An otherwise ordinary Sunday of Feb. 20th between the hours of 13 to 14 PM in Taman Sari Pesona Bali swimming pool in Ciputat where we live turned tragic for a man.
I was playing a rubber durian volleyball with a neighbor boy, friend of my daughter's, when he suddenly stopped the game."Look," he said, pointing to a terrible sight. At first I thought I saw two men kidding themselves by wrestling in the pool. Then I realized it was a "lifeguard" trying to tow away another man out of water. The guard couldn't pull the victim out of it, so I instinctively swam fast towards them and could give the victim a push below the water, then jumped myselfy out of the pool to help drag the body out. This guard instructed me to help carry the victim and lie him down on a wooden bench, which we did. Then he tried to press his hands several times to the victim's belly, when soon water and froth came out of the victim's mouth. He said to me, "All right, now do it." I responded, "Do what?" He didn't respond at first, then he said, or perhaps suggested unconfidently, "Let's move him out of the sight?," which we did. "This man had epilepsy, he said to me as we burden the cold body. Oh? I thought, that explained things (and that's the information I passed on to Chandra and my daughter Lej, later). A middle aged lady came approacing. As she began to recognize the victim, she started sobbing in panic.
Somebody had cleared the ticketing table, and a guy whom I thought was one of the pool management, told us to put down the victim on the table. A quick decision was made. The victim was to be taken to Gandul hospital, which , I don't really know, half an hour from the site? The weeping woman went with him. And that's it. Everything went flashing very fast, like in a dream. I didn't know even the least information about the victim. The 2-m part of the pool was empty for some minutes. When people came back swimming again, way too soon! As if nothing mattered had happened. As if nothing happened at all.
The guy who took the victim out came back, wearing an official lifeguard uniform by then. That's when I knew he was a guard. Apparently he didn't go to Gandul. As he walked slowly and passed by me, he gave me a nod, perhaps an unncessary gratitude, I inquired about the victim. Do you know this guy? What made you think he had epilepsy? " No, I don't, I don't know him at all. His mouth was frothing, as you saw it yourself. He might have been seized by it." I sat down aghast and became quickly consumed by remorse.
Two nights have found me unable to go to sleep without me having to confront countless of questions about the man and the whole situation. He was about 25-30, but who was he? How was he transported to Gandul? Did he die? What did they do? What should have been done? etc.
Now that I've learned from surfing the net something about drowning these two days ex post, I can only feel certain that that everything we did as soon as we left the water was inappropriate! The man either died or survived with irreversible brain damage. People can survive without food for days, but suffocation allows only 2-3 minutes before tragedy. It is with deep and bitter regret that I'm posting this. My purposes are: 1) to pay tribute to the victim; 2) to share a very costly lesson.
