The enticing love of the city is too luring for many, even after Joburg had shown many of her ruthlessness. After seeing her true being, many would still fall in love with her. Her breasts were just excessively seductive to have many distance themselves. Her thighs were just too luring to have many stick around. Her smile was too beautiful to have many bowing to her. Her charms were too powerful to have many lingering around her presence day and night, enjoying her being.

After the encounter with Annika, Thato now understood what this place could present to him. He knew it could be his worst nightmare or the place that would bring him the love of his life and for him to find that love. He had to fall in love with the city and its ways. He had to embrace its lifestyle and the lifestyles of those who dwell in it.

“Hi, don’t you know a girl called Annika?” he asked one lady who sat where he last found Annika.

“Oh! She was admitted to hospital earlier today,” said the girl.

“What? What happened?”

“We don’t know. I think she’s dead. She wasn’t breathing when we woke up,”

“In which hospital is she?”

“I don’t know,” she said, emotionless.

He looked for her in every hospital around. He finally found the hospital she was admitted in. The sight of the sick at the hospital was that which Thato never loved. The hopelessness, torment and fading faith, not only to the sick themselves but to himself too, filled her eyes with tears. So was the deep stench of medicine.

“Hi, I’m looking for a girl by the name of Annika,”

“Let me check here first,” she looked through her computer, typing frantically. “She’s in ward 22, the lady over there will take you to her,” said the receptionist.

Thato couldn’t wait, as soon as he saw the doctor coming towards his direction he ran to him. He just wanted to know if she was OK. It was as though the whole world had been shut down and nothing else seemed to exist except him and the doctor. It was as though all was blank before him, after him and beside him. He couldn’t hear any voice except his scream towards the doctor.

“How is she? Is she OK? Where can I find her?”

“Are you Thato?” asked the doctor. He asked with his voice low and sensitive.

“Yes I am why?”

“She wrote you as a next of kin. We need you to sign …”

“Please doctor, tell me she’s fine,” he said with tears in his eyes.

“I need you to sign these documents. She’s OK. But I have bad news for you. She has kidney failure. We’ll have to perform an operation after we find her a match,”

Tears rolled down his face. The thought of losing Annika was just unbearable.

“I’ll do the test and see if I’m a match,” he said suddenly.

***

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