The Patient

14. ACCOUTERED

Raquel did not expect that a  third time broken heart would hurt as much as the first, but whoa, it still did...
Clutching the pillow tightly to her chest, she couldn't help but wonder how many times a heart could break before it could no longer be pieced back together....was there even a way maybe so it became tough and numbed enough  to feel nothing at all? Even little by little, until...
But then this will mean putting your heart on the line again  and again and again.... which she didn't  think she could even do one more time.
   Her mother warned her the first time as she got an inkling ( but how ?!) of the way Raquel's heart was beating  , tumbling, leaping where her first love was concerned.
  " Remember your duty to your younger brothers! Keep your promise!"
   As the eldest among siblings in a not too well off family, Raquel was brought up with a clear purpose ingrained in her mind: "You are studying to get a good job, a job that will bring enough pay to help send the rest of your siblings to school! "
   Her two younger brothers were made to temporarily stop their secondary school studies to let the meager family income finance her college education. They even got employment in a bowling alley to add to the family income. It was understood that once she got a job , they will be resuming their college courses. This she easily and cheerfully did, focusing her time and mind on lessons and lecture notes, with her heart happily skipping as she regarded her inspiration , someone who didn't even realize her existence. But her mother knew! How , she couldn't  fathom. And so she blinked  and concentrated on landing her targeted job after graduation- staff nurse in a tertiary hospital.
   And while her colleagues  went on dates , she did overtime duties to bring in more money to pay for her siblings tuition fees. When her ex nursing classmate married her ex inspiration,   she applied for work in a hospital abroad.
   She was naive enough to fall hook, line, and sinker for a job offer of fly now pay later scheme. Only later did she realize there was an additional but hidden price to pay for  the job. Besides the six months
of receiving only half of the contract salary , the six other halves deducted already for her employment agency's cut, her acceptance bonus paid for her plane fare.
   Her recruiter fetched her from the local airport and
brought her to a motel , on the pretense of  letting her   rest  there before her international flight  and he will turn over her passport  and plane ticket in the room. But before all these
happened  he took the privilege regarding her body that she hadn't  even given to anybody yet. Shocked, confused  afraid   and terrified with this harrowing experience , she was loathe to inform her family then , she proceeded with her  flight schedule after wards.  She cried throughout the flight, but kept her resolve to continue to work  and focus on earning more for her family rather than on grieving for lost virginity. She thought up a business plan involving a new skill she learned online- cooking and selling  food online, or maybe buy and sell gold jewelries.... thus maybe she can just forget the harrowing experience she just went through.
   Encountering a foreign culture under which she had to nurse, new kinds of disease conditions , and learning foreign terms, she buried her sorrow by working, ignoring  her body function  changes, loathing even to examine herself  physically  and she was even sürprised when her menstrual flow suddenly  became copious from nil at the end of  three months . She realized that she had been  pregnant, but now experiencing   a spontaneous miscarriage.
   Raquel was brought to the Emergency Room by her room mates , transferred to the OB- OR for a D&C, then  discharged the next day . As this occurred on a week end, she only took a one day sick leave to rest , and resumed work the next day. One day sick leave and an emergency procedure was charged to her record  as the only remembrance of her first born child.  To counter her depression and anxiety  she ordered her life  to revolve upon her work and her sidelined business , which doubled her earnings and even earn  more at times of holidays.
   Her eight years of overseas work rewarded her family with five  more  college graduates and a new house and lot and electric and electronic appliances  as well as a small sari-sari store business.  And a freedom of sorts allowing her to finally accept a suitor when she came back home to her province after completing her last work contract.
   It was on the one time she joined the conversation instead of just letting  it flow around her. And the topic was within her area of  expertise : pregnancy.
Of the people talking, there were no other health professionals. And she had sat courteously with her boyfriend,  who soon after became her ex,  all because she was asked by their group of  friends ,
" What would you have done?"
She had answered , " see a doctor  for a prescription of morning after pills, "
" What? Why? Is that based on your own experience?" She was startled by the accusatory tone of her beloved , and the mocking glances sent her way by the group.
Tried , judged , and sentenced in an instant ! All because of a remark that hinged on her nursing background, and yes, oh yes! Based on her own experience, an experience she had  buried until now.
She was despised, her calls ignored  and ghosted after that night. After a year of romantic relationship, of getting to know each other better activities, she had realized his control freak nature. Her love for him had already died a few months ago, she realized, looking back,  as she clutched her pillow. The few tears she had produced had been shed not over the man she had loved once, but for the dream that fled with him. The dream that one day, a man would love her above all women. That she would be special to the one person who was special to her. Another piece of her heart broken, another scar to tend. But though a keloid may seem hard and tough, it is still sensitive to hurts... a long lasting effect of grief, fear , and emotions caused by her traumatic experiences. She thus pledged to barricade herself and her heart from possible hurts. She must from now on present herself invulnerable- cold as ice, hard as steel, tough as iron, to shield her heart!
   And that's  how Raquel learned to exhibit herself publicly, strict, direct to the point, unflappable.
  But this posture did not suit bedside nursing , so she climbed up the professional ladder to being the  assistant chief nurse of a tertiary hospital , gained from concentious masteral and then doctoral pursuits after  her  duty hours. Eight to twelve hours of work then four hours of study , two hours of personal activities including eating and commuting , finally six hours of sleep or less when she needed to do research, consisted her daily routine.
" I'm busy!" was her slogan and anthem , until a doctor  colleague pointed out laughingly,
" You should never say that! Because busy means
B-being U-under S-satan's
Y-yoke ! Say instead I'm otherwise occupied! Or otherwise engaged !!!"
That made her laugh and think again how otherwise she could use her time, instead of being negative to life.Then she accepted that a  new ambiance might lift her spirit.
   Thus when her doctor colleague, Domerico,  as she preferred to call him, fusing his two names, propped chief nurse position to her on his newly opened hospital in the province, with marriage on the side, she elated ly accepted. Still she vowed never again to let herself open to hurt and heartbreak. A cascade of tears overflowed on her cheeks, reflecting the burst of happiness she felt on her chest. And this time, she believed whatever heart break life will shove her way, she is now properly
ACCOUTERED.
(*£*)