My parents' faith: the Reason behind the name.

The night was dark due to lack of light, both moon and Nepa light. Mama fumbled with the torch that had its permanent residence by the little crib dad had worked so hard to get for me. 

Mama turned on the torch and light flooded the room, she squinted for few seconds as she tried giving her eyes the time needed to adjust to the assault of the bright light while reaching for the flask by the bed. 

She smiled at me through the sheer net of the crib. I looked so fragile, she thought as she furrowed her brows in faint worry, worry that increased tenfold when she opened up the crib and touched my skin and realized it was as hot as the water in the flask she held in her left hand. 

Mama jumped up in panic, picking up my little 3 months body and jolting Papa awake as a result. 

"Dee, ni ni mere? " Papa questioned in our dialect, asking her what the problem was. 

"Ahun ya ne nwuokwu" Mama said in dread. 

Papa jumped out of bed, I'm sure in that moment he felt like the athlete he had been all through his teenage years. He took me from mama's grasp as her hands were shaking so bad. 

"Let's take her to the hospital." Papa said. He always spoke in English when in distress. 

Mama nodded her head as she hastily put on clothes not minding if they went together or not, they did not. 

She reached out her arms from me and took me from Papa. 

"She'll be fine." Papa reassured through the lump in his throat. 

"God will not put us to shame." He reiterated as he jumped into his long Johns and large shirt. Standard clothes for the Deeper Life member he was. 

Mama and Papa rushed out the door, momentarily forgetting that it was 2am in the morning and though we lived in Lagos, it was going to be hell trying to get transportation anywhere. 

As presumed, getting transport proved futile. Mama and Papa trekked quite a distance before they sighted a hospital, their heart leaped as they increased their pace. In their fierce determination to find and get to a hospital as soon as they could, mama failed to notice that she now carried a lifeless child, it wasn't until she handed me over to the medic and he said he was sorry, that I was dead that she really looked at me and noticed my body was turning cold. 

Denial set in, mama begged them to check me, I couldn't be dead, she'd said. Her baby wasn't dead. The medic shook his head in sorrow and pity having seen the look of near madness and absolute grief in the eyes of so many mothers before. 

Papa shook his head defiantly and told the medic he didn't know what he was talking about, his child wasn't dead.

On our way to the next hospital, street security men, popularly called Olode in the west, stopped us and asked my parents what we were doing out so late. Papa explained that they needed to get to the hospital, their child was sick. Yes, sick, not dead. They recommended one nearby and mama and papa set off after saying their thanks. 

I was rejected at that hospital, and 2 more after that. 

They told Mama and Papa to take me to the mortuary but mama and papa held on tightly to stubborn Faith as they took me to another hospital. A very expensive one, the nurse looked at me and after examination told mama I was breathing deep inside and would need to give me an injection that would sustain me till morning and that we should come back then. 

Looking at us the nurse told us there was no way we could afford the injection and we knew it too. Papa hadn't had a job in so long and mama didn't have one either. 

The nurse told Mama and Papa that she'd help us. She secretly injected me and told Mama and Papa to take me home and come back in the morning as the doctor who could attend to me wasn't in. Mama and Papa took me home, I still wasn't breathing. They wondered what the nurse meant when she said I was breathing inside. 

They held on to faith and kept a lifeless child for 7 hours, body stone cold. 

At around 9:30a.m, after an awful night of staring at a child they helped bring into the world so still, mama and Papa set to leave for the hospital. As they prepared, they thought of how they would pay the hospital bills and decided that they couldn't. They decided to take me to another hospital but when they got there I was declared "dead". 

They shed the fear of bills and took me back to the private hospital I'd received the secret injection. On seeing us, the nurse ran to get the doctor. 

"This is the woman and her child I today you about sir." She said to him as they came out. 

The doctor grabbed me from my mother's arms and she watched ad his face transformed from concentration to anger. 

"Madam, how could you be so careless as to let your child die before being brought to the hospital! " he yelled even as he rushed me to a ward and placed me on the bed. 

"Please help me, please. I don't know, I didn't know " Mama kept chanting as she sobbed brokenly, deep heart wrenching sobs that resonated while she held on to Papa for support. Papa, whose grief threatened to choke him. 

Mama watched as the doctor hurriedly but carefully shaved off my hair in his efforts to find a vein. Immediately he found one he pierced me with a needle attaching a drip. 

An unknowing bystander would have seen the doctor as merciless, and he was merciless towards the death that held me tightly in its grip. He injected me in both my arms, elbows, legs, I had more that 5 drips running though my little fragile body at the same time. 

Mama and Papa cried and prayed fervently. 

In a very short span of time I was given thirty two injections and thirty three drips, all in a bid to bring me back to life. Death sought to take me through Pneumonia, I stayed in that little bed for nine days and slowly but surely my eyes opened and I saw the world again. 

Oh. Death. Where is your sting?  Jesus overcame the grave that threatened to swallow me. 

I was well and it was time to go home, mama and Papa had no money with which to pay the bills, the doctor looked at us and asked us to go, even blessing my us monetarily. 

God won the victory. 

Mama and Papa named me Prevail.