Little Ratu crushed in the Lombok quake, killed in the aftershock

‘My child. My God, my child.’ The awful screams rang out from the lawn of Lombok’s Mataram hospital yesterday morning.

‘She told me, I really miss you. I miss Mum’ ... Family and neighbours prepare Ratu’s body for its Muslim burial on Lombok yesterday. Picture: Amanda Hodge

“My child. My God, my child.”

The awful screams rang out from the lawn of Lombok’s Mataram hospital yesterday morning from a mother who had been ­expecting to take her five-year-old daughter home.

Priscilla Nafa Ratu Andini died just after 8.30am yesterday of complications after a powerful aftershock measuring 5.4 late on Monday, one of dozens since Sunday night’s magnitude-6.9 quake, forced the evacuation of the hospital where she had been recovering well from surgery for internal injuries caused when a wall of her family home caved in on her.

With Ratu’s death, and that of six others yesterday, the toll from Sunday’s quake rose to 105.

Like so many children killed or injured in the latest earthquake to hit Lombok, the five-year-old had been sleeping when it struck. Her mother, Yuniarti Darmawan, had been tending to the little girl’s 14-week-old sister in the next room.

In one of thousands of unthinkable choices forced on desperate families across the Indonesian tourist island on Sunday night, ­Yuniarti had opted to save her infant first, yelling to Ratu to run.

But the sleeping girl had been too groggy, too slow. Yuniarti had searched in vain for a nearby clinic not razed or overwhelmed with cases to treat her daughter, who was struggling to breath and complaining of stomach pain, before ­finally taking her to Mataram ­hospital.

By late Monday morning, doctors had successfully operated and were confident she would make a full recovery.

“They said my daughter had been calling for me and I was feeling so happy when I could talk to her on Monday evening,” said her devastated father Dedi, a bar and resort manager who had raced back from work on Gili Trawangan when the earthquake struck.

He sat yesterday in the grounds of his ruined home beside the body of his daughter wrapped in a brown batik sarong.

“She was still weak but she told me ‘I really miss you. I miss Mum’,” he said.

“I was pretty sure she was going to be all right but then the big earthquake came last night and everyone was rushed outside.”

Little Ratu was the last to be evacuated and in the panic that followed, frantic doctors failed to notice her rapid deterioration.

“We had to wait at least 10 minutes for someone to give her oxygen as she struggled to breathe,” Dedi told The Australian yesterday. “I kept calling for attention. My little girl was vomiting blood, but the doctors just kept saying ‘Please wait, please be patient’.”

As family and friends helped prepare for the funeral of the whip-smart kindergarten student who loved to ride her bicycle through the coconut groves of their North Lombok village Pandanan, her tormented mother wondered aloud whether, in that split second, she had made the wrong choice.

“I keep wondering if I should have saved my eldest daughter first,” she said. “I should have saved them both.”

Dedi was having none of it.

Like others in Lombok, many of whom were yesterday scrambling for basic provisions of food, water and shelter as they waited for promised government aid, he blamed the authorities for failing in their duty.

“I told the doctors, ‘This is your fault. You should have given her oxygen immediately,’ ” he said.

“I wanted to bring her more joy.”