A Voyage Through High and Low

Chapter 1: Past and present. Time is tricky.

Nurse Imel and Dr. Faizal walked me to her room. It's in the fifth floor of the hospital's main building. The hospital was one of the best in Jakarta, and it received various types of medical emergencies from all around Indonesia. It's popular not only because of the quality of the healthcare workers here, but also because of its strong non-discriminatory policies. You might think, how could an ill-fated, near-homeless 14-year-old boy come to know much about a reputable hospital? Funny story – perhaps bit twisted. My father used to work here as the Chief of Surgery. The hospital director, Mr. Fuji, was one of his dearest friends. I had always dreamt of becoming a doctor and working here in Galenteo National Hospital, but now the hospital merely served as a poignant reminder of the scars left by Dad on us.

Still, I realized I had not given much thought about how to pay for all the treatments. We did have national health insurance, but I felt like it would not cover every single penny. I had not told the staff upon admission. I was afraid that they would intentionally discriminate against my mother and I, and that we would be given below-par medical treatment. We're not living in a fairy tale, you know. Poor people like us were oppressed on a day-to-day basis, so screw the politicians who had promised us a fair country. Only three types of people were capable of being happy here: the lucky, the rich, and the privileged. Jakarta was not Disneyland. Dr. Faizal told us that today was an especially busy day as yesterday was Eid Mubarak and some staff were still on leave. While waiting for the elevator, I couldn't help but let my mind wander.

If God exists, then He most certainly doesn't love good people. Bad things always happen to the best people, like my Mom.

"How old are you, Yusak?" asked Dr. Faizal nervously, apparently trying to make up for his first impression. I guess he had recently started working here too, just like Imel. Senior staff wouldn't spend a single minute talking to a kid like me. It's not that they're arrogant; it's just that they already had too much things to do. A noisy flock of guest visitors exited as the elevator door opened.

"Fourteen."

"Do you live nearby?"

"Yeah, kind of. We live just at the corner of the street."

"Oh, isn't it a bakery there?"

"We rented a small space upstairs."
From the corner of my eye, I saw Imel giving the doctor a nudge in the ribs. The doctor immediately stopped talking. For a few seconds, we stood silently. The elevator music apparently had not changed for years. It had been three or four years since I last came to visit, but the songs were still the same mix of country and jazz music. I bet they had their own hospital playlist. Maybe they even produced their own songs, who knew.

The corridor was very busy. There was a great flurry of activity as soon as we stepped out of the elevator. A group of nurses walked past us while discussing about their Eid Mubarak's silly stories; a family of three argued with one another about the possibility of having another child; an old woman sitting patiently on one of the chairs while whispering some audible prayers about her dying husband. The hospital was the place where you saw people at their most vulnerable state. There was no need to hide behind masks and happy faces anymore. Everybody was suffering here.

We stopped in front of a small room with a look-through window. The walls inside were covered with floral motifs. The lighting was perfect, not too bright and not too dim. There was a widescreen TV hanging on the wall in front of the bed, displaying Asian Food Channel. Everything about the room was cheerful except my Mom, who's lying still with her eyes closed and her body connected to the beeping machine. Life's a lot of times like that – a stream of contradicting events yet fused together into one. Yeah, it's unfair like that.