THE HANDSOME MEDICAL DOCTOR: CHAPTER ONE.

The green flags of the trees become sepia toned, waving in the southerly wind. Within the multitude of soft chocolatey browns there is gold shining through, and a blush that brings summer fruits to mind. Mike sighed as he looked at the house before him. He didn't remember the last time he came here nor did he ever remember the house looking this way.

The house looked like a cut out from Architects Today magazine. It was beautiful. but not in the olde-worlde quaint kind of way he was usually drawn to. Everything was geometric, which a person could say about almost any pitched roof abode with square windows, but on this house you couldn't help but notice it. 

The roof was flat for a start and the door as wide as it was tall. The windows took up entire walls with only polished steel beams to break them into yet more rectangles. The look would have been entirely metallic, like a mini down-town skyscraper had it not been for the cedar beams of the external porch and the matching raised plant beds that contained only white blooms. Even in autumn, it still looked beautiful.

Mike ran his hands through his hair as he wondered if he was the right place. Everything had changed, even the bar he always usually goes to when he was still a wayward teenager had been renovated. The little city he once had grown up in was now renovated and looked astonishing. The roads were tidy, houses and buildings were livable, modern and mausoleum. 

For sure there were the browns that come as a comforting quilt to the earth, yet the rest are the hues of volcanoes, of firework sparks and festival hoopla. It is as if nature is calling out to the spring and the trees can't help but become as flowers, towering blossoms of flamed foliage to dance into the skies before tumbling as giant confetti to the sidewalks and verges and it still looked beautiful.

Every nook and cranny of Zades were was bustling with life and numerous activities. 

This made him feel anxious of being back home. All the reasons not to do this came flooding in, as if his body chemistry just sent them a blanket invitation. He felt the soft panic that can grow or fade depending on what he will do next. It will if he left again and forget about what he wanted to do.  

But then, he will have to suffer the guilt, loneliness and blameworthy. It will grow if he keeps letting these thoughts he had swirl into a vortex of stupidity, eating their own tail. Or he could breathe real slow, let the thoughts leak into the ether and be the real boss of him.

He came out of his car with an uncertain expression. His feets were stuck and he couldn't seem to move any further. He felt so nervous of seeing his brother again and make amends.

He sighed as he tried to take control of his own feet and reluctantly walked and soon, he was standing in front of the door after taking the door steps.

He closed his eyes and opened them again, trying to get rid of his nervousness. Was his brother going to forgive him after all these years? 

Was he going to accept him once again?

Pushing the rising thoughts aside, he manned up and raised his hands, wanting to knock on the door, but his hands felt stucked. He dropped his hands and clenched his fists, doing a mental count down from five to one.

And then he knocked. He bit his lips as he heard a female voice and then the door opened to reveal a woman.

"Mike?" Susanne, whom he knew was his brother's wife, who had opened the door said in utter surprise as her eyes became even more widened.

"Mike, is this really you? Boy am i glad to see you. Ben has been so worried and he will be very happy so see you. Please come in" She said happily as she opened the door wider so he could come in.

"Ben has been worried about him? Well that is a good sign" He thought as he heaved a sigh of relief.

"Please make yourself comfortable. I will be right back" She said as she disappeared into the house leaving Mike who had made himself quite comfortable on the long sofa.

He used the opportunity to take in on the appearance of the sitting room.

It was all the same as seven years before but the decorations given to it made it look like it was a new house.

The floor was an old-fashioned parquet with a blend of deep homely browns and the walls were the greens of summer gardens meeting a bold white baseboard. 

The banister was a twirl of a branch, tamed by the carpenter's hand, it's grain flowing as water might, in waves of comforting woodland hues. Under the lamp-shine it was nature's art, something that soothed right to the soul.

All the pictures that hung just above the plasma television were that of his brother and his wife. Looking at all the photos, it seems they haven't still had a child. Susanne had a womb problem so she is unable to reproduce but Ben still stood by her and still took her as his wife.

Something he doesn't even think he can do. 

There was one picture that caught his attention, The picture of himself and his brother when they were just teenagers. The picture was a time machine. One glance and he was back in his teen years with his life stretched before him, all the decisions that lay between his present self and his past self were unmapped, anything was possible. 

How impossible it seemed that all those day-to-day decisions would take him across these thirty years to where he now sat, broken and miserable. It was the day they had lost their father. If he'd just missed the train that day to the club maybe they will not have lost their father in that accident when trying to save him.

It was because of him that his father had died and surprisingly he never cared or felt a pinch of guilt.

Their mother had afterwards taken on the responsibility of two parents. She struggled to make sure the both of them got a good education making her age completely.

He still remembers his mother's face and figure, even after she had become older than her age after two weeks of their father's demise, all in the name of wanting to take care of him and Ben. 

He remembered clearly how old she looked but still she kept fighting it every step of the way. Her hair is jet black and the white skin of her face always looks too tight. Her lips have been fattened and her eyelashes are false. What she can't hide is the redistribution of her body fat. 

Even with countless hours of working hard, her waist was thicker and stomach seemed more relaxed. She was at the point that the more effort she made to cater for her children the worse she would look.

He remembered always being the old scum bag and always getting into trouble, going for night parties, always getting into jail, making his mother and brother struggle to always bail him out.

Thinking of all these made him feel so bad. He had been a very bad son and brother.

But was his mother still alive? 

He knew that his mother was a young woman and maybe she was still alive, praying and waiting for her don't to come back home.

He couldn't give the right answer to the question raging in his thoughts as he heard his name.

"Mike?" 

Turning his head, his eyes met a pair of green eyes but not the kind of shade that's easy to describe. It was almost like they were both green and yellow at the same time, with blue creeping in around the edges as if it were trying to take over. 

He blinked and the beauty was momentarily covered by the shield of his eyelashes; naturally long and soft looking - feminine compared to the rest of his well structured features. By the time his eyes opened again, he had still not recovered from his intense stare. 

Mike gave out a smile as he stood up, taking in on the appearance of his brother. He still had his heavily built body, with his muscles intact.

"Is this really you?" Ben asked again with a surprising look on his face jolting Mike from studying the rest part for his body. He looked as if he had seen a ghost.

"Yes brother, i am back and i am really sorry for leaving. I was always the stubborn and care free type, always doing all the bad stuffs and leaving it for you and mother to sort out. I can say i am a rich man now but i wish to be with my family again. I want to be a changed man now, i want to be a good son and a nice brother to both you and mother, if you will forgive me" 

Mike said as he bowed his head in shame showing how sincere and honest he ever was.

"You left without a word and left me and mother worried Mike. I was very worried about you. You made mother worried and she had suffered from a heart attack. She died a year after you got missing".

A tear escaped Mike's eyes as it suddenly dawned on him.

His mother was dead.

And it was all because of him.

He had killed his mother.

"I tried my best to fulfill her last wish which was to find you. I searched everything nook and cranny of this country, thinking i will one day bump into you.

"But i never did. I didn't wanna think something bad had happened to my little brother. What was left for me was to pray that wherever you are, you would come back home safe and unharmed.

He walked to Mike and held his shoulders.

"And here you are. Seeing you has erased all the anger i had towards you. As long as you have realized your mistakes and wanting to start a new life"

Mike smiled as he hugged his brother.

"Thank you brother. You don't know how relieved i am now to know you have forgiven me"

Pulling away from the hug, Ben ruffled Mike's hair.

"It's been seven years now, and i wanna know all you have been through while away. How about we go talk at the balcony and bring back old times?"

"That will be nice brother"

"Susanne, could you please make two mugs of coffee?" Ben shouted as the two brothers made their way to the balcony.

They talked, laughed, cried and sunk deep to old times.

They didn't know what time in the day it was.

But it was so soon,as night came suddenly.

         

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Susanna sighed as she walked out of the restaurant in which she worked in. She was a waitress at Madam Sheiriki's restaurant, a work that doesn't pay her much.

But at least it gave her money to take care of her daughter.

 It was 8 pm and she still had to pick Hannah who was still at her teacher's house. She wasn't an owner of a car and so she had to walk to the teacher's house in the cold and chilly night.

It is the type of coldness that reaches into someone's bones, as if her heart were a door left wide open to the icy wind, slamming only to open again. The only thing to do is keep moving, keep heading toward home and the steady warmth of the hearth. The sky is rolling blanket of cloud the colour of wet ash, and the ground its dank reflection. Each step becomes a prayer for the teacher's house as she walked, seeing the light from the doorway in their flickering daydreams, letting it become more real than the chilly night.

She knocked.

The door opened to reveal a woman.

Her porcelain skin was ashen, almost anemic; a cold sweat glistened on her forehead and her recessed cheeks; the moss of her eyes had turned into a leaf that was desperately trying to cling onto the last bit of its chlorophyll, its life. She had hair so black against skin so white and it made a contrast that only served to make the woman look like she was even more older, all the more alluring; her lips were pink and she had a pair of glasses on her nose. 

"Mrs Brownwell, come in, nice to see you. I will go get Hannah, she is asleep" The teacher said as she stepped aside for her to come in and then afterwards, went in on the purpose of getting Hannah.

She came back a minute later with the little girl who slept loudly in the teacher's arms. Susanna smiled as she watched her baby sleep. Her six year old bay girl.

"How will you be able to go home in this cold night with Hannah Susanna? Hannah has a fever and she cant go out. You can leave her here and you can come back tomorrow to take her to the Doctor." The teacher offered.

"I won't be able to stay in peace knowing my daughter is not in my sight" She said as she pulled her jacket and used it to wrap Hannah,and afterwards carried her from the teacher's arms.

"Aren't you going to catch a cold?"

"I won't. Thanks for your help. I will be going now" Susanna said as she walked out of the house and down the road with the teacher watching them till they disappeared into the still night.

                    🥀📖🥀

Ben smiled as he stopped his car in front of Zades hospital. He was glad his brother gave him a job here. Although he was wealthy, having quite a fortune but he still wanted to work as a Doctor in the only hospital that ever existed in Zades.

He had gotten a little place to call his home in the estate just after his brother's. His brother gave him an offer to stay with him and Susanne but he politely declined. He wanted to live by himself and work independently. It wasn't a problem since he had lived on his own for seven years.

He smiled as he got out of his car, taking in on the appearance of the hospital. It looked a lot better than it had looked seven years ago.

The hospital corridor is stuffy and the air has an undertone of bleach. The walls are magnolia and are scraped in places from the hundreds of trolleys that have bumped into them. The pictures on the walls are cheap benign prints of uplifting scenes and above the double doors are large blue plastic signs with the areas of the hospital that lie ahead.

The hallway has as much personality as the rest of the hospital. The floor is slate grey and the walls dove. Above the ceiling is made from those polystyrene squares laid on a grid-like frame. There are commercial prints on the wall, tasteful in the dull kind of way. Above every door he passes a large plastic sign, dark with white lettering- no fancy fonts, just bold and all-caps. It's so new and spotless Mike felt like the whole building must have just gotten beamed here from some-place dirt is outlawed. 

"Mike" Someone called and he turned to meet the figure of his brother who was already on his pure white coat. 

"Good morning brother" He greeted.

"I guess i can show you your office?"

"After you brother"