The Taxi Driver

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Hillary was confused, he has never been this clueless in his whole life. He was once a happy man till his wife was diagnosed with cirrhosis, she has been in the hospital for one week now, and with every passing day her situation grew worse.

She needed to be operated on and the Hospital required the money to be paid before they would do anything, the cost of the operation was N500,000 and so far he has only been able to raise N100,000, he still needed N400,00 to complete the money. She was lucky it was diagonised quickly, so it would be easier to manage.

He got up from the bed and entered the bathroom to take his bath, after bathing, he dressed up quickly and headed out, he missed his children, especially Chioma the youngest. She always woke up early to chat with him before he left for the day.

But for four days now, his children have been staying with his mother, so that he could focus on the situation at hand.

He stepped outside the house they shared with two families, he walked to where he parked his taxi at the back of the house, it was an old car that has seen better days, he had inherited it from his father, he maintained the car regularly and washed it almost every day, but right now it was very dirty and needed some washing, but he did not have time for that.

He opened the car and popped open his bonnet, he filled his carburetor with water from the stainless steel tank sitting at the back of the house, after filling the carburetor with water he started the engine and left it running, he closed the bonnet and entered the taxi, and drove out of the building.

The streets of Enugu was already bubbling with people going to their place of work, bankers, civil servants, business that morning was good and he received some good tips, as he worked he kept track of time, he was supposed to meet with Ikenna that morning by 11 am, he promised to assist him with a N150,000, loan.

After dropping off a woman at the airport by 10:40 am, he decided to head straight to Ikenna’s office, on his way from the Airport, he saw a way waving frantically for him to stop he did and the man ran towards the taxi in obvious haste, he was carrying a suitcase and a travelling bag.

Oga, where are you going?

I will drop at Zik’s Avenue.

Luckily Ikenna’s office was at New Haven, a two minutes’ drive from Zik’s Avenue so he would not run on empty after all.

Enter sir, it’s N500. The man hopped in and he sped off.

They got to Zik’s Avenue twenty five minutes, the man paid and Hillary drove to Ikenna’s Office, as he steeped down from the car to lock it, something caught his eye in the back seat, he looked from the window and saw a suitcase, he entered the car and checked the suitcase and saw it belonged to the Man he dropped earlier, he tried to open it and found out it had a combination lock.

He wanted to leave the box and go in search of the Man after his meeting with Ikenna, but curiosity got the better part of him.

He tried four zero’s on the combination lock, and the box opened, what he saw inside took his breath away, he saw some documents, two gold wristwatches and some money in bundles of mint N500 notes, he did not count it, but he knew it was more than N200,000, he closed the box slowly and leaned back on the chair, he had a big question to answer, should he return the money or use it to treat his wife?

To be continued

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