A Quest for Solace
A Quest for Solace examines what it means to be successful? What does it mean to “feel at home.” Can a woman have it all? And at what cost?
Osese Sharp is an ambitious cardiac surgeon. Because of the tragic murder of her father when she was ten and her teenage experiences in London, Os comes to believe that the world is a real life race based dystopia. She wants to get to the top where she feels she will feel safe and at home. However, her rise to the top job at the University Hospital is thwarted by institutional barriers and personal betrayals. Particularly from the Medical Director, Cody Hayes. Cody Hayes wants to destroy Os because she had him taken off a prestigious cardiac surgical team.
Trapped in a cramped flat during lockdown, Osese’s family life unravels as her husband, John, and her activist son, David, clash over ideas about race and success.
After a quarrel with John, David is arrested and dies of Covid after he is attacked in police custody. Her marriage begins to fall apart.
Yet Cody Hayes continues his witchhunt against the grieving Os. He suspends her from duty. Os ends up in a hospital basement. In desperate isolation Os reflects on the choices she made. Professional rivalries, marital and personal grievances converge. Her dark past intrudes. Osese grapples with her insecurities and a world in which ceilings are as much cultural as they are glass.
Finally, Cody presents her with a stark choice. Withdraw her application for the top job of face ruin. The strain is almost unbearable as she faces a stark choice. Either accept the odds are against her and concede defeat or risk a battle that could either raise her to new heights or cost her everything. Armed with her ever-present and comforting handbag, supported by her eccentric stepmother, H-mum, and driven by the memory of her late son, she fights. It is a Quest for Solace.
CHAPTER ONE
‘Professor Sharp to ITU, Professor Sharp to ITU.’
The voice on the Tannoy crackled with foreboding. Os gulped down the mug of black coffee, snatched Comfort, her big black bag, off the floor and raced down the corridor. In ITU, the patient, a Nigerian police officer, lay supine and tilted head down, his blood pressure and oxygen saturations plunging through the sparkling floor.
Ossy, you don’t need the IMF to tell you that Mr. Shoot-de-lot-of-dem won’t make it back to Lagos alive. Not without a major bailout. Was that why his aide de camp was kneeling outside giving the double stringed rosary such a desperate wank?
‘Back in theatre now,’ she said. In burst a dozen members of the team and, in a few hectic minutes, amongst the sharp whispers and cursing, the drats and shits and sucking of teeth, the not there – there!, not there’s but here’s, and hissed rebukes, pointed requests, curt shakes of heads, clashes between elbows and egos, they rushed the patient back to theatre.
Whilst they cranked his chest open again, Os tapped her favourite Beethoven CD into the player, then skipped next door to get scrubbed and gowned. She signalled for a stool to stand on as she waltzed back into the operating room, her gloved size 5 palms clasped in front of her chest as if in prayer. Radio pips for the six o’clock news mingled with the percussive laughter ringing from an adjoining room, syncopating with the portentous thrum of Beethoven’s 5th Da Da Da Dah-ing from the stereo. Os glanced down at the dusky heart. Cradled by the man’s pair of soot-spangled lungs, it looked like a distended bladder, rather than a muscular pump. Why hadn’t they called Cody Hayes? It’s always you, muggins Ossy. She lifted the heart. How did the extraordinary Lord Cody miss these fistulas? She hunkered down, time itself seeming to hover to watch her improvisations, the sutures gliding nimbly through her fingers. Soon she came to the home straight – grafting the proximal ends to the aorta. Like a snooker player clearing the coloured balls, she’d done this hundreds of times. Some, like her friend Drinkstain, claimed that she could do it in her sleep, blindfolded with her back to the patient, or with her teeth – like Hendrix playing guitar at Woodstock. Os, or Professor Konibaje Oritsejolomi Osese Sharp, to give her her full name, didn’t believe a word of it. Her stepmother H-Mum had seen to that.
‘Ok, let’s see if he’ll come off bypass,’ she said, her usually silky voice a rasp. She replaced the heart with studious care and, in a show of much greater alacrity than the banging in her chest suggested, clicked her fingers for the perfusionist to rewarm the patient. Time to shine – a few more brownie points on the old CV wouldn’t do any harm. Os applied the paddles and, on her nod, the nurse pressed the defibrillator button. The heart of the Nigerian police officer squirmed and fell still. Os raised the paddles for inspection and stared at the nurse.
‘Madame in the bluecap, please tell me that there was adrenaline in the syringe and not pissing orange juice,’ she said.
Ignoring the nurse’s daggers, Os gave the patient’s heart a quick knead with her left hand. Genies gimme strength, please wake this lot up. Yes, that one, the wide-bodied one with the long hair. Phew, she’s got the message. Yes, you regina blinking brontosaurus. In your own geological time. Please, madam, the syringe. Behind you, hand it over, like, now! No, you don’t need that. You’d think she was pulling pints of gulf sea oil.
‘Ah, ventricular fibrillation. Better than nothing,’ Os said aloud. Ten times she applied the defibrillator paddles to the heart and ten times the wicked man’s defiant heart thumped out a recognisable beat, flicking blood pressure up for a few seconds before wriggling back to a lifeless halt. ‘Try again, shall I?’ Sweat puddled inside her gloves. Why couldn’t Cody clear up his own mess? Typical Cody, nicking loaded overseas patients then doing a runner when things went fucking belly up. He must have thought the Nigerian had an oil well on tap in the Niger Delta. Well, maybe you deserve each other. Lord Cody and Sir Shoot-de-lot, who blows the heads off rough sleepers at the Lekki toll gate. What will the man say when he wakes up, if he wakes up, to find that a woman laid her fingers on him without permission?
“authoritative…moves seamlessly from eviscerating social commentary to hilarious surrealism…”
“I have loved working on a novel written by someone who has their own style and is utterly in command of what they are doing…”
“H-mum, the quirky stepmother… brings a little sunshine to the storm. She’s hilarious, a little offbeat, and the emotional boost Osese needs to keep going…”
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