it was five in the morning when my housemate, Annie, woke me up to have my subuh pray. refused to get up from my bed, I rolled myself back in my blanket, shut my eyes tighter than before. She knocked at my door again and again,
"Kateee, how long will you stay in bed? it's almost 5.15, the sun will rise in no time!"
"so what..."
"YOU WILL MISS THE MORNING PRAYER, THAT'S WHAT. NOW GET THAT ASS OFF THE BED, AND PRAY. HURRY!" she grasped my blanket and threw it away from my bed.
"how can you enter my room, geez..."
"who always left her room unlocked, Kate? now hurry wake up and pray..I'll make us breakfast"
"alright..alright.." I took my step to the bathroom halfheartedly, took my wudhu and did my morning prayers.
Annie's been my housemate for about a year now. she's actually not a very religious person, I used to drag her to pray and now it's been reversed. I felt so proud of her.
We have known each other for almost 8 years, we went to the same medical school in Jakarta, not really in touch back then. We lived in different kind of group, she was the sparkling one, not me. We graduated at the same time, even I was not the sparkling kid, I managed to graduate on time. We didn’t go to the same internship place, didn’t have any regular chat.
Until one day, I knew from my friend in the same group that Annie interested in neurology as I was, and that she was trying to take the residency test at the same period as I was. So then, as I knew she’d been so amazing in our school time, I asked her to have some study time together for preparation.
She still had that sparkling brain as before, while me? I was just a potato. I might not gonna make it to the residency if not because of her. The only flaw I saw on her was, she rarely did pray. We are both muslim, although neither of us wear hijab yet, I found that I did pray regularly, but she didn’t. I asked her once, that time, the zuhur time was almost up, she refused me by saying, “it’s almost up, I don’t want to be hurry in doing the pray. Thank you, Qatalonya,” ah yes, she still called me with my first name exactly how it’s written, Qatalonya. I, too, called her with her first name, Britany. We’ve been studying together for the test for about 7 months, and been great friend since then. I asked her to call me Kate, and she didn’t mind to be called Annie.
When we finally made it to the neurology residency with the same almamater as our last medical school, we were hyped. We celebrated it with went to some ice cream places, and forgot about the word fat. We gained 2 kilos each after that, but who cares? We made it to the residency! We made it with 5 other people, they were Eddie, Mitha, Sadhy, Gloria, and Monika. We called our team as 7 Endorphins and I wouldn’t ask for a better team. I’ll tell you more about them later.
As a junior resident, me, Annie, and 5 other junior resident had some random tasks to be done. Tag a futsal field, bought some watermelons, sent letters to other consultant out of town, packed invitations for Doctoral promotion and other random tasks. Annie was renting a room at Paseban street back then, we made her room as a base camp to finish all this random tasks.
I realized that me and Annie started to spend less time together, it’s almost always 7 of us. Actually I didn’t really mind it, but sometimes I missed our time, just the two of us, talked about everything from scientific thing as molecular reaction happened in stroke to silly random thoughts as why Cheetos should be named after cheetah.
After a year, while we was walking at the hospital’s alley about to go home, I finally asked Annie to search a flat to be lived in together, “Hey Ann, what do you think if we spare a flat together?”
“A flat? Why so sudden, Kate? Do you miss me?hahahaha”
“meh..i was just thinking to rent a flat near our hospital to avoid the morning jam. The traffic from my home at Bekasi to here at Central Jakarta is the last thing I wanna face in my everyday life until I graduate”
