IKIGAI Series #1: Estranghero

Wakas 3

I left campus with the kind of clean fatigue you get after a long afternoon class-the mind still wired, the body asking for coffee, and the heart already racing ahead to the part of the day that actually matters, which is picking up Elio and stealing a quiet hour with him before the city remembers to be loud again. 

I tossed my bag to the passenger seat, slid the key in, and let the engine purr to life, thinking about whether he'd want ramen or something lighter, and I even rehearsed a stupid line about tulips and truffle pasta because I know he'd roll his eyes and pretend he's not smiling. 

I had just shifted to drive when my phone rang through the car's Bluetooth, isang hindi pamilyar na numero ang nakalagay sa screen. I answered it in a bored tone I reserve for people who think my time is a suggestion, not a boundary, and I said that they have one minute to make this worth the interruption. 

The voice on the other end broke before it finished my name, and I felt the bottom of my chest fall away as the words arrived in fragments. 

"Hello? Am I speaking to Mrs. Lethia's son?" 

"Yes," Saad ko. 

"Your mother is in the San Rafael Hospital right now. Nahimatay siya earlier at sinugod dito, if you want to co-" Hindi ko na siya pinatapos at binaba na ang phone ko. 

I did not say anything heroic or profound, I only said I am on my way, and then I was already reversing too fast and correcting the wheel with the kind of precision you learn from both privilege and practice. 

The city blurred into a maze of tail lights and impatient horns, and I took the inner lanes like they were promises I refused to break, calling the hospital back to confirm the ward, calling the driver to stand by at home in case I had to rotate cars, calling the house staff to send my mother's medical file, and somewhere in between those calls I remembered I was supposed to text Elio that I was five minutes away.

My hand reached for the phone out of habit, but the adrenaline had already rewritten my priorities into a single imperative, which was get there and make sure she is okay, and sinabi ko sa sarili ko na I will message him at the next stoplight, except there was no next stoplight that wasn't a negotiation, and there was no stretch of silence where my mind wasn't doing triage on a future I refused to imagine without my mother in it.

I parked like the car owed me obedience, stepped out with my jaw set and my pulse refusing to settle, and the moment the sliding doors opened I was all movement and questions, asking for her name, her attending, her vitals, and whether she had regained consciousness, while also lowering my voice when I saw a nurse's hands shaking because leadership is not volume, it is steadiness.

They led me to a corridor that smelled like antiseptic and effort, and I forced myself to breathe in counts of four, because panic helps no one, and because my mother hates it when I look like I am about to wage war on people who are trying to help.

When I saw her through the glass-eyes closed, color slowly returning, chest rising in reliable increments-I felt my spine release a knot I did not know I had been carrying since the call, and gratitude washed over me so hard I almost swayed where I stood.

The doctor spoke of overwork and sleep debt and the kind of stress that disguises itself as productivity until the body calls bluff, and I listened without interrupting, asked for a plan, agreed to observation, and promised to clear her calendar myself, because there are battles you win by refusing to play the old game.

Only then did I look at my phone and see Elio's chat window unopened, the last message still soft and ordinary, and guilt slid in under the adrenaline like a second tide, because I know disappearing triggers questions in him I wish I could erase.