The first pill
Six weeks late, I went back to the clinic. One tablet, every day, at nine. The nurse who did not look at me looked at me.
I went back. Six weeks late, on a Wednesday, to the clinic on the Aba road, and the nurse who had not looked at me looked at me and said, you are late, and then she said, but you came, and she put a bottle on the counter with a month of tablets in it and a card with a number and she wrote on the card, in capital letters, EVERY DAY, 9PM.
It is free. I want that written down because I did not know it and I do not think most people in this city know it: the tablets are free. The government pays, or someone pays, and you collect a bottle a month, and that is the treatment. One pill. Same time.
She explained the rest and I only kept some of it. That in a few months the virus would be so low a test could not find it. That when it was that low I could not give it to anyone. That people on the pill live as long as anyone. I did not believe the last part. I am writing it down anyway so that the notebook has it even if I do not.
Nine o'clock tonight, in the room by the stadium, under the stain shaped like Imo State, I took the first one with the last of the Fanta the woman under the umbrella gave me, which I had finally opened. It tasted of nothing. It is the most important thing I have ever swallowed.