Two Birthdays And A Surgery
Oti lay on the surgeon’s operating table. He hoped it would be a successful operation this time. He didn’t want to do the surgery, but this was his last resort.
His life flashed before his eyes as he lay there thinking. The years had taken a toll on him, and this particular problem had always kept him between hot oil and hot water.
The operation had to succeed, otherwise…
At that moment, the surgeon and his team walked in. Oti looked up, his eyes filled with hope. “Are they coming?” he asked. The surgeon nodded. “We informed them and they both said they will be here. Everything will be all right.”
Oti really hoped so. The nurses started preparing him for the surgery, as he was hooked up to various monitors to track his vitals.
The doctor must have sensed his nervousness, and patted his arm telling him not to worry. That was when he saw two faces peering through the glass of the theatre doors.
His mother and his wife.
They both entered the theatre wearing white scrubs. He could tell that they were very worried, even though they were wearing surgical masks. His wife stood on his right, his mother on his left.
“So this is what it took to get you two to be with me today. Haven’t I tried all these years? Celebrating your birthdays independently. All I asked is for you to celebrate it together this time. But you both remained adamant.”
The two women looked at each other. If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that the love they had for him had no limits. It would always win in the end, even though he had to take a drastic measure to make sure it happened.
Marrying his mother’s birthday mate was one of the things that excited him when he first met his wife, but as the years passed, it became hard work keeping up. Not only were they birthday mates, but they would always share milestone birthdays.
Usually, he and his wife would go to his mother’s place in the morning, then spend the rest of the day together the way his wife wanted.
But this year, his wife was 40 and his mother 70. And both women had insisted they wanted individual parties and he had to be present at both despite his pleas.
“I think it is only when I am almost dead that these women will try to see reason,” he confided in a friend, who was also a doctor.
His friend came up with a plan to do a staged emergency operation and call his wife and mother to the hospital.
Oti was doubtful it would work, but it did.
So it was settled. There would be a 40th and 70th birthday party in one venue on the same day.
Based on a real-life scenario. If you were Oti, what would you do?
