YOURS, JANNAH

#FIFTY THREE

Jannah sat down quietly on the tiled floor of the hospital room and watched blankly from below as her daughter face was closed with the duvet she's used earlier to sheathe her body. Everything stopped making sense only the ringing of the ECG earlier, it kept resonating inside her brain making her see everything double. She wanted to yell at them to remove the duvet so it won't suffocate her daughter but her lips wouldn't move, nothing could.

Another sudden feeling of cold and heaviness expanded in her core, her muscles becoming lethargic and slothful. A tightness in her chest made her wheeze, Aisha was by her side at once while crying hard without trying to hide it away from anyone. How could she? Her stomach feels heavy and her head is aching excruciatingly right now, it is too heavy against her neck. All she wants to do is wake up from this nightmare.

She stood up after Jannah calmed down, removed her phone from the jeans she wore inside and called Hajiya Maimuna to tell her about the dreadful news. She collected Jannah's phone and checked to see whether Adnan had seen the message, not seen so she called but it wasn't going through. She went back to sit down on the floor with Jannah, wrapping her arms around her shoulders in an emollient way. She is still crying too.

Aisha choked once in a while, her cried muffled like a baby's.

While they were huddled on the floor for God knows how long, Hajiya Maimuna rushed inside the hospital room looking disoriented, strayed and misplaced at the same time. None of them could raise their heads or speak to her as she rambled on and on in gibberish. She fearfully opened the duvet to see whether or not Imara is the one, maybe they were playing a prank on her though no one does that. Lie about someone's death? That's a no go territory.

When she saw Imara, she could not tell what happened but she found herself held by Ammar from behind her. Hajiya Maimuna could not believe that her granddaughter whom she's seen healthy, buoyant and exuberant just few days ago is now lying inanimately stagnant on the bed appearing dead. No... is she really dead? She searched for pulse but found none.

Oh, she really is no more. She is dead. She's left the world for them to struggle, her body shut down along with the machines beside her.

"Innalillahi wa inna ilaihi rajiun! Ammar, tell me sh-she is not the one. Just reassure me this is a dream or I am hallucinating. Anyth-anything." She turned around and hugged her son steadfastly to her bosom while she cried.

That is something she hadn't done since the death of her husband several years ago.

Ammar couldn't say a thing, the only sound he managed was a terrible whiny gasp, he only held his mother and patted her back his eyes bouncing from Imara's lifeless body on the bed to Aisha and Jannah rocking each other on the floor. He's got no idea how tears started running down his face, his chest moving along with his mothers as they cry and console one another.

No words were exchanged in the room, they allowed everything to be as it was, hoping deep down Imara would wake up.

It is a wishful thinking that they shouldn't even have but they cannot help it. Each and every one of them in that room is in denial, they are yet to accept that Imara is really dead. It is something extremely strenuous because she was fine yesterday, healthy and watching cartoon in the living room until later in the night. How are they expected to just welcome and swallow the fact that she is dead?

Nawal walked into the room wailing in hysterics, her eyes red and face puffy. She rushed to the bed and also opened Imara's face, then she fell on her knees beside the bed bawling. That is islamically not permissible but none of them could bring themselves to talk her out of it. She cried while holding her niece's hand, the girl she promised to take out to sneak ice cream next Friday. A Friday she was never promised.