Is she losing another child?

As mentioned in my previous post, Zana finally contacted me after having lost touch for quite some time. Zana was the first case I had to send to a shelter home in KL due to her out-of-wedlock pregnancy way back in 2006. She gave birth to a pair of twins, both boys, but one of them died after a few months. After she left the home, I lost touch with her, getting only updates from time to time from the lady in charge at the shelter home.

When she called me on Wednesday, she was at the hospital because her 10 year old daughter, was hospitalised for toxoplasmosis. Zana couldn’t call me earlier as she had lost my number, but finally managed to get my number from somebody else.

So yesterday morning I went to the PICU. I called Zana to come out so we could have a chat outside. Zana still looked very much the same although I have not met her for the past 5 years.

She cried the moment she saw me. “Dah takde harapan, kak. CD4 dah kosong. Dia pun dah coma dari semalam. Kena pakai mesin.” Her mother was sleeping on a chair outside the ward. That was the first time I met her mother. When I went to fetch Zana years ago to send her to the shelter home, she wasn’t staying with her real parents, but her foster mother’s home. So I never met her real family, although I have been contacting them via SMS when I was trying to arrange to send her back home after she delivered the twins. But at that time Zana’s father totally disowned her and simply refused to let her back home, especially with the twins tagging along.

Apparently for the past year, Zana had been accepted back by her family. How, or what prompted it, I don’t know, it wasn’t a suitable time for me to ask when I met her yesterday. I just listened to her story without asking too many questions. She did initially brought her son along to stay with her and her family, but somehow, looking at how her family treated her son (he got beaten up quite often), she decided to send him back to the shelter home so they could take better care of him. According to Zana, her family seemed like they still couldn’t accept the little boy who is now 6 years old.

6 years already? Wow, how time flies. I still have a picture of the twins when they were just a few months old before one of them passed away. Yesterday Zana showed me a picture (on her handphone) of her daughter and son together (before the son was sent back to the shelter home). They both looked so cute! The girl was still a chubby girl then.

Yes, the girl. She’s so skinny now, with a CD4 of 0, in coma and on life support.

Zana has already lost one child. Is she going to lose another? We can just pray for the best. Surely Allah knows better.