At two in the morning, a harsh cough came from the master bedroom. It sounded different from usual—like someone struggling desperately to pull air into his lungs, followed by a loud, wheezing breath. A second later, Mom’s panicked scream shattered the silence.
“Ghan! Ghea! Help, honey! Dad can’t breathe!”
I jumped out of bed immediately, leaving my bedroom door wide open. In the master bedroom, Dad was already sitting on the edge of the bed, his body shaking violently. His face was deathly pale, his lips were beginning to turn blue, and both hands were clutching his chest. He was gasping as if he’d run out of oxygen.
“Ghea, call an online taxi right now! Gas, help me carry Dad!” I ordered quickly, trying to stay calm amid the panic overwhelming me.
Gastan, his eyes red and his face filled with fear, immediately grabbed Dad’s legs, while I wrapped my arms around Dad’s thin body, which felt frighteningly light against my shoulders. We carried Dad out of the house through the light drizzle and put him into the taxi that arrived a few minutes later.
Throughout the trip to the emergency department of the regional public hospital, I rubbed Dad’s cold forehead. Mom kept whispering prayers into his ear, while Ghea gripped his trembling hand tightly. In the front seat, Gastan just stared silently at the road, his shoulders rising and falling—maybe he was crying. He must have known that Dad’s stress since that incident had been the main trigger for this asthma and heart attack.
A government hospital at three in the morning was a cold, exhausting place. The sharp smell of disinfectant, overly bright fluorescent lights, and nurses hurrying past with exhausted faces greeted us. The emergency doctor on duty immediately placed an oxygen mask over Dad’s face and injected him with a bronchodilator.
“His lungs are filled with fluid because his heart failure has flared up again,” the middle-aged doctor said after examining Dad’s chest with a stethoscope. “He needs to be admitted to the HCU, or High Care Unit, for close monitoring for at least two days.”
I let out a sigh of relief that lasted only a few seconds before a nurse called me over to the administration desk.
“Family of Mr. Rahmansyah?” the female clerk behind the service window asked.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m his son.”
“Sir, I’m sorry. We checked Mr. Rahmansyah’s BPJS Kesehatan records. It turns out his coverage has been inactive for the past two months because of an administrative issue with his former workplace,” she explained flatly, as though she were used to delivering bad news like this.
“To be admitted to the HCU as a self-pay patient, you’ll need to pay a three-million-rupiah deposit for initial treatment and medication.”
Three million rupiah?
The words felt like a hammer blow to my chest. I stared at my phone and opened my mobile banking app. My current balance was twenty-one and a half million rupiah. Eighteen million of it was the project money Elang had sent me, which I absolutely could not touch because it was Gastan’s debt repayment money, due tomorrow afternoon. That left only three and a half million rupiah of my own money.
If I swiped my debit card for three million rupiah to keep Dad breathing now, I’d be left with only five hundred thousand rupiah in savings.
That meant tomorrow afternoon—or rather, in just a few hours, on this Thursday—I would have only eighteen and a half million rupiah to hand over to the debt collectors. I’d be short six and a half million rupiah.
“What should I do, sir? Without the deposit, we can only provide emergency treatment in the emergency department corridor. He can’t be moved to the HCU,” the clerk pressed, gentle but firm.
I turned around and looked at the half-open emergency department curtain. Dad was lying weakly behind it, electrode wires attached to his chest. Mom sat beside him, wiping his forehead with a tissue.
There was no choice. Money could be found, but Dad’s breathing couldn’t be put on hold. I pulled the blue debit card from my wallet and slid it through the service window. “Just charge it, ma’am.”
The sound of the EDC machine processing the transaction was like a time bomb counting down inside my head. My phone vibrated, displaying a balance-deduction notification. I now had eighteen and a half million rupiah left.
I shuffled toward a plastic chair in the cold hospital corridor. I sat back and stared at the blurry white ceiling. Gastan came over, sat in the chair beside me, and lowered his head deeply.
“Ghani...” he whispered hoarsely. “You used up your savings on Dad, didn’t you?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t even have the energy left to get angry or lecture him.
I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling the bitterness of life become truly unbearable. I was in the darkest corner of the room, and I had no idea where else to go to find the money I’d lost.