Jerry checked his Rolex. He had built empires and conquered the cutthroat world of Nigerian real estate. But time was the one thing his money could not buy back. He watched Maya staring blankly at a group of pigeons she could no longer see. And for all his billions, he felt completely helpless. For six months, Maya’s world had been fading into a fog.
He had flown in the best eye doctors from London and Dubai, but they all gave him the same grim looks and confusing medical terms. They called it pediatric macular degeneration. They blamed genes. They blamed the environment. But in the middle of the night, when the house was quiet, Jerry felt a cold dread in his bones. This did not feel like a disease.
It felt like something else, something intentional.
“Daddy, is it getting dark already?”
Maya’s voice was a tiny, fragile whisper.
Jerry swallowed the lump in his throat. It was barely two in the afternoon.
“No, my princess,” he said, pulling her close. “It’s just a big cloud passing over. I’m right here.”
A wave of dizziness hit him, the kind of exhaustion that comes from not sleeping for weeks. His doctor had told him to rest. But how do you sleep when your only child is slipping into darkness?
