Saved By Grace- Ep 20 (Main)

Episode 20- I’m Here, Baby!!

Supriseeeeee🌝🌝🌝

SOTERIA’S POV

I thought I had understood what death meant. I thought that by gathering in the lounge in Abuja, by opening the pages of Romans and Psalms until the leather grew warm in my palms, I had somehow managed to tame the monster.

I thought that because I could pray with my mother without my voice cracking into pieces, I was ready for this day.

But I was not ready.

Nothing in this life prepares you for the sound of a shovel hitting dirt when your father is underneath it.

The day before the interment was the Service of Songs.

We held it under the massive white canopies that the military boys had erected in the center of our compound.

The village had never seen anything like it. It was a sea of peak caps, polished medals, and starched camouflage uniforms that looked sharp enough to cut grass.

High ranking officers from the Defence Headquarters, representatives from the presidency, and traditional rulers from across the Niger Delta had taken over every single hotel in Uyo just to be here.

Normally, according to the strict protocols of the Nigerian Army, a Major General who dies in active service or with such an untarnished record is supposed to be laid to rest at the National Military Cemetery in Abuja.

It is a place of white marble headstones, manicured lawns, and silent prestige.

But my father was a man who never forgot the taste of the water from his own stream.

Long before he ever knew a bullet or a sudden collapse would take him, back when he was still a young Colonel with broad shoulders and a laugh that could wake the neighbors, he had written it into his official service will.

He wanted to come home. He had requested that whenever his watch ended, he should be buried in the soil of his fathers, right beneath the shadow of the tall oil palm trees he had climbed as a little boy.

The Army had granted that final wish on special executive order.

During the Service of Songs, I sat between my mother and brothers in the front row.

As the choir from our village sang the hymns my father loved, the air under the canopy grew thin.

They sang It Is Well With My Soul, but as the notes floated up toward the roof of the family house, I looked at the dark wood of the casket sitting on the elevated dais, and my soul felt like it was being pulled through a tight ring.

Akila was there, standing with the official military delegation near the back.

He was in his full ceremonial dress uniform, his posture so straight he looked like a statue carved out of dark stone.

He didn’t look at me directly while the pastors were preaching, but every time I felt like the heat and the crying of my aunties would make me faint, I would tilt my head just enough to catch the edge of his beret. It was my anchor.

---

But then Friday morning came. The main burial day.

The sun rose with a strange, fierce brightness that felt completely disrespectful to the quiet inside the house.

By 09:00 AM, the compound was completely locked down.

The military police had blocked the main road for three kilometers, and the only sound you could hear was the low, rhythmic thud of the brass band preparing for the funeral march.

We went through the church service in the parish building down the road like people walking through deep water.

I carried the baby, Asuquo’s little girl, on my lap just to have something warm and breathing to hold onto.

My mother was completely silent now.

She had passed the stage of weeping; her face was just a pale, smooth mask of endurance.

She held a white handkerchief in her right hand, her fingers turning blue from how hard she was squeezing it.

When the service ended, the real nightmare began.

The pallbearers, all of them brigadier generals and colonels who had served under my father, lifted the casket onto their shoulders.

The weight of the wood made their boots creak against the church aisle.

We walked behind them, the family procession, moving slowly down the road back toward our compound where the brick vault had been dug.

The crowd was a wall of faces.

Thousands of villagers had lined the dirt path, some of them holding up pictures of my father, others throwing pieces of green leaves on the ground as the procession passed.

The women were singing old Efik songs of lamentation, voices rising in a high, mournful wail that made my skin crawl.

Enye ama unam mfafon uwem, they sang. He did good things for us.

We entered the gate, and my eyes immediately landed on the rectangular opening in the earth near the family tree.

The soil that had been dug up was piled high on one side, a dark, reddish brown mound that smelled like damp moss and old roots.

Seeing that hole made my knees go completely soft.

Effiom caught me by the elbow, his grip tight and painful through the sleeve of my black dress.

I clamped my teeth together until my jaw ached. I looked across the grave and saw Akila.

He was part of the firing party detail now, standing with his men, his rifle held across his chest.

His face was completely blank, the face of an officer on duty, but his eyes were fixed on me.

He was watching my breathing. He knew the exact moment the panic was starting to claw its way up my throat.

The military chaplain stood at the head of the grave, his white surplice fluttering in the hot breeze.

He opened his prayer book, his voice booming through the microphone.

“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery,” he read, the words hitting my ears like stones.

“He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as if it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”

The pallbearers stepped forward.

They lowered the casket onto the green straps that were suspended over the dark hole.

My mother let out a low, shuddering breath and leaned her entire weight against Asuquo.

“In the midst of life we are in death,” the chaplain continued, his voice steady, entirely used to the business of putting men into the ground.

“Of whom may we seek for succor, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?”

The soldiers handling the straps began to let them slide through their white gloved hands.

The dark wood of the casket dropped an inch.

Then another.

A sound started to build in my ears, a loud, roaring noise like a locomotive engine passing right through my brain.

I watched the brass handles of the casket disappear below the lip of the earth.

The gold lettering that spelled out MAJOR GENERAL I. IDORENYIN was slowly swallowed by the shadow of the pit.

That was the moment the world ended.

The month of Bible study, the peace I thought I had found, the strength I had been praying for, it all vanished, burned away by the raw, unadulterated horror of seeing my father being taken by the dirt.

“No,” I whispered.

The word was small, but the moment the bottom of the casket hit the base of the grave with a dull, heavy thud, something inside me snapped like a dry twig.

“No! Daddy! No!”

I didn’t just scream; it was a primal, desperate shriek that tore out of my lungs with so much force it felt like my chest was ripping open.

Before anyone could grab me, I tore my arm out of Effiom’s grip and lunged forward.

The red dirt at the edge of the grave was slippery, but I didn’t care. I wanted to go down there.

I wanted to jump into that hole and pull him out, or stay down there with him where the noise of the world couldn’t reach us.

I couldn’t leave him in the dark.

He was my father. He was the man who used to carry me on his shoulders when the water in the compound flooded.

“Soteria! Sote!”

Effiom and Asuquo threw themselves at me just as my foot slipped over the crumbling edge of the pit.

Effiom wrapped his thick arms around my waist from behind, lifting my feet completely off the ground, while Asuquo grabbed my arms, pinning them against my sides.

I fought them like a wild animal. I kicked, I writhed, my fingernails digging into Effiom’s uniform, tearing at his brass buttons as I tried to break free.

My head was thrashing from side to side, my hair coming loose from its pins and falling over my face in wet, tangled knots.

“Let me go! Effiom, let me go, please! He can’t breathe down there! Let me go to him!” I screamed until my voice turned into a hoarse, bloody rattle.

The tears were coming so fast I couldn’t even see the sky anymore, just a shifting, terrifying blur of red dirt and black uniforms.

My mother was wailing now, her voice joining mine in a terrible, jagged duet that made the civilian mourners break down into loud, uncontrollable sobs.

The whole compound was in chaos.

The aunties were rushing forward, trying to hold my legs, but Effiom wouldn’t let me go.

He held me against his chest with a desperate, crushing strength, his own tears finally spilling over his eyelids and dropping onto my neck.

“Soso, stop! Please, he is gone! He is gone! Stop!” Effiom sobbed into my ear, his chest heaving as he struggled to keep us both from falling into the red dirt.

My strength began to leave me all at once.

The adrenaline that had driven me to the edge of the pit evaporated, leaving behind a cold, gray emptiness that felt like death itself.

My lungs couldn’t find any air.

The locomotive roar in my ears grew louder, and then the light in the sky began to dim around the edges, turning into long, dark shadows.

My head dropped back against Effiom’s shoulder, my fingers loosening their grip on his shirt. I was fainting.

The darkness was coming to take me, and for the first time, I wanted it to.

Through the heavy fog that was settling over my brain, right before my eyes closed completely, I looked across the grave.

The firing party had been ordered to stand at ease while the family was managed. Akila had dropped his rifle slightly.

His face was no longer blank.

His jaw was trembling, and his eyes were wide, filled with a raw, agonizing pain that had nothing to do with military discipline. He wanted to cross that pit.

I could see it in the way his boots shifted in the dirt, the way his fingers were twitching against the steel of his weapon.

He wanted to take me from my brothers and carry me away from the grave.

Then the darkness took me completely, and the sound of the 21-gun salute began to fire in the distance, each blast shaking the red village earth where my father was now sleeping forever.

---

AKILAHYEL’S POV

The boots of a soldier are meant to carry the weight of a nation, but tonight, they felt like blocks of lead dragging me deep into the floorboards of the Idorenyin family house.

The protocol had been completed.

The final commands had been barked over the open earth, the rifles had fired their crisp, deafening volleys into the heavy Akwa Ibom sky, and the trumpet had blown its long, lonely notes for the last time.

Major General Idorenyin was beneath the ground.

The country had officially handed over the folded flag to his grieving widow, the high-ranking officers had climbed back into their air-conditioned SUVs to head toward the airport, and the official machinery of the state had begun to pull away, leaving the family alone with the raw, bleeding silence of their reality.

But for me, the real battle didn’t end when the ceremonial parade was dismissed.

It began the exact second I had to watch Asuquo carry Soteria’s limp, pale body away from the graveside.

The chaos that followed her collapse was something out of a battlefield medical tent.

While the senior officers tried to maintain their composure to finish the final burial rites, the inner circle of the family had fractured into sheer panic.

Effiom had been forced to stay by the grave to represent the lineage, his face a tight, agonized mask of tears and military discipline, his shoulders shaking as he stood where his sister had just tried to throw herself.

I had been ordered to stand at ease with the firing party, but my soul was pacing a cage.

I had watched Asuquo run toward the main house with Soteria in his arms, her long black hair trailing in the dust, entirely lifeless.

Effiom had finally walked into the house after the last guest departed, his uniform dusty, his eyes bloodshot.

He had immediately thrown his arms around Amara, the two of them sinking into the sofa in a quiet, heart-wrenching embrace, while Asuquo paced the hallway, his face pale as he waited for the doctor to come down from his sister’s room.

“She’s stable,” the doctor had finally said, stepping down the terrazzo stairs hours later, wiping his hands with a towel.

“It’s acute emotional shock combined with severe physical exhaustion. I’ve given her a sedative to force her brain to rest. She needs absolute quiet. No more mourners, no more noise.”

The house had settled into a terrible, heavy stillness by 08:00 PM.

Mummy Idorenyin was locked in her private wing, the faint, muffled sound of her weeping occasionally drifting through the corridor before being swallowed by the humid night air.

Asuquo’s wife had finally managed to quiet the baby, and everyone had collapsed into different corners of the mansion, their bodies completely broken by the weight of the day.

I stood in the dark hallway upstairs, still dressed in my black ceremonial trousers and a plain t-shirt, having stripped off the heavy uniform jacket hours ago.

I felt entirely helpless. I was a man trained to fix things. To clear routes, to neutralize threats, to command men in the face of death. But you cannot use military tactics against a broken heart.

I stood there, leaning my head against the cold concrete wall, praying in my spirit, tongue after tongue rising from my belly because my human understanding had run out of words.

I walked slowly toward Soteria’s room.

The door was slightly ajar, a warm sliver of light spilling out onto the dark floorboards. I pushed it open gently, my boots making no sound on the thick rug.

Soteria was lying on the massive bed, looking so small beneath the white cotton sheets.

She was asleep, but it wasn’t the peaceful sleep of a child; it was a fitful, agonized rest.

Even under the influence of the heavy sedative, her body was fighting reality.

Her breath came in short, jagged hitches, her small hands twitching against the blanket as if she were still reaching for the edge of that pit.

Her face was flushed, and a steady stream of silent tears was tracing paths down her temples, soaking into her pillow.

She was crying in her sleep, her subconscious refusing to accept the peace the drug was trying to force upon her.

Her maternal aunt, Auntie Alice, was sitting on a stool by the bedside, a wet handkerchief in her hand, her eyes heavy with her own exhaustion.

She looked up when she saw me enter, and a look of profound relief crossed her weathered face.

“Captain,” she whispered, her voice cracking with fatigue.

“Auntie,” I murmured, stepping closer. “How is she?”

“She is restless,” the older woman sighed, rubbing her own aching lower back.

“She keeps whispering ‘Daddy’ in her sleep. Her mind is still at that graveside. I’ve been trying to wipe her face, but the tears just keep coming.”

Auntie Alice stood up slowly, her joints popping in the quiet room.

She looked at me, her eyes filled with a sudden, pleading desperation.

“Akila, please, can you stay with her for a bit? I need to go down to check on my own children in the boys’ quarters, and I haven’t even seen Mummy since we came back from the cemetery. I need to make sure she has taken her pressure medication. I asked Amara and Naya to rest downstairs because those girls look like they are about to fall ill themselves.”

“Go, Auntie,” I said immediately, my voice low and steady.

“I will stay here. Don’t worry about her. I won’t leave her side.”

“Thank you, my son,” the auntie whispered, patting my shoulder gently before she slipped out of the room, closing the door softly behind her.

Then, it was just me and her.

I walked over and sat on the edge of the mattress, the wood groaning slightly under my weight.

I looked down at her face, and a sudden, sharp pain cut through my chest so violently it felt like a physical wound.

My heart felt like it was being squeezed by an iron fist.

The memory of her scream at the grave came rushing back, echoing in my ears until my head throbbed.

I remembered the exact second her foot had slipped, the way her fingers had clawed at Effiom’s uniform, the absolute terror in her eyes as she tried to follow her hero into the dark.

I had stood there in that formation, bound by the rigid chains of my military duty, forced to keep my weapon at my chest while the woman I loved was tearing herself into pieces just twenty yards away.

In that moment, my heart had almost come out of my chest. I had wanted to throw my rifle into the dirt, to run past the generals and the traditional rulers, to push her brothers aside, and to just grab her.

I had wanted to tuck her so deeply into my arms that the pain couldn’t find her.

I had wanted to carry her away from that red dirt, away from the village, away from the sirens, and just hold her in the dark until the world healed itself.

But I had been forced to stand still.

A single, hot tear escaped my own eye, dropping onto the back of my hand.

I didn’t wipe it away. I reached out with a trembling hand, my rough, calloused fingers gently wrapping around her small, smooth hand where it lay twitching on the sheet.

Her skin was warm, a little slick with sweat, but the moment my palm closed over hers, her fingers tightened around mine with a sudden, instinctive desperation.

“I’m here, baby,” I whispered, my voice thick with an emotion I could no longer try to hide behind my rank.

“I’m right here. I’ve got you.”

I took the small towel from the basin on the nightstand, squeezed out the cool water, and began to gently wipe her forehead, her cheeks, and the tracks of her tears.

I moved with a softness that no one in the barracks would ever believe Captain Hyel possessed.

I paid attention to every detail of her face. The natural gap between her front teeth that was slightly visible through her parted lips, the curve of her jaw, the dark circles under her closed eyes that told the story of a battle with grief.

She let out a long, shuddering sigh, her body relaxing just a fraction as the cool towel touched her skin.

She stopped thrashing against the pillow, her head turning toward me, her hand still gripping mine like a drowning person clinging to a rope.

“You fought so hard,” I murmured, leaning my forehead against the wooden bedpost, my eyes fixed on her.

“You’ve been the light for everyone else, Soteria. You held your mother’s hand through the dark. But tonight, you don’t have to be strong. Tonight, you can just let the wall fall down. I am here to hold the weight for you.”

I sat there in the quiet room for hours, the only sound being the distant whir of the generator outside and the steady rhythm of her breathing as it finally began to slow down.

I didn’t let go of her hand for a single second.

Every time her fingers twitched, I squeezed back, letting the steady pressure of my grip remind her that she was no longer at the edge of the pit.

As I watched her sleep, the remaining walls around my own heart completely dissolved.

I didn’t care about the timing anymore. I didn’t care about the rules I had made about her grief or my boundaries.

Seeing her break had broken me too, and in the ruins of that pain, I realized that my love for her wasn’t a distraction or a mistake. It was a vow.

I was going to be the wall she could lean on for the rest of her life, the one who would guard her light from ever being snuffed out by the cold winds of this world.

I closed my eyes, my spirit settling into a quiet, fierce determination as I held her hand in the dark, waiting for the morning to come.

---

SOTERIA’S POV

The transition from the deep, heavy darkness of a medicated sleep to the waking world is a slow, painful pulling apart of the soul.

When my eyes first flickered open, the room was disorienting.

The wooden ceiling beams were too low, the air too thick, and the rhythmic, metallic drone of the village generator humming outside the window reminded me instantly that I was not in my bed in Abuja.

Then, the weight of the previous day hit my chest like a physical blow.

The red dirt. The gold lettering on the dark wood disappearing beneath the lip of the earth.

The sound of my own voice screaming a name that would never answer me again.

The memory made my lungs seize automatically, a gasp catching in my throat as the sheer panic of her absence threatened to drag me right back under the surface.

I tried to sit up, but my limbs felt like they had been cast in concrete.

My body was entirely sore, as if I had survived a physical crash.

“Steady,” a voice murmured beside me. “Steady, Soso. Just breathe. Don’t rush it.”

I turned my head slowly on the damp pillow.

Sitting right there on the edge of the mattress, his large frame blocking out the morning sun that was trying to peek through the heavy curtains, was Akila.

He was still wearing his plain black t-shirt and uniform trousers from the night before, but his boots were gone, and his shoulders were slightly slumped with an exhaustion that made him look completely human.

His eyes were heavily bloodshot, surrounded by dark circles that told me he barely closed them for a single second while the stars moved across the sky.

But it was his hand that caught my attention.

His large, rough fingers were still completely locked around mine, holding my palm with a steady, unyielding pressure that felt like the only thing keeping me attached to the earth.

I stared at our joined hands, then up at his face.

The rigid, untouchable Captain who had stood across the grave with a rifle was gone.

In his place was just Akila, the boy who had carried his own dead father through a bush, the man who knew exactly what the red dirt tasted like.

“You didn’t leave,” I whispered, my voice sounding like broken dry leaves in my throat.

“I told you I wouldn’t,” he said softly.

He loosened his grip just enough to reach for a glass of water on the nightstand, sliding his other hand gently behind my neck to help lift my head.

“Drink this first. Slowly.”

The water was cool, clearing the bitter taste of the sedative from my tongue.

As I sank back into the pillows, the reality of my family came rushing back into my mind.

“Mummy... where is Mummy? The boys?”

“Mummy is in her wing,” Akila answered, his voice a low, grounding rumble that instantly lowered my pulse.

“Auntie Alice gave her her medication last night. She slept through the night and she’s resting now. Asuquo and Effiom are downstairs dealing with the final logistics for the tents and the catering. Everyone is tired, but everyone is holding up.”

I let out a long, trembling breath, my eyes filling with fresh tears as I looked at him.

“I tried to be strong, Akila. I swear I tried. During the Service of Songs, I didn’t even cry loud. I held Mummy’s hand. But when they started lowering him... when the gold letters disappeared into that ground... I felt like they were burying me too. I couldn’t handle it.”

Akila didn’t offer any cheap platitudes.

He didn’t tell me it was going to be okay or that time heals all wounds.

Instead, his grip tightened around my hand again, his thumb tracing a slow, soothing circle over my knuckles.

“Nobody expected you to handle that,” he said, his eyes raw and intensely focused on mine.

“You are a daughter. You loved your father with your whole heart. Seeing him go into the earth is a fracture that nothing can prepare you for. You screamed because it hurt. Don’t ever apologize for bleeding when you’ve been cut open.”

For the first time, I saw the absolute depth of the intimacy that had been forged between us in the fire of this grief.

There was no mask.

No military protocol.

“How is Naya?” I asked suddenly, remembering the chaos before the darkness took me.

“Her fever spiked badly yesterday,” Akila sighed, rubbing his eyes with his free hand.

“The doctor said it was emotional shock mixed with the physical stress of the last few weeks. She’s downstairs in the guest wing. Amara is with her. Let’s get you washed up, then we will go down together and check on her.”

With a gentleness that seemed entirely natural to him now, Akila helped me swing my legs over the edge of the bed.

My knees shook, but he stood right there, his arm a solid iron pillar around my waist, supporting my weight without a single word until I found my balance.

He guided me to the bathroom, waiting right outside the door until I had splashed cool water over my face and changed into a simple linen lounge set.

When we walked downstairs, the mansion felt entirely different from the day before.

The loud, performative wailing of the distant relatives had cleared out, leaving only the quiet, systematic movement of a family trying to pack up the remnants of a funeral.

We found Naya lying on the sofa in the upstairs lounge, a light blanket pulled over her shoulders.

Amara was sitting on the floor beside her, holding a cup of warm beverage.

Naya’s face was still pale, but the violent shaking had stopped.

When she saw me walk in, her eyes filled with tears, and she reached out her hand.

“Soso,” she breathed.

I dropped to my knees beside the sofa, wrapping my arms around her as we both let out a quiet, shared sob.

“I’m sorry, Naya. I’m so sorry I frightened you guys yesterday.”

“Don’t say that,” Naya whispered, her fingers digging into my back.

“I was just scared for you. When you lunged for the grave, my heart just failed me. But we are here. We are going to be fine.”

Akila stood by the doorframe, his arms folded across his chest as he watched the three of us.

Effiom walked up behind him, his uniform replaced by a simple native kaftan, his face looking entirely drained.

He looked at Akila, then at me, and gave a slow, respectful nod.

“The military flight is confirmed for 14:00 hours tomorrow,” Effiom said, his voice dropping into the quiet space of the room.

“The private jet is cleared too.”

Going back to Abuja felt like a distant dream, but twenty-four hours later, we were boarding the private jet at the Uyo airport.

The movement was a blur of black outfits, security escorts, and the heavy silence of the cabin.

Ayo had tried to call my phone twice before we left the village house, but I hadn’t picked up.

I didn’t have the space for him. My mind was entirely consumed by the fact that we were leaving my father’s body behind in the red dirt of Akwa Ibom.

My babiesssss🥹🥹

Let me leave you guys to reflect a bit.

See you on Monday for a fresh episode 🙏🌝

Kindly run up the numbers to encourage me🥹🥹