Kapitan Sino

Chapter 20

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Chapter 20

Less than a week after the deaths of more than a hundred lives, several people from the CDC in Atlanta finally arrived in the coordinating center of Pelaez. Along with the Filipino doctors, the foreign professionals taught several volunteer health workers the process of facing the calamity. Every day, the experts work round the clock in finding a way to beat the disease. Countries are competing in body counts, and so are the country’s own regions. Laoag, Cabanatuan, Masbate, Butuan, Zamboanga. The pandemic slowly creeps upon the archipelago. As if G.o.d wants to burn the world. Until one day, good news finally arrived. Finally, the cure to defeat this terrifying problem is found.

Thursday night, the munic.i.p.ality did an announcement. The people are asked to come out of their homes and to properly line them up in front of the church where the health professional tents can be found. The people of Pelaez rushed to arrive, women and men, children and elders. Everyone, wrapped in fear. The announcement reached all the way to the precinct where the prisoners are also having their blood taken.

“I thought you were going to give us a vaccine, miss?” complained Bok-bok after the blood letting.

“There still isn’t a vaccine, sir, the reason why we’re taking blood is to find the blood type that will match the medicine and vaccine being developed.”

Bok-bok’s already irritable because of the dread in the air, as is most of the citizens lining up in fours in front of the plaza in Sto. Domingo, the line reaching up to the precinct and the fire station.

“Could you please hurry up already, people are dying!” Another missus aired her grievances.

“We’re just doing our job, don’t make us out to be the villains!” The tone of one female doctor is ugly. Some of the citizens retaliated. A small commotion happens inside the line. Scared people and tired volunteers; sleep-deprived, hungry—all terrified creatures. Thunder rumbles in the sky. The riot and pushing in the line is starting to get bigger when a nurse started shouting in a megaphone.

“Rogelio Manglicmot!”

Bok-bok nudges his friend when he heard his name. “Hey, they’re calling for you!”

“I’m already done,” Rogelio groggily answers while slowly returning back to his slumber on the floor.

Bok-bok listens to the name again. “No, it’s you! Hey!”

After a while an Italian doctor and a representative from the DOH arrives at the precinct to collect blood from Rogelio again. They test once more. The doctor calls someone on the 2-way radio that he talked to in Italian after speaking to the Filipino in broken English.

“We need him!” Said the Italian acting to free Rogelio.

“You kant! He a bad person not a good!” The police on duty is trying to reply in English, but it went to nothing since the chief himself decided quickly in favor of the doctor and the citizens. The tanods immediately pulled the unwilling teenagaer.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, you don’t need to grab me!”Rogelio looks back at his friend while struggling. “Bok-bok!”

Bok-bok stops. He knows Rogelio has seen something bad. He carefully brings his hand up to feel the strange sensation on his face. To the side of his right cheek, under his ear, he wipes his hand on the beads of sweat. Then he looks at his fingers. Only then did he realize it was his blood.

“Bok-bok!” Rogelio calls for his friend again while struggling against the tanods. “Sir, my friend is infected! Sir, wait a minute! Sir!”

“That’s why we should hurry more,” coldly answered one of the men upon reaching the tent next to an ambulance.

The doctors immediately surround him and explain the importance of him giving blood. He couldn’t catch the fast and simultaneous talking of the men in white. American, Filipino, Italian, and people that look like j.a.panese wearing ties. He didn’t understand anything that they said except “cooperation”, “immediately”, “consent”, “important”, and “to save the people”. Before he could even finish reading the paper on the clipboard they gave him, they take his blood pressure. He signed it despite not fully understanding. The nurses started clapping. The foreigners were smiling and hugging each other. Some were jumping, someone did a sign of the cross with shut eyes, and some are teary-eyed in grat.i.tude. The line of the citizens are broken, curious of what they are doing to him.

“Sir, my family,” he turns to a Filipino while laying down and having his blood taken. Though not understanding nor speaking Tagalog, a white doctor answers him just to calm him down and shush him.

“Yes, yes.”

The people are now pushing more once learning that Rogelio’s blood is the one that will save them. One old woman even shouted while being mobbed: “There, Rogelio, save people! Pay us back!”

The rumble of thunder keeps on coming and the wind on the street picks up. The tanods push back the onlookers, but they weren’t prepared for the bigger mess when a woman shouted: “Elmer’s eyes are bleeding!” The people ran away when just a while ago they were pushing at each other. Some trip and sc.r.a.pe themselves. All of them disgusted with their fellow men, terrified, wiping their skin and spitting, thinking the sickness can be removed through doing this if ever they caught it. The police tries to control the situation and protect the doctor’s process. With the blood of the other citizens no longer needed, the medical staff start moving Rogelio to the church. They didn’t know that the doctor themselves were arguing on the issue on how much of his blood will be needed and how much could be extracted from the boy.

After more than half an hour, Rogelio exits the church. Dizzy, eyes blurry, almost couldn’t stand due to fatigue. They took more blood than a human can let in one go from him. Several doctors were against this but they still continued for the sake of the many. One nurse calls for him to return to the bed but he ignores her. He continues walking towards the direction of his parents now knowing the sickness is in Pelaez. But he can see nothing but a blurry image fo his surroundings, of people barricaded by the police, reaching their hands out to him for healing. The rain is finally pouring, but the boy did not waver in the search for his parents, nor the people looking for salvation.

“Father!” he shouts to the people he could not recognize. He feels the same weakness that he saw that night in Michael’s last breaths. He doesn’t know if the first thing that left him was his strength, or his mind. But he knows, in these moments, that Captain Who has truly left him.

A barefooted man carrying an unconscious child gets past the tape of the police and comes closer to him. Weeping and full of tears. Almost couldn’t say his begging.

“I…Is it true that your blood is the cure?” Asks the shaking man. Rogelio says yes, but a sound no longer exits his lips. The man comes closer and pushes to him the child he’s carrying whilst asking for forgiveness. Rogelio stares at him, unable to speak. The turn of the world slows down. The voices of the people deepen. The drops of the rain on his face were like kisses from the heavens. His vision spins and darkens, and he then slowly falls down to the ground. The man carrying the child, hand bloodied, steps back, tears still flowing. He kneels by the knife stabbed into the body. Then dips his hand at the gaping wound. And wipes the blood on the unconscious child.

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