Dancing on the quicksand

Dancing on the quicksand

One key component of marriage is trust. Any conjugal relationship built on foundation of distrust is like a quicksand. And anyone that dances on the sinking sand will end up going under.

A pretty lady got married to her heartthrob who is a medical doctor, the former being a teacher by profession. Despite her beauty which was like an attractive, juicy orange dangling from a tree by the roadside, she still felt threatened by anyone in skirt.

As a medical doctor, the husband is exposed to all manner of patients who need his services. Doctors work at odd hours in the hospital assisted by nurses who are mostly women believed by many to be couch-warmers for doctors on night duty.

When the pretty teacher prided herself for hooking up to a doctor, she did not factor the temptation that daily comes the way of the life-savers as a result of their contact with female patients. Those who specialise in gynaecology face the worst enticement in the profession. They are the ones whose imagination is made to run riot as they dig into the grooves of their patients to carry out examinations. Very few of them can pray through to be delivered from evil that temptations lead them to on daily basis.

In the midst of all the myriad of temptations, the medical doctor was faithful to his pretty wife all through the time he was in paid employment until he resigned to set up his own clinic in Kaduna in the belief that he would have less contact with female patients than in the public hospitals. In anticipation of her spouse’s plans to set up his own clinic, the teacher wife encouraged their kids to read medicine-related courses so that they could work in their father’s clinic and be her eyes there.

While the kids were still pursuing their careers, the spouse took it upon herself to be policing her man wherever he went. There was one evening she trailed him to his club where big men congregated to unwind. She sneaked into his car using the spare key and laid an ambush on the back seat, awaiting her “unfaithful” man to emerge from the club accompanied with a mistress.

After clubbing a little into the night, the doctor made for his car mistressless. But unknown to him, his distrustful spouse was lying in wait. He kicked life into the car and drove off. Then suddenly, his wife sprang to a sitting position, an action that startled the doctor. He lost control of the car and the duo crashed into a moat by the roadside. Fortunately, they escaped with no serious injuries but the fender of the car and the windscreen were damaged. The automobile had to be abandoned and the couple had to catch a taxi back home.

There was another encounter where the teacher sighted her man as he parked to give a ride to a female sibling of a managing director of one of the banks which patronized his hospital on retainer basis. The wife rushed for the car just as the husband was taking off and she already had one leg inside the car. Before he could realize the wife’s desperate entry, he dragged her along the street for a few metres as she hanged on to the door. It was quite a spectacle to the onlookers.

The matter got to a head when the wife locked out her man for returning home late. He had to scale the fence of their bungalow like a thief and used a ladder to climb to the balcony. Despite all her excesses, the gentleman doctor never raised his hands against her.

To shorten a long story, the wife decided to assume latter-day celibacy and shut down because she feared that her husband would pick HIV/AIDS and transfer it to her. Why must she be a victim of the grave consequences arising from someone else’s hedonism? For close to three years, the doctor had no access to his wife’s bedroom even though they lived under the same roof. And since nature abhors a vacuum, the doctor had to step out and began to date around until he finally got hooked up to one of his old patients. The fear of landing in the HIV/AIDS net kept the teacher away from her husband’s arms for close to three decades.

About a decade ago, she began to take ill. But for her fear of contracting HIV/AIDS that kept her away from her loving spouse for years, the nature of her illness would have been tied to the disease she so dreaded. At first, she never wanted her man to be part of her treatment. Eventually, she backed down. Her condition became critical in the last couple of months and she passed on recently.