ABOUT THIS BOOK
Description
The attention of the Civic Education teacher and almost all the students was focused on the monitor, who had been tasked with distributing the test papers from last week. This allowed two girls among the students sitting in the middle of the front row to finalize the plan they had been hatching since morning.
One of them suddenly clutched her stomach, screamed with all her might, and then slid down to lie on the floor. Before the teacher and the others could process what was happening, the second girl knelt in front of her, shaking her gently, and said in a tearful voice, "Rumana, what happened to you? Please wake up, oh my..."
A smile almost escaped Rumana's lips, but she immediately felt a sharp pinch from her friend, Yusra. "Damn it, if you blow our cover, I swear I'll tell them I had nothing to do with this!"
It was pure panic that made Yusra swear. By then, the teacher had arrived, and the rest of the classmates gathered around them, asking what happened. Yusra, crying corporate tears, claimed she just suddenly saw Rumana collapse out of nowhere.
The health prefect was called from their class, and with the help of Yusra and a female teacher, they carried Rumana to the small clinic inside the school. They then looked up the contact number of her next of kin, who happened to be her uncle, and called him.
After an IV drip was set up and she was given an injection, everyone left the room except the doctor and Yusra. Sensing that the coast was clear, Rumana opened her eyes, climbed down from the bed, and knelt before the doctor. "Doctor, please help me. When my uncle arrives, tell him that ulcer is about to eat up my intestines."
Even though he found the request utterly ridiculous, he couldn't help but let out a sudden laugh. He quickly hardened his expression, though.
"Do I look like your playmate or something?"
Yusra knelt down as well. "If you don't help her, I swear starvation will kill her at their house. Then she will get a real ulcer."
As he turned to leave, Rumana—who knew for sure that if their plan failed today, her body would bear the brunt of it at home, aside from the hunger—instinctively ripped the IV needle from her arm and rushed to block the door. "If you don't help me, I swear I will fake madness in this clinic. Tell him a terrible illness has struck me and that I should be taken to our family home so I don't die here."
He stared at her, completely dumbfounded. Before he knew it, she marched over to the clinic bed, and since it wasn't very heavy, she flipped it over. She also overturned the small side table next to the bed, screaming and crying. Yusra, who had helped plan the fake illness, actually grew frightened seeing that Rumana looked like she was genuinely losing her mind.
While this was happening and the doctor was trying to restrain her, she heard her uncle's voice from the small reception area asking where she was. Her eyes filled with tears, she looked at the doctor again, pleading and begging for help.
He felt a pang of pity for her, while Yusra was now crying for real.
The moment Awaisu stepped into the room, he found her looking completely disheveled, as if she had been in a wrestling match. Tears had washed over her face. He quickly rushed to her side and held her. "Rumana, what happened to you? Stop crying and tell me what you want."
She couldn't speak and just kept sobbing. She hadn't wanted to resort to this, but if she didn't return to her parents' house, she didn't feel she could endure living in his house any longer.
Deeply anxious, he looked at the doctor. "What is wrong with her?"
The doctor swallowed hard, looking at how the two girls had locked their eyes on him. "Uhmm, based on my examination, this girl is suffering from a severe ulcer, to the point where it is about to damage her intestines." He was shocked at himself for playing along and even borrowing their exact words.
He shook his head in disbelief. "An ulcer? An ulcer from hunger? Tsck, certainly not in my house, I swear."
"That is what the examination shows, sir," the doctor replied, already starting to worry that the matter might be escalated.
He flared up. "Do you know who I am to accuse me of letting someone starve? Why, even my security guard wouldn't complain of hunger, let alone my daughter!"
The doctor's heart sank, and he thought to himself, His daughter? What kind of daughter frames her own parents like this? He glared at them, even though neither of them was looking at him.
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