Chapter 4 THE FINAL HOURS AND THE SILENCE AFTER

The final hours came cloaked in dread-not the dramatic, trumpet-blaring dread you read about in books, but the kind that creeps in softly, without announcement. The kind that speaks in whispers. The kind you feel more than hear. Something in the air had shifted. A stillness. A sacred hush that wrapped itself around us like a prelude to goodbye.

We didn't know it would be his last day. No one ever truly knows, not even the doctors who had seen this cycle before. But somewhere inside me, something stirred. A tension. A quiet ache that seemed to know before I did.

I had to leave Chinedu's bedside to fulfill a duty I had no heart for-my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). In Nigeria, it's a compulsory program for university graduates. One year of service to the nation. Everyone goes through it. Everyone talks about it as a rite of passage. But I had already missed two months staying by Chinedu's side-through the vomiting, the blood transfusions, the endless nights of groans and whispered prayers. Through the painful watching. Through the waiting.

The NYSC officials were stern: miss one more month, and I would be suspended. All the effort would be wasted. I'd have to start again. I'd have to do it without pay. No leniency. No exception. Bureaucracy has no heart.

So I went-not with peace, but with guilt that pressed on my chest like a rock. I didn't want to go. Every step away from that hospital felt like betrayal. Like abandonment. I carried him in my heart the entire journey to Abuja, but the weight of distance between us made it feel like a thread was unraveling inside me.

The night before I left, I sat beside him in the hospital. He was wrapped in a green blanket that reminded me of when we were boys-when we shared bunk beds and dreams and secrets whispered under mosquito nets. His eyes were tired, sunken, but still glowing faintly with that fierce kindness that never left him. I studied his face like I was trying to memorize it. Every line. Every scar. Every soft breath.

"Go," he said, barely above a whisper. "Don't worry. I'll be here when you return."

I nodded. But I didn't believe it. Not entirely. I smiled. He smiled. We held hands. I prayed quietly over him before I walked out.

I left him in that hospital room, unaware that it would be the last time I would ever see him alive.

---

By Wednesday morning, I had completed my clearance in Abuja. I sat in a cab on my way back, eager to return to his side, hopeful that I'd find him a little better-maybe sitting up, maybe cracking a joke, maybe talking about the free school again.

Then, casually, I opened WhatsApp.

What met me didn't make sense at first. A friend's status: Chinedu's photo-one I had taken of him laughing, full of life. Underneath it, the words: "You fought a good fight."

My heart stopped. Literally. I stared at the screen, willing it to mean something else. A metaphor. A tribute to strength. Anything but what it looked like.

I called home. No one picked. I called again. And again. I called friends. Nothing. My hands trembled as I borrowed a friend's phone and dialed again.

Finally, my sister picked up.

The moment she heard my voice, she broke. And then she did the one thing that confirmed everything-I heard her sob once, sharply, and then she hung up.

Silence followed. But in the background, before the line cut, I heard it-wailing. Deep, primal, soul-tearing wailing. The kind of sound that breaks the air. The kind of sound that only comes when something unthinkable has happened.

My world collapsed.

My phone slipped from my hand. I felt my knees buckle-not physically, but spiritually. The kind of falling where you crash inward, into a place where no light reaches.

She called back moments later. I didn't want to pick up. I didn't want it to be real. But I did.

Her voice cracked like glass.

"Winner..." she said through sobs. "Edu just left us."

I didn't speak. I couldn't.

I hung up.

And then I broke.

I locked myself in a room and wept like a child. No, deeper than a child. Like a soul that had been ripped in half. The promise I had once made to Chinedu came flooding back: "If you go, I'll go too." That was how tightly we were woven. My brother. My best friend. My twin flame in a world that didn't deserve him.

I meant it. I meant to follow him.

I found something poisonous in my room. Something final. I remember writing "Goodbye" on my WhatsApp status. It was brief, but the intention was clear. I wanted out. I wanted to stop breathing. I wanted to silence the unbearable noise in my chest. The grief was too much. Too large. It filled every crevice. It turned the world grey.

But then, my phone rang again. It was my mother.

Through broken sobs, she said the words that stopped me from ending everything.

"Do you want me to bury two sons in one day?"

That sentence. That voice. That mother who had already buried dreams, now pleading not to bury another.

And somehow, that pulled me back.

I lived-but a part of me didn't.

---

Chinedu was buried the following week.

I wasn't there.

My mother, knowing how deep our bond was, forbade me from attending. She knew I would not survive the sight of his body lowered into the earth. She knew that seeing him like that would destroy me in ways even she couldn't repair.

And she was right.

I asked my friends not to send me photos. No videos. I didn't want to see the casket. I didn't want to see the dirt. I didn't want to watch his story close like that.

Instead, I chose to keep him alive in my mind-in full color, in motion. Laughing. Walking with long strides. Dreaming big. Living large. Loving hard.

To this day, I don't know exactly where he's buried. I've never seen the grave. I have never stood beside it. Some days I wonder if it's peaceful there, if flowers bloom, if the wind whispers softly over his resting place. But mostly, I choose not to know.

Because Chinedu doesn't live in the ground.

He lives in my dreams.

He lives in every child whose school fees he paid with his own salary-children he never fathered, but who owe their education to his kindness. He lives in the patients whose medical bills he quietly settled, never seeking recognition. He lives in the old woman who still calls him her "son" because he once carried her across a flooded street and bought her food when she had none.

He lives in me.

He lives in every person who remembers him not as a victim of a system that failed him, but as a symbol of what humanity should be. He lives in the dreams he dared to speak out loud-the free school, the hospital where no one would be turned away, where healing wouldn't depend on how much money you had in your pocket.

And sometimes, when I close my eyes at night, I still see him. Whole. Restored. Smiling. He doesn't speak in these dreams. He just stands beside me, hand on my shoulder, as if to say, "I'm still here. Keep going."

There are days the silence screams louder than any noise. Days when I instinctively reach for my phone to send him a text. Days when a memory flashes and for a second, just one second, I forget he's gone. And then I remember-and the ache returns.

But I live.

I live because he believed in me. Because he would have wanted me to finish what he started. To build that school. To raise that hospital. To be light in the darkness the way he was.

Grief, I've learned, never truly ends. It just changes form. It becomes a companion, walking beside you, sometimes whispering, sometimes screaming, but always reminding you of what-and who-you loved.

One day, I will see him again.

Not in pain. Not in a hospital bed. Not behind swollen eyes or trembling hands.

But whole. Radiant. Laughing like he always did. And on that day, the silence will break into song.

Until then, I carry him with me-in every act of kindness, in every word of hope, in every dream that dares to look like his.

Because some people never really die. They just become the breath behind every good thing you do.

And Chinedu... he was made for others.

Even in death, he still is.