When a doctor's honest help paid back with a cruel attack
By Yogita Tahil Ramani
JAKARTA (JP): It was dusk on Nov. 27 and Andi Santosa, a 47- year-old general practitioner, was at his rented practice on Jl. Dewi Sartika, East Jakarta.
He was alone. The last patient had left a few minutes earlier and no one was in the waiting room.
At about 6 p.m. Andi, who was still in his white coat, heard a knock on the door.
"It was a handsome man in his mid-20s," he recalled.
According to Andi, the visitor implored the doctor for assistance to help a dying relative at a nearby house.
"He told me that his relative living in a nearby house could not get out of bed," Andi told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
Knowing that more patients might show up at any time, he politely told the stranger, whose eyes were etched with desperation: "Even though I have no patients, I cannot leave my practice."
The man left and Andi returned to his work.
Like many other businesses, only a few people had visited his practice recently in the wake of the prolonged economic turmoil.
About one and half hours later, the same man appeared again and made the same plea.
Andi looked at the visitor earnestly.
The resolve of the 1979 graduate of Atma Jaya University's school of medicine started to ebb.
His 16 years of experience as a general practitioner suddenly came across his mind, when he had often walked or ridden his bicycle along dirty, spooky alleys at all hours to help the poor.
Earnest eyes
Even though he was aware, from the media, about the escalating number of street crimes in the capital in the last few weeks he decided not to take the alarming news seriously.
"I am a doctor. I saw in front of me a man who seemed decent and sincere," Andi said, adding that the man was clean-shaven with short hair and earnest eyes.
The visitor, he said, wore a short-sleeved shirt and a light khaki-colored vest.
"He was quite handsome with wheat-colored skin. Judging from his accent, it seemed that he was from East Java," the doctor continued.
Andi listened to his pleas for another few minutes before finally buying the story.
He grabbed his satchel, locked his practice and invited the "good man" to get into the passenger seat of his black Suzuki Escudo van.
During the trip, the generous doctor asked more details about the passenger's ailing relative, who the man said was "really sick and too weak to speak".
"We had not even gone one kilometer when he told me to turn left into a small alley near the intersection of Jl. Dewi Sartika and Jl. MT Haryono," Andi said.
The alley, he recalled, was lined with small kiosks. It ended in an open, deserted field. Scores of houses could be seen about 15 meters from the field.
"I parked my car on the field. The man then pointed to the back door of one of the houses which had an iron fence and neon lights around it.
"On reaching the door, he told me that it was locked. And then... another man screamed 'Ya!' (Yes!)" Andi said.
Before Andi could react, hands appeared from everywhere and he was pinned to the ground. Each of his arms was held by a pair of hands and another hand grabbed his throat.
Andi felt his life being literally choked out of his body. He could neither breathe nor speak.
He heard the rustle of plastic rope and knew that the crooks were about to tie his legs. He struggled with all his might.
"They failed to tie my legs after trying four times.
"God, I knew I was going to die right there. I knew that if they succeeded in tying my legs, they could easily throw me into a river," Andi said.
"I just kept thinking that my family would not be able to find my body should the gang dump me into a river," the father of two children said.
From the corner of his right eye, Andi saw a man taking out a sickle. Instinctively, he used his right hand -- which was free at that moment -- to grasp the weapon.
His hand was bleeding but he felt no pain. He could not even breathe but he did not care.
He said he was so angry at what was happening to him.
After succeeding in freeing his left arm, he was able to remove the hands from his throat.
"I took two quick breaths and then the hands were back on my throat," he said.
The crooks, Andi said, carried out the crime carefully, quickly and silently.
But for Andi the seven-minute episode lasted far too long.
"They did not say a single word until I heard them whispering to each other to get the ignition key of my car from my pocket," he said.
"I freed my neck and shouted to them to take the key from me if that all they wanted," Andi recalled.
The gang replied to his shout with an instant blow to his left temple, leaving his left eye almost barely able to open.
"I heard someone turning on my car's engine. I was still pinned to the ground. They then sprinted and ran to the car and fled with it, leaving me alone at the site," Andi said.
But God was merciful, Andi said.
A man suddenly came out from the house, supposedly the home of the crook's ailing relative, and asked me about had happened, he said.
"He got me up and both of us, together with residents living in the kiosks along the alley, tried to run after my car but to no avail," Andi said.
With a bleeding hand and a lump as big as a Ping-Pong ball on his forehead, Andi was escorted by a local on a motorcycle to report the case to the nearby police station on Jl. Otista.
Andi was then treated at St. Carolus Hospital in Central Jakarta where he has been training medical students for the past seven years.
"I received two stitches on a right finger and treatment for my head," Andi said.
The nightmare, he said, had disturbed his sleep ever since.
He now ends his practice one and a half hours earlier than the previous 8:30 p.m. closing time. His van is still missing.
"Society is really sick and there's no good, no good at all in helping people here," Andi ended his tale by saying.