Of all places to be!

By Emmanuelle

AND the world of her words seemed but just a hairbreadth away.

This intern, whose quiet footsteps I follow, monitors the patients on the chart supposedly by the hour. Each round, though, takes more than an hour, even two hours to complete. These predawn hours, it is a full deck, not of cards, but of people. Very sick people.

In my mind’s eye, I see the doctor followed by my friend emerging from the semi-darkness of the hallways like phantom spirits. My friend stays still before the double doors of the patients’ rooms. The doctor proceeds to the beds to check on the condition of each patient on the list and the intravenous line to which an arm or a leg is attached. There are minimal whispered exchanges about nausea or vomiting, bodily functions speeded or interrupted. The doctor assures the patient everything is being taken care of in the best way possible. You rest na. You sleep na. Kaunting tiis pa. Kaunting lakas ng loob pa.

As she leaves a particular patient, the doctor manages a joke. We must not keep seeing each other this way. Ngunit hindi ko mapigilan ang aking sarili. I will see you again. On my next round.

A tender pat on the arm, a slight reassuring smile. The doctor turns away to hide a worried frown, a sigh kept shallow for the while. Onward to the next patient. One of them may turn out hopeful. For awhile.

My friend does not venture further than the doorways. She flinches not at the chemotherapeutic drips hanging beside each bed. Not even at the various stages of hairfall. Nor at the varied physical manifestations of cells gone crazily awry, such as a bloated stomach, a missing limb, a scarred or bandaged face, a live skeleton. She looks into their eyes, at the volumes of withheld questions waiting to be asked. Questions that may never be asked, need not even be asked. My treatment seems to be more and getting longer each time yata? Will I get well, well enough not to come back here again and again? The patient is almost always the last to be told. The patient, though, is almost always the first to know.

Then the doctor proceeds to the children’s ward. Ah, the children. The youngest is not even a year old. Plump and bald. Plump from the liquid food in the dextrose and bald from the chemo. Graduation is not from school. Graduation is finishing off the last of the seemingly endless cycles. Near graduation, looking for good veins to insert an IV catheter is as nearly impossible as looking for a needle in a haystack. At least, one can use a magnet to look for the needle. Sometimes, it takes the doctor more than an hour. To find a good vein. Or to finally give up looking for even a passable vein. Then giving-up time would be the time to call the Pediatrics Department to take over the search. For the vein. The vein searches are called The Vampires or Dracula or Draculita by the children’s guardians.

Meanwhile, the child screams and squirms inside the quilt immobilizing his arms and legs tight na parang lumpia, keeping him from grabbing the needle and the line or kicking hard the doctor who is the source of his piercing agonies. How can a child understand that the doctor is just trying to help, when the pricks from the needle and the fluid from the gray flannel-wrapped chemo drips are more painful than what threatens their lives from right inside their flesh?

(Concludes next week.)

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