And as the latch clicked, I realized the tiny blue flower I’d ignored my whole life wasn’t simply an old tattoo.
Then the doctor did something none of us expected.
He pushed up his own sleeve.
And on the inside of his wrist was the exact same faded blue flower.
PART 2
The security officers, it turned out, weren’t there to detain my mother.
They were there because the doctor — Dr. Samuel Okafor, head of the department — had asked for privacy, and in a busy hospital, closing a door quietly sometimes requires help clearing a hallway.
I had misread the whole thing.
We all misread it, at first, because fear makes everything look like a threat.
Dr. Okafor pulled a chair to my mother’s bedside and sat down, and when he spoke, his voice had gone soft and thick.
“Ma’am,” he said. “My name is Samuel. I was born in 1969. I don’t remember my parents — I was two years old the last time I saw them.
