Ignoring his wife's anger, Awang whispered, "Please call the clinic. My patient can wait, and we'll talk about it later."
<i>He's made a habit of throwing his own mistakes at me</i>, Kuntum thought as she walked toward the telephone on the kitchen wall.
<i>He'll regret it and apologize later.</i>
Kuntum had no doubt because it was always like this. Awang would eventually apologize, even when Kuntum was the one in the wrong. Awang looked weak and pathetic, and she didn't know the reason behind it, but she was sure he did it deliberately to make her feel guilty in the most twisted way.
No matter how hard she tried to get rid of her guilt, the feeling always resurfaced, and it made her furious. She did her best to calm herself as she called the clinic, and when someone on the other end picked up, she managed to say, "Good morning, this is Kuntum. Mrs. Awang Dermawan. Doctor Awang won't be coming in today."
"What's wrong, Mrs. Kuntum?" the short, plump receptionist asked before Kuntum could hang up.
<i>Why are people so nosy? Can't they just listen to what I say and accept it without asking questions?</i> Kuntum thought as she opened the refrigerator to take out a few eggs. What happened in someone else's marriage wasn't for everyone to know, including their mothers and grandmothers.
<i>What's wrong with people these days?</i> Maybe it was the nature of small towns that made people so curious about their neighbors' affairs.
People hadn't acted like this when she was still in college. Of course, at school, she had gradually lost touch with all her friends because she spent more and more time with Awang. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, even if she regretted it now. In fact, if she had spent more time with him, her friends wouldn't be here for her.
This shabby little town had degraded her social life.
At least she still had Gumarang to talk to. Gumarang had been a good, reliable friend ever since they'd met. Kuntum could sense that the man actually wanted more than friendship, but she would never let that happen.
Even though she and Awang had plenty of problems, she loved her husband more than anyone she had ever known. She didn't understand why Awang couldn't see that.
<i>How could he be jealous of someone else when he was the man she'd chosen to be her husband?</i>
Sometimes Awang's thought process was too twisted for her to understand. It made no sense that someone as intelligent as Awang could be consumed by such terrible jealousy. Besides, she didn't want to lose the only friend she had left. Although she felt that this made her selfish, it only made her angrier.
After finishing her scrambled eggs, Kuntum sat down and ate them with toast while drinking a cup of coffee. But a rustling sound and muffled screams nearly made her heart leap out of her chest, and she dropped her plate, sending it tumbling off the table. Before she realized it, she was running to the living room to check on Awang.
Her husband's behavior had changed strangely. Awang sat trembling at the edge of the sofa, his eyes staring wildly. Cold sweat poured down his face, and he clutched a plastic garbage bag in both hands.
"Awang, are you okay? What happened?"
Trying to stand, swaying from side to side and clearly in so much pain that he could barely remain seated, Awang managed to open his eyes.
"It... I... it was horrible. I... I've never had a nightmare like that before. It was so real...."
Although Kuntum was still annoyed with her husband, she wrapped her arms around Awang's sweat-soaked body and did her best to comfort him.
"Tell me about it, Wang. Talking about it will make you feel better," Kuntum whispered, knowing full well that it wasn't true. Her introductory psychology course had taught her that.
Reliving trauma was generally traumatic in itself and could be considered worse than the original cause. Depending on a person's personality structure and coping skills, the impact of something as simple as being sideswiped by a motorcycle could develop into the equivalent of the apocalypse in the sufferer's mind.
She herself had never experienced anything like that, apart from being abandoned as a child, but the lesson had still remained firmly lodged in her mind.