I stopped at the pharmacy because bleeding slowly felt easier to manage than rent.
The sign was already on, bright and honest in a way the rest of Friday had not been. Around it, Yaba was doing its usual evening argument with traffic. Horns. Heat coming back off the pavement. Men selling plantain chips with the posture of people who understood that desperation buys quickly. Inside the glass door, the light was sharp enough to make all lies look underdressed.
I stood outside for a second pretending I was only adjusting my bag. Really I was deciding whether I could afford another small form of not-dying.
At five o'clock I had still owed Akerele twenty-two thousand five hundred naira by seven. At five-thirteen I still owed him twenty-two thousand five hundred naira by seven, plus the Saturday-morning threat hanging behind it like extra teeth. My right heel throbbed. The shoe had started flapping openly now. No more discreet class decline. Full audio.
I went in.
The place smelled of antiseptic, dust, and cartons that had crossed too many hot storerooms before reaching a shelf. Nothing had changed much since Tuesday. Narrow aisles. Blood-tonic and cough-syrup boxes stacked behind the counter. Sanitary pads in disciplined rows. A muted television in the corner showing a preacher with both hands raised toward a silent victory. The coldness was still mostly visual, but even that helped.
Mimi was behind the counter, writing in a ledger with the same calm concentration that made everybody else look either theatrical or unfinished.
She looked up once. Her eyes dropped to the shoe, rose to my face, and stayed there.
"The heel survived two days," she said. "I was optimistic for nothing."
That was how I knew the week had really been bad. A woman could greet me by continuing an injury.
"It has put in honest work," I said.
"And now it wants retirement."
There were two customers ahead of me. A woman in a salon apron buying cough syrup for a child she described as dramatic. A thin man in a security uniform asking for one condom like he was negotiating national debt. Mimi handled both with the same efficient face. No wasted pity. No fake friendliness. Just service delivered in correct portions.
The salon woman pointed at a cheaper syrup on the lower shelf. "This one works?"
"Works is a large word," Mimi said. "This one can help."
"You people in pharmacy don't like certainty."
"Because your body also doesn't."
The woman laughed, bought the cheaper one, and left.
By the time it was my turn, I had already checked the money in my wallet twice without learning anything useful. Two five-hundred notes. One two-hundred. Some twenties and tens that had gone soft with handling. Not enough for rent to respect. Enough for small medicine if medicine was humble.
"What do you need?" Mimi asked.
"Something for the heel. Small antiseptic. Plaster. The economic versions."
"You people always say economic as if pain is checking exchange rate."
"Mine is."
She put down the ledger and leaned once over the counter, not closer in any dramatic way, just enough to get a better look at my foot.
"Did you change the plaster?"
"I changed it this morning."
"And since then?"
"Lagos happened."
"Lagos is not a treatment plan."
I almost smiled. She was wearing the same store polo shirt as Tuesday, sleeves folded once. Her braids were packed back again, but a few shorter strands had escaped near one temple. She looked like she had been working since morning and still had the energy to be exact with strangers. I respected that more than beauty and found the two more entangled than was helpful.
"Sit," she said, pointing to the plastic chair by the weighing scale.
"I can stand."
"Yes. Badly."
I sat.
She reached for a small bottle, a strip of plasters, gauze, and something in a plain white packet whose branding had clearly given up before printing.
"This one is cheaper than the nice version," she said.
"Does it still know its job?"
"If your foot cooperates."
"My foot has entered politics."
That got the edge of a smile out of her. Not a gift. More like temporary release.
"What about pain relief?" she asked.
"Let's first solve the visible rebellion."
"Have you eaten?"
She remembered.
"I had akara around ten-thirty," I said.
"That is not food at this time of day."
"It was food in the morning."
"This is evening."
"Time is very judgmental in your profession."
"It is a pharmacy. We keep records."
That call-back worked on me more than it should have. Tuesday she had remembered my cough syrup and vitamin C like my life had been filed quietly somewhere competent. All week people had used records to expose me. She was the only one making memory feel less like a weapon.
"And before you ask," I said, "I bought bread that night."
"I know."
"How?"
"The woman outside said you stood under her awning eating half a loaf like a man settling a case with God."
I laughed. "So the surveillance is neighborhood-wide now."
"Only for repeat offenders."
"I didn't know my feeding habits were on file."
"Your feeding habits are not. Your stubbornness is."
She said it while reaching for scissors, completely unromantic, which was exactly why it worked. Most people in my life noticed failure only after it had gathered enough weight to become a performance. Mimi kept catching it while it was still trying to dress itself.
A man with red eyes came in asking for tramadol in the tone of somebody requesting forgiveness. Mimi shut that down with one flat look and pointed him toward a weaker alternative. He left annoyed. Then a young mother came to buy diaper rash cream. Then an old man wanted blood-pressure medicine and spent eight full minutes describing how people no longer respected boiled yam. Through all of it Mimi moved between shelves, calculator, cash drawer, and counter without once looking hurried. Watching someone do ordinary work well when your own job has spent two days treating you like a suspicious receipt can affect the body strangely. It made me feel both tired and thirsty.
When the rush thinned, she came around the counter with a small tray.
"Show me."
"That sounded medical and insulting at the same time."
"Good. Remove the shoe."
There are dignities a man can preserve. There are others he only rents by the hour. I bent, loosened the shoe, and pulled it off carefully. The sock had given up on secrecy. The heel area was dark, damp, and ugly in the way wounds become when a full city has walked on them all day.
I looked away first.
That is one of the worst parts of being seen clearly by somebody you find attractive. Your own body starts behaving like gossip.
Mimi did not flinch. She set the tray on the counter beside me, tore open fresh gauze, and said, "You should have come in yesterday."
"Yesterday was being used by transport."
"And today?"
"Today was being used by payroll."
She poured antiseptic onto the gauze.
"Your life sounds overbooked."
"I have complained to management."
"What did management say?"
"Tuesday."
That made her pause for half a second.
"Tuesday is a strange answer."
"It was given by experts."
She crouched slightly to clean the heel. The first touch of antiseptic was so sharp I grabbed the edge of the chair.
"Jesus."
"No," she said. "Just Dettol."
I laughed through the sting. That was the first proper laugh I had managed all day and it arrived while a woman disinfected the evidence of my decline. Life has no respect for staging.
"Easy," she said, not unkindly. "If I do it softly, you will still limp tomorrow."
"You talk like someone who has given up on comfort as a governing idea."
"Comfort is extra. Healing is the work."
Her hands were steady. Not tender in the performative way people sometimes use when they want credit for touching your damage. Just practiced. Efficient. She peeled away the dead plaster, cleaned around the blister, added cream, then pressed fresh gauze into place. I watched her face because watching the heel itself felt too intimate, almost rude.
"You know," I said, "some men would fall in love just from being treated with basic competence."
"Then those men are not ready for the economy."
"That is a hard thing to say while holding my foot."
"I'm not holding your future. Relax."
I did not relax. But I appreciated the instruction.
Outside, evening traffic kept grinding. Somebody nearby was frying yam. The smell came in whenever the door opened. My stomach noticed before my pride could object.
Mimi taped down the gauze and sat back on her heels once to inspect the job.
"Better," she said. "Not fine. Better."
"That has been the theme of my week."
"Week only?"
She said it without sentiment, almost absentmindedly, while reaching for the shoe. That was what made it land.
"Please don't escalate a small joke into biography," I said.
"You brought biography with your foot."
She handed me the shoe and stood. Even rising, she had the same contained, unworried movement. Like nobody had ever successfully rushed her into foolishness.
"How much damage?" I asked, meaning the items, not my life.
She named the total.
It was not impossible. That was almost worse. I could afford it in the technical sense and still resent the purchase as treason against larger disaster.
I counted the notes carefully on the counter. Broke people do mathematics with their fingertips.
She took the money, checked it once, then opened the drawer.
"You're short by twenty."
"I am also short by twenty-two thousand five hundred. Let's keep perspective."
"Perspective does not enter balance."
I searched my pocket and found two tens trying to become lint.
"You people in pharmacy really enjoy exactness."
"You people in trouble enjoy poetry."
I gave her the twenties. She tore a receipt from the book, wrote quickly, and handed it over with the small packet of medicine.
"Use that tonight again," she said. "And tomorrow morning."
"Tomorrow morning has not agreed to anything yet."
"Still use it."
A different girl came out from the back room then, younger, probably a stock assistant, carrying a carton of sanitary pads on her hip. She greeted Mimi, glanced at me, then at my bare foot, and politely decided my humiliation was senior enough to respect. She disappeared toward the shelves. Good. I did not need the scene expanding.
I put the sock back on gently, then the shoe. The fresh dressing made the foot feel both safer and more aware of itself.
"Try standing," Mimi said.
I stood. The pain was still there but less ragged, as if someone had lowered the volume without changing the song.
"Better," I said.
"I told you."
I hesitated at the counter a moment longer than purchase required.
"Thank you."
"It's a pharmacy."
"That's what you said last time."
"And yet the truth is still available."
The television preacher in the corner changed to an advert for herbal bitters. The generator from the shop next door coughed into life. The light in the pharmacy flickered once and steadied.
"Are you closing soon?" I asked.
"By six-thirty. Why?"
"No reason."
That sounded false even to me.
She looked at the clock above the blood-pressure poster, then back at me.
"You don't look like a man with no reason."
"That is hurtful. I have many useless reasons."
"I know."
"How do you know?"
"You are still here."
Some lines flirt. Some lines diagnose. I wasn't sure which one that was, and that uncertainty did something loud inside my chest.
A man came in to buy baby formula, then changed his mind after hearing the price and asked for a smaller size with the expression of a father being quietly defeated by powder. While Mimi handled him, I moved aside toward the glass door and pretended to examine a poster about ulcer medication. Really I was checking the time again. 5:41.
One hour and nineteen minutes until Akerele's deadline. One full lifetime until whatever version of home was waiting.
Mimi finished with the formula customer and stepped out from behind the counter with a nylon bag of emptied sachet-water wrappers in one hand.
"Hold the door," she said.
I did. She dropped the trash into the bin outside, then stayed there a second, looking up the road where buses kept choking past one another in heat and impatience.
"You can sit outside if you want," she said. "Inside looks like you're loitering. Outside looks like you're resting."
"That is a sophisticated distinction."
"It helps me and helps you."
There was a low plastic stool beside the wall and one of those faded branded chairs every small business in Lagos eventually acquires from a drink company. I took the chair. She leaned against the doorframe, not fully outside, not fully in. The light from the shop fell around her and stopped at the pavement like it knew its jurisdiction.
From there I could see the bus stop, two schoolboys buying gala, a woman arguing into her phone, and a man selling phone chargers beside a gutter with the confidence of old fraud and decent markup. The city was still moving at full speed while I sat with treated heel, cheap medicine, and a deadline large enough to have posture.
"You did not go home directly," Mimi said.
"Observant as always."
"You came in limping and then stayed after paying. That one is not observation. That one is arithmetic."
"Maybe I like the sermon on mute."
"You don't."
"True."
She folded her arms.
"So?"
"So what?"
"What are you postponing?"
Most people ask questions in ways that leave you room to perform. Mimi asked like she expected an answer to justify existing.
"Home," I said.
"Why?"
"Because home currently has accounting."
"Rent?"
I looked at her.
"People drag that face only for three things," she said. "Rent, hospital, or family WhatsApp group."
"You forgot work."
"Work usually enters through one of the first three."
That was annoyingly good.
"Rent," I said.
"How bad?"
Now we had reached the part where pride starts pretending silence is maturity.
"Bad enough that plaster feels like a luxury purchase."
"That is not an amount."
"You like amount too much."
"Because amount is where truth stops hiding."
I laughed once without joy. "You sound like Finance with better skin."
"Insult refused."
I watched a bus conductor slap the side of his danfo and shout CMS with missionary conviction.
"It is due by seven," I said finally.
She looked at the clock inside the shop. 5:48.
"And you're here."
"That is the troubling part, yes."
"Do you have the money?"
"If I had the money, I would be performing arrival instead of sitting near ulcer medication."
She let that sit between us.
"How much?"
I hated the number. Saying it out loud made it put on shoes and enter the room.
"Twenty-two five."
Her face changed only slightly, but enough. Not pity. Not shock. Just recalculation.
"By seven?"
"By seven."
"And how much do you have?"
"Enough to be annoyed by this conversation."
"That means no."
"That means if I answer honestly, I become one of those men discussing exact failure beside a pharmacy."
"You already are one of those men. The only question is volume."
I should have been offended. Instead I found myself looking at her mouth again, which was unhelpful in several ways.
"You are not soft," I said.
"Soft is expensive."
"That line belongs on a billboard."
"No. Then men like you will quote it without paying consultation fee."
This time I smiled and she saw it. She didn't smile back immediately. She only tilted her head a little, as if checking whether I still remembered how.
"What happened at work?" she asked.
"They explained why money left my salary."
"That sounds generous."
"It was very official. There were forms. Stamps. A special room for telling adults that Tuesday is now their emergency contact."
She waited.
"They said it is under review," I added. "Which in this country usually means the problem has learned office English."
"And until Tuesday?"
"Until Tuesday I am apparently a risk to organized systems."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning my supervisor now looks at me like I might refund the building."
She gave the smallest breath of laughter.
"That one is actually funny."
"I'm glad somebody is enjoying the administrative arts."
"I'm not enjoying it. I'm respecting the madness."
A bike shot past too close to the gutter and sprayed brown water onto the road edge. The man selling chargers swore with deep family commitment. Somewhere farther down, a generator changed pitch.
Mimi straightened a little from the doorframe.
"Can I say something?"
"That depends on whether it will improve rent."
"It won't."
"Then go ahead. Everything else has already failed."
She considered me for a second. Really considered me. Not the shoe. Not the envelope corner visible from my bag. Me.
"The first time you came in here, you looked tired," she said. "Today you look arranged."
"Arranged?"
"Like every part of your day already agreed to meet at your body before you arrived."
I looked at her too quickly.
"That is a disturbing thing to say in public."
"It's just what you look like."
"Maybe I have one of those faces."
"No."
She pushed off the doorframe and came fully outside now, just enough that the shop light caught one side of her face and left the other in the softer evening color.
"Some people are just unlucky," she said. "With them, it sounds loose. Random. One thing here, another thing there. But when you talk..."
She stopped. Not for effect. Searching.
"When I talk what?"
"It sounds like your problems know your timetable."
There are moments when the body reacts before language. My chest went tight first. Then my fingers. Then the mind arrived late and useless.
I made myself laugh, lightly, because what else could I do?
"Bad management," I said. "That's what I call it when I want to sound less mad."
She shook her head.
"Bad management is confusion," Mimi said. "The way you talk, it sounds personal."