The paper before him lay blank, the pen hanging loose in his hand. He had wanted to write everything down, his fears, his prayers, the stories that slipped through his memory like water. But the page refused him. His body trembled, his chest fought for air, and still, nothing came.
When the collapse came, it was quiet. A step missed, a breath too shallow, his knees giving way. Darkness closed around him, and he was carried unwilling, unknowing into the sterile walls of a hospital that smelled of spirits and disinfectant.
It was there, under the dim light, that the nurse entered not as a stranger, but as if she had always been there, waiting. Her presence was calm, not demanding, not questioning.
For days Umondi had been drifting, and in that drifting, he found himself speaking. Not to family. Not to friends. But to this figure in white who did not flinch at his silences.
"Sometimes," Umondi whispered, his voice thin, "I think I've already died. The boy who laughed with his friends, who ate at his mother's table… he's gone. What's left is only shadow."
The nurse adjusted the drip, her hands steady. She didn't offer false comfort, didn't reach for empty hope. Instead, her words were simple, heavy with truth:
"You're not a shadow. You are a man whose time has been shorter than he deserved. That is not weakness. That is not failure. It is only life, in its cruelty."
Umondi's lips trembled, and for a long moment he said nothing. Then, with effort, he turned slightly toward her, his voice little more than breath:
"If they ask… if they ever ask… tell them I tried."
She leaned closer, catching the words as if they were fragile glass. "I will," she said quietly. "I promise."
Nights blurred into mornings. His breath grew thinner, his body lighter, as though it was slowly leaving him. Sometimes he muttered fragments—his brother's name, the sound of rain on the roof of home, laughter that belonged to yesterday.
The nurse listened, recording not on paper, but in silence, letting the words rest where they landed.
In those last hours, Umondi's vow returned to him, the one he had carried like a curse (I will not bother them until I am well). He knew now he would never be well. But in the presence of the nurse, he found something else. A listener. Someone who bore the weight of his last confessions without judgment.
"I thought my father would kill me. I thought poverty would kill me. But it is my own body that decided the ending."
His chest rose, fell, and after a long pause, he added, broken but resolute:
"Tell them I fought… even when I was quiet, I was fighting."
The nurse's eyes stung, but her voice was steady. "They will know. Because I will carry it."
Umondi's lips curved faintly, almost into a smile. "I am afraid," he said, voice nearly gone.
She placed a hand on his shoulder, firm and steady. "Fear is human. Let it come. You do not have to fight anymore."
And in that stillness, as the machines hummed softly, Umondi let go of the vow, let go of the silence, let go of the fight.
The boy who once dreamed of building a life beyond the small savings and borrowed time slipped into the quiet he had always carried, only this time without resistance.