The Defiant Doctor
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 3: The Phone Call
The residence hall room was small and orderly in the way that Amara made things small and orderly — everything in its place, her textbooks arranged by subject on the narrow shelf above the desk, her notes from the first four weeks of lectures stacked and labeled in the drawer beneath it. The window looked out over a courtyard where other students sometimes gathered in the evenings to talk and laugh and do the social things that people her age did, or that people older than her did, which was most people here.
She did not often join them. Not from shyness — she was not shy — but because her evenings belonged to her work, and her work was considerable, and she had learned early that the hours between dinner and sleep were the ones that separated the students who kept up from the ones who fell behind.
She was reviewing her biochemistry notes when her phone rang.
Her mother’s name on the screen. She set her pen down, straightened in her chair, and answered.
“Mama.”
“Amara.” Her mother’s voice carried the particular warmth it always carried — big and immediate, filling the phone the way it filled rooms, the voice of a woman who laughed easily and loved without reservation and had worked hard every day of her life. “How are you, my girl? Are you eating?”
“Yes, Mama. The dining hall is good. How are you? How is Baba?”
“We are well, we are well. Your father is working. Your sister is driving me mad, the usual.” A laugh, then the sound of movement — her mother shifting, settling, the background noise of home adjusting around her. Amara could picture it precisely: the small kitchen, the plastic table, the window with the broken latch that let in cold air in winter. “We are so proud of you. You know that.”
“I know, Mama.”
“Everyone asks about you. Mrs. Mthembu, the pastor, everyone. They all want to know how the famous Amara Dube is getting on in Cape Town.”
Amara smiled at her notes. “Tell them I am getting on fine. Tell them the work is hard and I am doing it.”
“That is what I tell them. That is exactly what I tell them.” Another pause. Longer this time. The quality of it different — not the pause of someone gathering the next cheerful thing to say but the pause of someone gathering something else entirely. “Your father wants to speak with you.”
The warmth in Amara’s chest shifted slightly. Her father did not usually ask to speak with her during her mother’s calls. Her mother’s calls were her mother’s calls — her father would call on Sundays, separately, brief and formal and proud in the way that men of his generation expressed pride, which was mostly through silence and the occasional gruff acknowledgment.
A shuffling sound. Then her father’s voice, lower and more careful than her mother’s.
“Amara.”
“Baba. How are you?”
“I am well.” He cleared his throat. “You are working hard?”
“Yes, Baba.”
“Good. Good.” Another pause, longer than her mother’s had been. She could hear him breathing. She could hear him deciding. “There is something I want to tell you about. Nothing to worry about. Just — there is a man who has come to speak with us. A good man, a man of standing. He has a son.”
Amara was quiet. Outside her window two students crossed the courtyard, their laughter rising briefly and fading.
“His name is Bongani Zulu,” her father said. “You would not know him. He is from outside Dundee. He has land, cattle, a business. His son is educated — engineering, in Pretoria.” He paused again. “He came to speak to us about you.”
“About me,” Amara said.
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