STOLEN
Episode 4
Harold couldn’t just get his mind off something he would have passed off as not really important until he nearly ran a man down.
It was two weekends back, Chief Stanford and his wife were away in London and somehow Harold had lazily found himself in his dad’s study, he sat around a bit and playfully pulled out a drawer of the file cabinet beside him when he saw numerous files, for lack of what to do, he started to go through the files one after another.
Chief Stanford Okeke was a man who kept records religiously like monks kept the tenets of their religion, he still had the receipts of his first Akai stereo turntable purchased in 1974, the receipts of his Peogeout 307, 404, 504 and 505 salon series purchased from PAN in 1979, 1982 and 1984 respectively. Reciepts of his several other cars like Mercedes 200, and Volvo 240 GLE were intact, numerous reciepts were intact even after the items that had been identified to be purchased by them were no more. Harold had been opportuned to run into these as he had lately been granted unfettered access to his Father’s files and his entire study. Then that afternoon after oogling and laughing over a N420.68kobo Nigerian Airways Lagos to London to Lagos business class return ticket he had come across a file containing health records of his father Chief Stanford, he went through and then came across files containing court litigations for and against Chief Stanford. Harold was having fun going through all these records so he decided to extend it to his mother Mrs Lauretta Okeke’s, he went into her room and couldn’t see anything tangible but then before he gave up he saw a blue file folder and in the file contained very many dusty and some dog eared papers, so he slowly proceeded to go through and in it were firstly certificates of educational laurels Mrs Lauretta had garnered over the years and he smiled as he went through, smarted babe he chuckled as he saw her numerous exploits academically, then lastly was a very old brown sheet of paper with Queen Elizabeth hospital, Umuahia and medical result sheet inscribed at the top, it was type written in some areas and also had hand writings on the dotted spaces, with a stamp and seal over signatures. He dropped it at first and then on a second impulse he proceeded to go through it and he discovered it was a heart breaking result in which Mrs Lauretta Okeke had been declared irreversibly sterile after a 1984 series of medical tests by a high level Medical team specialized in gynaecology from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Umuahia, now the Federal Medical Centre Umuahia had been conducted on her.
So shocked was Harold at first at what the results bore as information and then subsequently not at the content of the result as it is understandable that she might have had only Harold as a child and might have not been able to conceive after him due to the verdict by this medical test result, but the timing of this pronouncement by the Queen Elizabeth hospital team of gynaecologists and his birth date left a lot to be imagined.
Harold had his birth date as July 01, 1985 but this medical report was duly signed, stamped and dated on the 7th day of February, 1984.
How come she was able to conceive afterwards.
STOLEN CONTINUES……
