I wasn't as scared as I am now the day a snake creeped out in the bathroom while I was having my bath. The fear and panic in my heart now is incomparable to any other as I watch my wife shut her eyes in pain and scream out from the sting of labour.

    As I held her hands, tears threatened to pour down my eyes. We have been in this hot soup for Seven hours or more. Seven horrible hours of pain, labour and fear. I'm shaking within me praying to God to spare her life and our baby. But I should have known.

         With every minute that passes, her voice grows smaller, her breathing becomes heavy and her body turns weaker. I whisper into her ears to stay with me, I kiss her on her cheeks and rub her hands as if it would even ease her pain. A tired smile creaked out on her face when a nurse came to massage her below her stomach to ease the cramps folding up. I search the nurses faces of anything, anything at all about my wife's situation but I found nothing.

      I shifted closer to her; "all will be alright" she only pressed her lips together suppressing the threatening cry- "James I don't want to go...I want to stay with you" as she shook her head left to right, my heart tightened. I held her shoulders to place my head gently near her. I was lost on what to do, I could only think of whispering the love song i composed for her on our wedding night to her ears.

      About thirty minutes later we are at it again. She stood between the heavens and the earth making a sacrifice for our child. As she dug her nails into my arms she gave out that push followed by a loud cry that brought out the baby's head. At last the tension in the room subsided. "Sweetheart, you can do this! Our baby is coming out" and gradually the most beautiful little human on earth came out.

Minutes later a nurse handed her over to me in a wrapped clean white fluffy towel. I broke out laughing - I was beyond overjoyed. She is angelic in every sense, my heart melted instantly at the sight of her. I held her gently like an egg and brought her close to my wife's chest; "Thank you so much darling...for this gift" but she didn't respond, that is when i looked at her and knew my life was about to shatter. Horror dawned on me. 

   Her eyes were gradually closing up her breath was too slow and weak to be normal. Fear gripped me as my legs wobble; "James...I..." The whole room was filled with the noise of frantic movements "she no go survive am oo...Nurse Tope!!"

I just stood there having lost the instinct to move or say a word. They are taking her somewhere, the emergency ward or so. She is bleeding, losing ten times more blood in fact. She smiled at me and it killed every part of my soul. The Obstetrician there stopped and gave me a sorry look, i got the message, then it dawned on me. The icy claws of death had taken my wife away from me.

A nurse had to snatch my baby out of my week hands as I collapsed to the floor like a lifeless bag of cement. I crumbled up like a squeezed piece of paper. I didn't care as I smashed my head on the floor, I cursed the universe and every god that exists. "I don't deserve this!!! Why me! This is cruel!?! Who did this to me?! Please!!" My heart kept bleeding from the several stabs of reality. I am finished. All is ruined for me.

Hands pulled me out of the room as I scream like a lunatic that i had become. I did everything to struggle free. My broken voice yelled out my wife's name, my veins pulled out of my forehead. She is wicked! How could she not stay! Why would she leave me? Leave us? What about our baby? All the plans we had?

Hands grabbed me off the flour to pull me out of the room; I struggled to be free from their pull but it was vain. My broken voice yelled and called out my wife's name as angry tears dampened my face, but there was no response from her -her eyes remain closed and i watch them pull a white cover over her face.

Almost an hour later I weakly head over to where my newborn was kept. It was a bitter sweet moment watching her sleep with no worries, nature took one from me and gave me another. I hope to be strong enough to take care of her in the absence of her mother.