More Than My Bodyguard

She was born just before sunrise, in a room that smelled like Dettol and boiled rice. Her mother, Sade, always said it was a strange kind of morning-too quiet for a house that usually echoed with the cries of children and the clatter of mismatched kitchen pots.

The baby didn't cry at first. The midwife panicked, briefly. Not that anyone admitted it, but you could feel the tension. Everyone held their breath... until she let out the tiniest, sharpest squeal. Like a kitten, maybe. Or a bird that didn't know it was small.

They named her Adesewa. It means "the crown of beauty" or something along those lines. Names always meant more than one thing in Yoruba, depending on who was translating. Her father, Baba Tunde, said she looked like light. Her grandmother said she looked like trouble. Both would be right in different ways.

From the beginning, she was... delicate. Not sickly exactly, just often tired. She'd sleep too long, or too little. Her fingers were cold in July. She'd cough sometimes, for no clear reason, then stop. It was easy to miss at first. Poor people dont always catch the signs early we're too busy managing. Managing rent. Managing rice. Managing prayers that feel like bargains.

But then came the fevers.

They werent loud. No convulsions or screaming. Just heat. Quiet heat that sat on her like a wet cloth. And her lips would turn the wrong shade. You know the kind of wrong that doesn't need explaining? That kind.

Eventually, her parents scraped enough for a hospital visit. Not the private kind, obviously. A place with peeling walls and nurses who had seen too much to pretend they hadn't.

That's where the word came up. That short, almost casual phrase that would end up shaping her entire life: "She's AS."

Her mother blinked. "AS?"