CHAPTER 3
I was hooting outside the hospital's gate like a mad person.
I don't even know how I drove there. I don't remember the road, I don't remember the traffic, I don't remember if I stopped at any red light. All I remember is Penny in the back seat, or rather, half lying, half sitting, bleeding, and little Melissa screaming now at the top of her lungs because she was hungry and scared and cold. I was hooting non-stop. Pe-pee-pe-pe! Like a mad woman. Like someone who had lost her mind. I was shouting out of the window, "Fungua gate! Fungua!"
The whole hospital's activities seemed to have come to a standstill. Guards came running. People who were walking stopped and stared. Within seconds, doctors and nurses were rushing towards my car pushing a stretcher. I had never seen them move that fast. Maybe it was the blood on my hands that I had gotten from carrying my sister. Maybe it was the way I was screaming. Maybe it was the baby crying.
My sister was taken in. They lifted her onto the stretcher and wheeled her away so fast I could barely keep up. I followed while carrying my niece Melissa, who was now clinging to my neck so tight I could feel her little nails digging into my skin. Her diaper was wet. Her face was dirty. She smelled of sweat and blood and fear.
Inside, it was chaos. Questions. Forms. "What happened?" "Who did this?" "Are you the next of kin?" I answered what I could, but my mind was not there. My eyes were fixed on the swinging doors where they had taken Penny. I kept staring at those doors, willing them to open and tell me she was okay.
After what felt like an eternity, a doctor came out and told me she would be fine. She had lost blood, she had bruises, she had a mild concussion, but she would be fine. She was stable. Everything was settled. I could breathe again. Just a little.
I left her under a particular nurse's care, whom I strictly insisted on having. I told them, "This one. I want this one to watch her. No one else." I don't know why I did that. For reasons best known to me. Maybe because that nurse had kind eyes. Maybe because I didn't trust anyone else in that moment. Maybe because I needed to feel like I had control over at least one thing, when everything else was out of control. The nurse, a middle-aged woman with a soft voice, nodded and said she understood.
I went to my house after that. I had to. I had Melissa with me and I couldn't stay at the hospital with a baby who needed to be fed and cleaned. I drove home, and the drive back was quieter. Mel had finally stopped crying and fallen asleep on my chest, exhausted.
At home, I fed Mel. That's what I used to call her, Mel. My little Mel. I warmed some milk, tested it on my wrist like Penny had taught me, and fed her. She drank hungrily, her eyes looking up at me. Then I changed her, cleaned her, wrapped her in one of my clean lesos. She smelled like me now. Like my soap. And then I took a bath myself. I stood under the hot water for a long time, watching the water go down the drain, thinking it was washing away the blood but knowing it wasn't washing away the images.
All this time my mind was in another planet, replaying all my life's events. I saw myself as a little girl. I saw Penny braiding my hair. I saw us sharing one mandazi. I saw us sleeping on one mattress. I saw every time I had failed them. I had failed Mel and her mum, Penelope. I had let this happen. I had known Jim was an animal but I had respected Penny's decision to stay.
I wanted to call Jim. My fingers hovered over his number. I wanted to shout at him, to tell him I was going to kill him, to tell him he would pay. But I thought against it immediately. Not now. Calling him now would be emotional. And when I meet him, I don't want to be emotional. I want to be cold. I want to be that other Alby.
"Mummy will be fine, okay baby?" I told Mel as I stared at her clueless face. She was barely 9 months. She was playing with my fingers, putting them in her mouth, giggling a little. She didn't understand. She didn't know her mother was lying in a hospital bed fighting for her life. She didn't know what her father had done. That's what hurt me the most. Her innocence. The fact that she was too small to understand why her mother couldn't hold her right now.
"Jim is truly an animal, ain't he?" I muttered as I paced around the living room. I couldn't sit. I couldn't stand still. I was pacing like a caged lioness, having a thousand thoughts at once, my heart pounding like it was about to pop out of my chest.
I remembered everything. I remembered the first time he had laid his hands on my sister. How she had come to my house with sunglasses on a cloudy day. I remembered the second time, when she had a sprained wrist and said she fell in the bathroom. I remembered the number of times I had had to drive insanely on the road rushing to save her, just like today, but today was the worst. I remembered the number of times I had let him humiliate Penny, as I used to call her, because she would beg me, "Alby, please don't say anything, he will change, don't embarrass me." I remembered the number of times I had listened to Penny as she begged me not to do anything crazy but help her pray for her husband.
Pray. Always pray.
The picture of Penny on that hospital bed made me sick. I could see it clearly, her swollen face, the oxygen pipe, the drip. She was lying there fighting for her life while Jim, probably, was out there having fun with his numerous girlfriends. Probably drinking. Probably laughing. Probably telling his friends how he had disciplined his wife. The thought made my blood boil to a point where my head was burning.
My head was burning from too much thinking as I wondered where I would leave Mel to go and look for Jim so we could have a conversation. And by conversation, I didn't mean talking. I meant the kind of conversation that happens when words have failed for years. I needed to find him. But Mel... Mel was with me. I couldn't take a nine-month-old baby to go confront a monster.
I looked at Mel, now sleeping peacefully on my couch, her chest rising and falling slowly. I had to find a way. I had to find someone to watch her for just a few hours. Just a few hours to go find Jim and make him understand that he had touched the wrong person's sister for the last time.
© 2026 THIRST FOR REVENGE by Bobo Creatives
All Rights Reserved.
Originally published on Soma Stories @Bobo Creatives.
It took courage to write the next chapter. I was shaking as I wrote it. Let me know what you think on the comments section. Should Alby go ahead with her plans or not?
At only 3 coins you'll join me on the ride to "Thirst for revenge". Prepare to laugh, cry, feel sad, feel angry, you name it.