Spend wisely, love from Suzanne Lloyd.”

You all are rich screamed Dave as he watched the tears drop down Emma’s pretty face.

Suzanne Lloyd was Kent’s mother who never used all the fortune she inherited from her father.