Have I Been?

I was stuck on the highway leading to KL-Seremban highway last Saturday. The cars were bumper to bumper, but I wasn't complaining. I was enjoying the drive, enjoying the songs on Red fm, humming and occasionally singing to the tunes.

Then I heard the siren of an ambulance.

From far the other side of the road, the ambulance was coming closer. As it passed me, I was stumped. It said "Az-Zahrah" on the side panel. My heart fell. Oh, they have their own ambulance now. And I was suddenly brought to the day of 23rd May 1999, in a flash.

It was the day when Siti Ainin Sofya was delivered. She came out blue. The obstetrician couldn't find her heartbeat, she found murmurs instead. She franically suctioned some phlegm from the frail baby. No go... couldn't do any good.

"Get an ambulance" she said softly but firmly to her staff. "Ambulance?" The doctor did not reply. "You stay here, take some rest. We'll make sure your baby is ok."

They owned no ambulance then. They had to call one of the privately owned. And they couldn't find a place in nearby hospitals. They had to take her to University Hospital in Petaling Jaya.

Siti Ainin Sofya was diagnosed with one of the rarest disease in Malaysia. It was myopathy - the laziness of the muscle I was explained years later. Her muscles weren't functioning as they were supposed to. They were lazy to function, too lazy to respond to the firing of the nerves. The only thing that weren't lazy were her beautiful eyes. They responded to calls of her name. She knew it was her name.

Siti Ainin Sofya saw my tears every time I went to see her. It hurt to see your baby poked by needles upon needles. It hurt to see her tubed down her small tiny nose. It hurt to see traces of dry blood on the apparatus around her. It hurt too much not to cry. It hurt to see her beautiful big eyes looking as if asking for help, as she laid there still and helpless.

That was the time when it also hurt to hear the siren of an ambulance from afar. It hurt to be reminded of a beautiful child long gone succumbed to the rarity of her illness.

But after some time, I learnt to put the hurt away, locked, so that I can move on. So that I can stop crying. After some time, the pain no longer there.

But that day, that Saturday, when I heard the siren and I saw the name of the private clinic where I delivered Siti Ainin Sofya, I was reminded of the pain. And my heart fell, and broke, and I felt like crying.

I must have been in denial. I think the pain was never locked up. I was just denying its existance in me.

I must have...