KambingBujang

As soon as the nurse made a confirmation to transfer my wife to Kajang General Hospital, I kissed my wife goodbye, informing her that I had to make a pit stop at home to take iPod charger. I didn’t want to let the time killed me with infinite boredom. We went to different vehicle. I crawled up inside my BLM car and she was escorted by nurse to take a ride with Ambulance.

Keep The Faith
Turning the key of my car ignited me the moment of 5 minutes ago; an Indian family argued with a nurse that they refused to go Kajang Hospital. They repeatedly asking the same question if there’s any possibility to take the pregnant one to another hospital. If else, they wanted to go home and waited until there was vacancy on Serdang Hospital. But the nurse forced them not to do that.

I saw fear burned in their eyes.

We all have the same fear with Hospital Kajang. We feared their mistakes and carelessness happened in the past, would happened to us. Unfortunately, I could not afford to go to private hospital. Not in terms of money. I had made savings just to keep the pace with this expected event. It’s not a problem of money. I had my reasons why the private would be my last choice.

The rate of cesarean in private, for some unknown reasons, was far more higher than any public hospital in Malaysia. They’re more preferred cesarean operation because they can smell fifthly money and took opportunity to ripped that money out of it. And good sale equaled to good profit. That made sense in a greedy corporate world.

I really hate cesarean. And I didn’t want my wife to deal with its long-term effects

***

Finally I was at Kajang Hospital after 12 minutes of fast driving.

I picked up the pregnancy basket from my car, walked to Dewan Bersalin (Labor Hall) and found myself a comfort seat outside the hall. I tried to cooling down my emotions for a while. The thoughts of how bad the structure of the old British-fashioned buildings was, and why they have not refurbished yet, had made my mind spinning again. The seat was not comforting anymore.

As I regained control of myself, I immediately approached the front desk of Dewan Bersalin and asked where can I find my lovely one. She’s pointing the way.

The Last time to I see You
She sat on a bench with uneasy look, and she already dressed up with pink cloth. I hold her hand and I tried to comfort her in a gentle way. Her hand still warm and pleasant. It’s just like the first time I met her. She hooked a smile in her face, and saying she was experiencing frequent contractions every 5 minutes.

“Stay with me for while,”  she said.

I asked her if she was okay, if she could bear on with the pain, if she still found the breathing pattern she learned were helping, and if still she ready for giving birth to the our baby.

A few minutes later, a nurse said it’s about time.

That was the last time I see her before you go into the labor room.

It’s our policy.
I took my effort to lead her by holding her hand and put my other hand around her waist. And then we’re stopped by an annoying nurse, “I’m sorry.  We are not encourage the husband or relatives accompany the pregnant mother through the giving birth process. It’s our policy,” she said.

My wife gave me a frowned look, wanted to show her sign of disapproval that she didn’t want to do this alone. She needed me so bad. The nurse led the way to the labor as my wife’s face filled with wrath.

Good luck my love.

As  I walked out of the hall, I transferred my rage to the door by slamming it so hard that the other soon-to-be fathers outside the hall, looked at me with question marks in their head. I avoid eye contact with them.

There’s no need to small talk or expand social networking right now.

I ignore them as I was walking to available row of seats.

I lay down and stretched out my body on four seats. In rage, I started questioning myself in my head.

Why they call it Dewan Bersalin? Was it similar like my former school’s Dewan Makan that we do our dinner together with another 100 students? Does my wife giving birth together with another 100 pregnant women?

Why hospital policy is like that? Why not they introduce new policy that gave benefits to everyone?

Recited Yaseen
I closed my eyes and saw my wife’s face in my head. I realized to just lay down here and did nothing. I was not there for her, like the first giving birth. To hold my guilty feeling from becoming worse, I read Yaseen instead.

I slided to unlock my iPod, open Al-Quran app, searched the surah index and started reciting Yaseen softly. This was the most meaningful recitation of all my life. In the length of recitation, my memory played all the sweetest things that we had for the last three years of marriage.

The pleasing moment when we met our eyes for the first time, the remarkable marriage ceremony, the sensational feelings the first time we made love, the awful nights we had our fierce fights, the birth of our first child, and the moment I heard our second unborn baby made the thumping noise inside your womb.

At least, I had contributed something indirectly.

My God, I was so afraid if I had to lose my love.

After I finished reciting, I tried to remember what had happened that night.

My wife’s bag of water broke exactly at 1.20 am. We went straight to Serdang Hospital and we waited there almost two hours, just to be informed that there’s no ward vacancy. Laboring couldn’t be done if the wardroom was full. We finally agreed that we had no choice but to go Kajang Hospital. Now I was waiting patiently outside the Dewan Bersalin, and my wife was in desperate struggle inside.

It was 5.20 a.m. Unconsciously, I went to sleep.

5.30 am: The Unexpected Call
The sudden vibrations from my pocket sent an impulse to my brain, and forced my eyes to open. I woke up from my sleep almost instantly. I took out my phone inside my pocket and looked at caller’s name on the screen.

It’s my mother-in-law. I guess she wanted to check our status whether we were okay or not. Just like several calls before that. I was really tired of giving the same answer to everyone.

I wished I had an application in my phone that can automatically replied when someone asked “How’s going on?” that night.

I accepted the calling.

“Congratulations, Your wife gave birth to your baby girl!” “Thanks, Mom!”, I blind-fully responded. We continued the conversation with a small talk about 5 minutes before I hang up the phone. A moment after that, my vision became blurred and my thought were hanging in the air.

How on earth my mother-in-law knew about my baby? Did I hear a word ‘girl’ from her mouth?

The thought made me jump off from the seat and made an approach to the security guard. I asked her whether she heard any news from the labor, she replied “No news from the labor,”. She explained that if the nurse didn’t come out looking for the husband, then there’s no news.

It made no sense. I was here, distinguished by the bricks of walls, and received no news from inside the hall. On the other hand, my mother-in-law who lived about 475 km away from hospital serdang, knew about it, and gave me her compliment minutes ago. Did she practiced black magic? Okay, Let’s not go there.

But, How on earth..

The End Of Waiting
It was 6 am. I did my subuh prayer at new surau. I raised up both hand and prayed that Allah accepted my subuh prayer because my physical and mental disciplines during prayer were disturbed by worrisome and mixed thought.

After another 1 and half hour of waiting. Alhamdullillah, at last my wife appeared, but in a tireness figure. Her weary eyes were obviously encircled by two black rings. It must be some of kind of battle inside the labor room.

The adorable smile hooked on her face when she saw me waiting for her. I noticed that she was holding a baby. From where I standing, I sensed that she still trying to deal with the magnitude of the aftermath, and she couldn’t stand to walk. She used wheelchair instead.

After that, she gave the baby to me. I hugged the baby carefully with her head on left forearm. I smelled her thick hair and her chubby cheek. Gave kisses several times.
“Your mom knew before I even heard any news from you,” I said.

“I’ve told you that she’s working as calling officer at Hospital Besar Kota Bharu. How can you forget your about my mother? She has been working for more than 20 years. She memorizes the number of every general hospitals throughout Malaysia. She might have received the news from a nurse she called,” she explained.

So that’s how she knew about it. Hmm.. What am I thinking?

The coming of our second child has rejuvenated our love again. The moment I hold my newborn baby, I was falling for my wife again. This time I was in too deep that I thought that I couldn’t recover at all if I lost her.

28th April 2010. It was another best day of my life.

Photo Credit: Mylla