The boy sneered. “You’re burning with fever and this is what you brought?”
Still, he stood and brought out three small items—two sachets of paracetamol and a bitter herbal syrup for fever and body pain.
“This will help. But you’re not supposed to be walking around like this.”
Sarah nodded, barely able to speak.
“Thank you. God bless you.”
He did not reply.
She left the shop, clutching the small nylon bag like it held treasure.
But she had spent everything.
And she was still hungry.
Back under the bridge, Sarah took the medicine with another sachet of water, then lay down on a carton that served as her bed. She wrapped herself in her faded wrapper and prayed softly.
“God, I did not ask for a mansion. I did not ask for cars. Just strength. Just one more day.”
She coughed—a dry, rattling sound.
Her throat was sore.
Her eyes grew heavy.
As she drifted off to sleep, she dreamed of her son.
In the dream, she was back in the hospital—the one where they told her he had died. She remembered screaming, the nurses holding her down.
But in the dream, she saw him.
A baby wrapped in cloth, carried away by a woman in white.
She tried to run after him, but her legs would not move.
She woke up gasping, her heart pounding.
“Agu,” she whispered. “My Agu.”
Tears slipped down her face.
By late afternoon, the medicine had cooled her fever slightly, but not her hunger.
Her stomach growled, twisting in pain.
She had nothing left.
No bananas to sell.
No one to borrow from.
No strength to hawk.
No food to eat.
That night she listened to the city buzzing around her—the laughter of young girls nearby, the roar of passing cars, the voices of boys playing loud music under the bridge—and she closed her eyes.
If I die tonight, she thought, I hope someone buries me like a human being. I hope I get to see Agu just once.
But fate was not yet done.
It was only beginning to open a door.
A door that would turn Sarah’s pain into purpose and bring light to the darkest chapter of her life.
Because sometimes, just before the miracle, comes the breaking.
And Sarah was at her lowest.
But the highest was coming.
The next morning arrived without ceremony.
No rooster crowed. No warm sun greeted her.
Only hunger.
Sarah lay on her side beneath the concrete bridge, her body curled tightly like a child trying to disappear into itself. Her wrapper barely covered her trembling frame. The ache in her stomach had grown sharper.
It was not just hunger.
It was desperation.
The sachet water she had drunk the night before was long gone from her system. The paracetamol had dulled the fever, but there was nothing to take the edge off the gnawing pain in her belly.
She had no money.
No bananas to hawk.
No strength to work.
No one to turn to.
Still, Sarah sat up slowly, carefully. Her vision swam, her legs ached, but her spirit, though battered, refused to completely give up.
She looked around at the others under the bridge.
A group of teenage boys were playing cards, laughing and trading crude jokes. Two girls with heavy makeup were brushing their wigs.
Life moved on around her—loud, reckless, youthful.
But at sixty, Sarah had no such luxury.
She stood, adjusted her wrapper, and began walking.
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