Fighting through the fire,together

The stench of stale beer hit Amaka the moment she opened the front door. Her white nurse’s uniform was still damp with sweat, her shoulders heavy from a double shift at the hospital in Ikeja. She dropped her bag quietly, walking past the flickering TV to find Femi sprawled on the couch, shirtless, a half-empty bottle of gin in his hand.

“Femi,” she said softly, already exhausted. “You’ve been drinking again.”

He groaned without looking up. “Don’t start, Amaka. Not today.”

She walked up to him, yanked the curtains open to let in the dying rays of the sun. “Every day I come home, this is what I meet. You sleeping. You drinking. You’re betting on matches that never pay.”

Femi sat up, eyes bloodshot. “You think I don’t know? You think I’m proud of this? I lost my job two years ago, Amaka. Two years. Do you know what that does to a man?”

“Yes, I do!” she snapped. “It’s killing our marriage. It’s killing you. And we’ve been trying for a child

for three years, three years, Femi! The doctor said your health is affecting your chances. Don’t you care?”

Silence hung between them like wet laundry. Then, quietly, Femi whispered, “I’m sorry.”

A week passed. The fighting became fewer, but the tension lingered like harmattan dust. One night, as Amaka folded clothes in their bedroom, she noticed something on the table, an unopened counselling brochure she’d brought from work months ago. It had been gathering dust.

She didn’t say a word. Just left it on the dining table.

The next morning, the brochure was gone.

“Na, here be the counsellor’s office?” Femi asked the receptionist, clutching a folded appointment slip.

“Yes, sir. Third door on your left.”

He sat nervously in the waiting room, unsure of what to expect. Shame burned his chest, but beneath it was something else, hope. It was Amaka’s tears last week that shook him. Not her anger, but how she quietly cried when she thought he was asleep.

That image haunted him.

He started attending weekly counselling. At first, he said little, but slowly he opened up. The job loss, the guilt, the pressure of being a “man” in a country that offered no mercy. He stopped betting, reduced drinking. Then stopped entirely.

Two months later, he sat with Amaka in a quiet hall in Surulere. It was their first session of family counselling. She’d agreed to come, unsure but willing.

“I just want to feel like I have my husband back,” she told the counsellor.

“You will,” Femi said, taking her hand. “I’m working on it.”

They began rebuilding—brick by painful brick. They laughed again, even danced to old Asa songs on Sunday mornings. Amaka noticed how Femi now shaved regularly, how he applied for jobs without her needing to remind him.

One morning, five months later, Amaka sat on their bathroom floor, holding a test strip in her shaking hands. Two faint lines.

She burst into tears.

“Femi!” she called, voice trembling. “Come!”

He rushed in, half-dressed for a job interview. “What happened?”

She showed him.

He blinked. “Is this… are you…?”

She nodded, speechless. “I think we’re going to be parents.”

Femi sank to his knees, head in her lap. They cried together, tears of joy, relief, and redemption.

Later that night, they sat on the balcony, watching the Lagos stars fight their way through the clouds.

“You know,” Amaka said, resting her head on his shoulder, “I never stopped loving you.”

He squeezed her hand. “I just thank God you stayed. You saved me, Maka.”

“No,” she replied, smiling, “we saved us.”

And under that night sky, in their small apartment filled with the scent of suya from down the street, the noise of generators, and the promise of new life, Femi and Amaka began again, not perfect, but stronger. Together.