{ if this ain't love, then how do we get out? 'cause i don't know. }
I check my watch as I ring the BIHEP clinic's doorbell. I frown because I'm late; the car usually passes by for me in school at around 12, and I'm about an hour behind schedule. I decide that it probably wouldn't do any harm to cut my Bahasa class and do more stuff for Histo as soon as I get back, and I walk in as soon as I'm received by the nurse.
Dr. Carbonel is busy talking to an elderly patient inside of her office, and I make my way to the waiting room with its lines of reclining armchairs and chains hanging from the ceiling. At around the time that I have my weekly treatment some other people are around for their own IVs--two weeks ago it was a young woman about Kristine's age who played with magnets and talked on her iPhone while waiting for the drip to finish, and last week it was a mild-mannered old man who watched Wowowee on the TV. Today the room is filled with several visitors in their mid-sixties, and they smile at the sight of a teenager's school ID and ask me why I'm here. To their amusement, I smile back embarrassedly and point up to one of the chains.
I sit down on the chair nearest to the door. It takes Ate Teresa a good ten minutes to emerge with my bottle, decidedly the biggest so far. She tells me that this one will have to take two hours and asks me if I'm still going to class; I shake my head and pretend to complain as she tapes my right hand down and presses a tiny needle into my vein. "Ate Tere, ba't ang dami," I whine, as the clear fluid starts dripping down my tube. "Tumahimik ka nga, matapang ka naman e," She teases. "Sasakit siya ng mga dalawang oras, pero after that siguro okay na."
For the first half hour it feels like ice water is flowing into my arm. I continue reading 'Portrait in Sepia' as the woman with funky blue glasses switches to a cooking channel. Another patient walks in, a Chinese lady of about thirty, and is fondly addressed by Doc as 'Sunshine'. Her bottle is smaller than mine, and soon after about a quarter of hers is done, she puts down the book she's reading and falls asleep. The only breaks I take from mine are to go the bathroom--carrying my bottle with me in one hand and doing everything else with the other--and I tiptoe to replace it on its hook before I sit back down and absorb myself in the story of Aurora del Valle and her superfluous grandmother Paulina.
Sunshine's drip finishes and Doc sits with us in the waiting room to talk to her about some sort of lab examination she'll have to go through on Saturday and her decision to push through with a root canal. Doc asks if she's been following the diet; Sunshine laughingly admits that she only cheated during Chinese New Year for the tikoy, and I interject saying that I did the same thing. We both tell Doc that we hold the fair end of the deal by abstaining from fried food and cutting down on red meat and dairy, but we're still having a hard time reaching the daily three-liter water quota--the most I reach in a day is about a little more than one liter, about two and a half normal-sized bottles of Volvic and Hidden Spring.
Sunshine leaves promising that she'll try her hardest to drink more water during the day, and we say goodbye and wish her good luck for her Saturday check-up.
At around the time that I reach the part where the Santa Cruzes find out that Lynn is pregnant, Ate Tere comes out of the secretary's office carrying a syringe full of amber liquid labeled 'B-Complex'. I openly cringe, having figured out that the darker the drip is, the more it hurts. Doc chortles as the contents are emptied into my bottle. "E masakit talaga ang B-Complex, malapot at malamig sa dugo," she says as the fluid dilutes and changes color. "Just tilt your hand upward and it won't hurt that much."
It still does. I bite my lip as the pain starts biting into my arm. I go to the bathroom one last time, and I'm alarmed to see that the first part of the tube, the part taped to my hand, has turned dark red inside and filled up with my blood. Doc tells me to take it easy and everything turns back to normal when the bottle is suspended higher. After two hours alternately spent talking to strangers, singlehandedly relieving myself and reading a new novel, I pay Ate Tere in cash, tell Doc that I'll be coming back next week at around the same time, and walk out of the clinic with a small cotton bud taped to my right hand.
I listen to sad music on the way back to school, and after a few minutes I succeed in flexing my hand without flinching. I think about loads of things I've kept quiet about, things past the food segregation and the complaints about the diet, and after Battle practice I come home to a dinner of sardines and toast.
I think about how I sleep a little better and trim a little more off my stomach. And I thank God that it isn't too bad at all, and that it isn't diabetes.
I miss spending my break with my friends, but I guess Thursdays are special.