Seizure symptoms had to be reported to Lembaga Berlalulintas Kerajaan, and Awang wasn't about to let that happen to him.
Awang still had all his mental faculties, and most of the time he only drove short distances from his home to the clinic or the nearest hospital. The accident had made his friend take over his practice permanently, and there had been no need to take it back ever since.
He knew his friend had done it mainly to erase his guilt, but every attempt to change his friend's mind had failed.
Groaning loudly, Awang's eyes fluttered open, then immediately narrowed against the glaring sunlight. Confused and blinking, he struggled to prop himself up on one elbow. A sudden wave of dizziness forced his eyelids shut again.
"What the hell is this?" he muttered incredulously. "Where am I?"
"Take it easy, Wang," Kuntum sighed in relief. "You fell and passed out for a little while...."
Ignoring Kuntum's words, Awang struggled to stand. Nausea nearly made him pass out again, but years of fighting the same feeling under the influence of drugs enabled him to get upright on both feet.
The headache that rattled his brain—and seemed to make the ground tremble beneath him—was another matter. Paracetamol or ibuprofen definitely wasn't going to make this one go away.
The thought frightened him, making his body sway. Kuntum leaped forward and grabbed his arm before he stumbled into the stone parapet, backing away in a daze. A powerful aftershock nearly brought them both to their knees before she managed to drag Awang to a safer spot behind the parapet. Awang swayed in her arms, struggling desperately against the sleep overtaking him.
They had to get down into the valley before something even worse happened.
Stepping away from the relatively safe parapet, Kuntum shifted into a seated position with Awang in front of her. Using a loose stone as a sled, they slid down the slope. A few minutes later, they reached the valley floor just before another aftershock brought down the more-than-one-ton stone parapet in a landslide that followed the same path.
Before the next tremor hit, Kuntum managed to drag Awang's nearly motionless body to her car and load her groaning husband into the back seat.
"I'm taking you to the hospital," she blurted between gasps over the roar of the engine as the car squealed onto the rough asphalt road.
Awang didn't respond to his wife's words. Consciousness vanished, swallowed by postictal sleep's darkness.
The day began leisurely at Kedai Sudut Jamil on Jalan Raya Utama in Taluk Kuantan, Kerajaan Melayu Raya. Days always began leisurely there, and Johar Jamil had no desire to change that.
He and his wife had settled into an easygoing life for the best of reasons. When Johar was a super-busy psychiatrist in Pekanbaru, his life had raced out of control like a tram without brakes—or at least until his doctor warned him that his severe heart condition had been quietly taking over and stealing days from his life.
He had known about his high blood pressure for years, but even though he was a doctor, Johar had never taken his hypertension seriously until his blood pressure showed significant ischemic changes. In fact, he kept working until one day tightness clutched his chest, spreading crippling pain into his arm and up his neck like terror radiating outward.
A few days in the hospital, aided by morphine and cardiac catheterization, had changed his perspective. He had to change his life, or the rest of it wouldn't be worth living.
The small city of Taluk Kuantan was his answer, and he couldn't imagine a better place. With a population of three thousand, most of them newcomers, and situated in the heart of Hutan Lindung, peace and isolation were their only options.
Of course, his wife Halida was thrilled by the idea of returning to her hometown. She had wanted to move for years, and Johar's health gave them the best reason they'd ever had to make such a dramatic change.
Fortunately, they had prepared for retirement from the very first day Johar started working. They were financially comfortable, especially for a city the size of Taluk Kuantan, which was one of the areas with the lowest cost of living in the Grand Malay Sultanate.
Running a small grocery shop at the main intersection let them live leisurely, introduced them to the people in town, and gave Halida something to do with the time she had never been able to fill properly after the children left home.
They couldn't be too ambitious about overworking themselves. They might not make much profit selling goods at rock-bottom prices to keep people from going to the supermarket for their necessities. The point was that they were together, and her husband was still alive.
The low rumble reaching her ears as the shelves began to rattle brought memories of her childhood rushing back. She had experienced one or two minor earthquakes as a teenage girl, but earthquakes were relatively rare in the Grand Malay Sultanate, even though Hutan Lindung Tesso Nilo lay along the Patahan Besar Sumatera.
Several powerful earthquakes, predicted time and again, had devastated Negara Bagian Bangkahulu, Persemakmuran Sriwijaya. A few years ago, one had shaken the coast of Pelabuhan Padang, Republik Minangkabau. Before that, the west coast of Aceh Darussalam had been ravaged by an earthquake and tsunami.
This was the first time an earthquake had made the teacups clink. Some of the shop's shelves shook violently, and several eventually toppled over. She herself struggled to remain standing.
The earthquake was stronger than anything she had experienced in the past, just as unpredictable as death, which could claim a human life at any moment. In less than a minute, most of the goods on the shop's shelves had spilled across the floor.
The panic she felt gradually faded once the shaking stopped. The grocery shop, built from old bricks, had been designed to last for centuries. The sirens wailing outside signaled troubling news somewhere else in town.
A few seconds later, she felt Johar's arms embrace her from behind, and she knew everything would be all right.
For now.