Feelings
Of all places to be!
By Emmanuelle
Usually, at this point of our predawn confidences, I would be thoroughly awake. My friend’s texted messages at these unholy hours always did have this powerful effect not only on me, but to all of us whom she calls her predawn friends. If she texted you at predawn, you are a friend. If she does not, you are merely an acquaintance, dispensable and replaceable.
Actually, up to now, I really am ambivalent on whether I should feel awed or I should feel annoyed at being fondly ranked a predawn friend. Sounds like being tagged and glassed-in as one of those preserved prehistoric relics before the era of a new dawning. Sounds like, too, of being one of two lovers hurried and harried against time. Ancient I am not, and her lover most definitely not. Babae po ako! And I could really be more believably insistent than Michael V.
Her next text waits its turn in my inbox: After the last monitoring round, the doctor whose footsteps I follow slumps on a hard chair in the call room and stretches out tired legs on another as equally hard chair. One is not allowed to be comfortable during duty hours. Sleep waits just at the wings.
Then, a code is called. The doctor drops still numb feet on the floor and rushes out the call room, rubber soles sliding down the shiny sheen of the hallways. The patient is in a room two doors from the Hospice.
No one is around to assist the doctor. The resident is still buildings away. The nurses are all busy with patients in same dire situations.
The patient had pulled out the endotracheal tube out of her mouth and is gasping for breath. Her blood pressure is plunging, her skin is bluing to black. The doctor looks at the chart. There at the bottom, the DNR directive in bold letters. Do not resuscitate. It seems cruel. To stop one’s hands from performing its healing, reviving training.
It is more kind though. The end will be more swift. One moment she was here amongst us mortals. The next moment she is gone. She had just turned forty.
There is a pause in the spate of messages. I imagine my friend staring at the shrouded body. At the orphaned loved one standing forlornly by the bedside. I shake my head at no one. I whisper harshly to myself. I promise myself, next time I will wait for the morning to read these predawn texts. No need to punish more an already ravaged heart.
She is not through with me yet. Before dawn breaks out, she sends these last two messages:
When the resident doctor and the intern and the nurses were gone, I walked slowly passed that room. The younger sister forlornly stands by the bedside, her left hand on the dead patient. Her face is turned to the large windows, up to the trees, to the skies beyond. She whispers. Or maybe she prays.
O di ba. We shared one same word. Across the distance. Across the darkness of predawn. Forlorn.
Her last text. I walk on to the pediatric wing. The less-than-a-month-old child, whose IV needle took more than an hour to insert, is still without IV chemo drips. The lights must have been not enough to find that good vein. What did the grandmother say? Next month is her eighth and last cycle? May you have a happy graduation, beautiful girl. May you have your wish. Hair grown long and wavy.
To you my friend, goodnight. Have a goodnight sleep. I wish I did not disturb you much.
Hah. You wish.
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