Hermogena’s Twilight, II

    Migs

September 25, 2008 by Migs  
Filed under Migs

The rather dilettantish occasions I had showed up in at the Instituto Cervantes Manila near Taft Avenue were interjected with less sophisticated visits to the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), which is along Taft Avenue. We’d decided, you see, that grandmother needed urgent medical attention.

Last weekend I made an unfashionably late entrance to the cultural center for the World Book Day Open House, and tomorrow I am scheduled to see a concerto by a classical trio from Taiwan. (I am convinced that the best things in life are free!) Today, however, I – along with family – had to drive yet once more to the student-populated area of Manila, an area noteworthy for its ugly and beautiful honesty. Of course, traffic today was terrible as usual, and the buses belched black smoke as expected.

My first impression of PGH, upon our arrival, was that it didn’t look the same as before – ‘before’ meaning about two, three years ago when I went to visit a terminally-ill aunt; thick tarpaulin banners (all congratulatory) now hung about the edifice; large old-fashioned murals decorated the walls; old plaques had been wiped clean and new ones, installed. Even the windows were now of multi-colored stained glass with round patterns, as in church, or perhaps really after the effect of church.

Did we enter an insufficiently-funded museum by mistake? I made these observations as I pushed grandmother on her wheelchair, ever so carefully, as if we were in an old park at which the renewed scenery was to be taken note of, if not admired.

And it was convenient (at least to my wandering eyes) that the Department of Surgery was located at the southernmost wing; strolling past the other units, I peeped at the slightly opened doors to see the Neurology ICU, where blanket-covered patients were sleeping restfully alongside their harboring IV drips; and the Plastic Surgery Department, where, at its reception area, a framed painting of a naked woman’s back (very Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets) was displayed; the psychiatric wing I didn’t need to witness.

Wheeling grandmother farther, I saw that the interior of the charity wards had now been painted with a very gentle caramel, and this sharpened the view of human figures lying on the white beds with their disfigured arms, throbbing heads, bandaged feet, and bleeding noses. Initially, I did mistake the renovated wards as the pay wards, though of course the overpopulation of the above-described patients plainly indicated otherwise. It indicated ‘charity’.

Grandmother’s checkup was scheduled to take place at the periphery of Ward Six. It was almost in a separate wing, dark, isolated, with paint peeling off, broken schoolroom chairs, candy wrappers dancing with the yellow leaves on the cold floor, peanut shells, plastic bags, two stray black cats. (I have no idea why a hospital would have two stray black cats inside its premises, regardless of its being a government hospital. What if someone superstitious accidentally passed them by?) But everything was peaceful and quiet. Along the hallway, I sat dangerously on the steel ledge to regard the new playground below. They said it was a project of politician donors for specially-educated children.

Not long after, grandmother was called to one of the wing’s clinics, though she just as quickly emerged from a very brief consultation. She was finally to be confined. Resident doctor of Surgery Department was to be there shortly. Father made some phone calls while appearing to need a cigarette.

And so it was that we waited by this wing’s hallway for over four hours, waiting anxiously and furiously for a ‘Hazel’ to see to us and hand over grandmother’s admission orders, waiting as the sun set and the dirty wind blew, waiting while grandmother slept through the seconds and the minutes and the hours. For my own amusement, I had brought a book, but I fancied that it was a little depressing to be reading Dostoevsky’s The Idiot in such a setting. I managed only a few chapters.

And then at last! The papers! They had not forgotten us after all. Quickly we rose to find out where grandmother would be staying. Ward Six, they said; another charity ward with caramel walls. Jorgen, my prodigiously athletic cousin, lifted our still sleeping grandmother to her new bed, and immediately her adult diapers were refreshed. Of course we had to lift a blanket to cover the scene: the patients’ beds were no more than just about twenty-four inches apart, making a tincture of privacy impossible and leaving between these short gaps a humble white table where one could put things and small towels perhaps damp with alcohol and such. As with others’, several tiny cockroaches slyly and rapidly crawled on grandmother’s table. She didn’t notice, though. She slept all throughout the initial admission procedures, with her eyeglasses on, as if it made her see her dreams more clearly.

Tomorrow, after the concerto at Cervantes, I will be walking to the hospital to tend to grandmother. I believe this won’t cause any inconvenience to any party. I will read, the nurses will be by their stations, and grandmother will sleep. I’ll enjoy her company. And perhaps I too will cherish imagining her dreams – come what may.

About the Author:  Migs Bassig is a freelance writer and journalist with a background in Mass Communications. After working for a Manila-based advertising agency, PR firm, and events organizer, he now contributes to various locally published magazines and newspapers, and is one of the authors of Metroblogging Manila. A suburbanite commuter, Migs has lived all his life in the Philippines and loves scouring the Philippine capital’s rich patina of arts and literature.