Hello Oso!

We rushed my Dad to the Chinese General Hospital Emergency Room at around 4am this morning. He was coughing very badly and his nose started bleeding profusely. There were blood splatters on the edge of the bed, the floor and even on his legs. He tried to stem the bleeding with tissues and towels, so the floor was littered with blood soaked and crumpled tissues that look strangely like paper rose blossoms. It wasn’t the first time it happened, but this time there was so much blood that he really had no choice but to allow us to take him to the hospital.

Blood Pressure Gauge na de gulong. Nakalagay malapit sa receiving table ng emergency room.

The emergency room waiting area at 4am was peaceful. My Mom took my Dad into the emergency room after the preliminary check-up while my sister and I stayed in the waiting room. There were around 10 people waiting for relatives who had already been rushed inside.  I sat myself beside the emergency room entrance so I could get a good drawing view of the people. Every time the door opened, I smelled antiseptic. I snatched what could from the snippets of conversation in the waiting room. One group had a police man for a family member. They were asking if he was conscious. An old woman who I assumed was his mother was starting to cry and the others tried to console her.

May kamag-anak na pulis na pinasok sa emergency room. Nauna sila sa amin kaya pagdating namin sa emergency room, nasa loob na yung pulis. Tinatanong nila kung may discount ang mga pulis. Kaso pang-Manila Police lang ang discount. Nagkataong taga Quezon City ang kapamila nila.

Once in awhile, a new patient came through the waiting room doors. Twice, unconscious women were wheeled in with a gurney after having been brought over by a tricycle. One of them was a fleshy looking woman with short hair. She was as white as marble and naked from the waist up when they wheeled her in. A small towel covered her breasts and her left arm dangled from the gurney. I heard she didn’t make it.

Another group came in after having been injured from a collision between a car and a tricycle. The tricycle driver was pushed through the emergency room in a wheel chair grimacing in pain. Then there was the guy who came out of the room with a patch on his forehead. He had a big red blotch on his shoulder that I assumed was blood. It looked strangely like tomato juice.

My sister and I had to buy medicine from the Mercury outside the hospital to lower my Dad’s blood pressure. By the time we came back at 530am, Umagang Kay Ganda was playing from a TV set in the waiting room. The people inside had increased and so did the chatter. We got the medicine to my Dad and we waited a bit more and I drew what could. There was a lot of waiting involved between having to lower my Dad’s pressure to hospital personnel attending to the more life threatening cases. Although, seeing how much blood was coming out his nose a while ago looked pretty life threatening at the time.

My Dad and Mom finally came out of the emergency room at 6am. We were all hungry. I had an unusually strong craving for McDonald’s, probably because everybody was talking about the “First Love” commercial and I was looking at some new McDonald’s packaging earlier today.  I hadn’t eaten McDonald’s in months because I was cutting down on the fatty stuff. But that morning, I wanted to eat a Sausage McMuffin with Egg. It must have been catharsis, I don’t know. When I finally opened the wrapper, the muffin was all cheesy and beefy and I remembered how much I used to love eating these things after overtimes. I felt a bit guilty eating it and I joked that if I kept on eating one of these, they’d have to take me to the emergency room.