at the grocer's

I went to the grocer's with my parents last Saturday. I'm not really the type of person who finds joy in this mundane activity, let alone do it with my parents. But let me explain how I ended up doing that.

I've had a fever for a week, with the added treat of some gooey phlegm scratching up and down my throat. I didn't exactly toss and turn in my undies in bed like what I did the last time I got sick. It's less dramatic this time. I didn't even stop working. I was only absent for a day, when the fever reached uncomfortable heights. That was just it.

My mother finally managed to drag me to see a doctor in this rundown private hospital downtown that reminded me of a butcher's shop. When I whined about the hospital's unplastered walls, grimy tiles, and ugly nurses, my mother retorted that we no longer live in Manila. If I wanted the best hospitals, I needed to travel all the way down the mountain. This medical facility was the best this city has to offer.

Since I was just an outpatient, we went straight to the emergency room whose appearance alone was enough to make me develop hemorrhoid. Or maybe that was the whole point. The place was designed to make you feel worse. The more sick you are, the thicker the owners' wallets become. It makes perfect sense, really.

While waiting for my turn inside the emergency room, I was approached by an intern who shoved a thermometer up my right armpit. The butcher, er, the doctor was prescribing some meds to a young mother and her whole brood. Apparently, they all got sick at the same time. Damn this season. And so I waited, rolling my eyes up the ceiling and down on the floor and up again, fighting the urge to scratch my armpit which was increasingly becoming itchy by the minute. I wonder how many armpits---both hairy and waxed---this mercury-filled tube had explored before the intern unceremoniously stuck it into my sorry armpit. I didn't even know they still use such crude medieval thermometers in hospitals these days. I know they have high-tech pointed thingies which they stick into your ears and then it registers your body temperature in less than two seconds. But anyway, I was sick. A few armpit hair lice from strangers wouldn't have mattered, really.

Pasted on the wall was a huge, computer-printed sign which said “This hospital is declared the most healthy [sic] in the whole province by the governor [sic].” I read it again. And again. And again. I was trying to figure out what it meant exactly but its grammatical structure made me sick all the more; it felt like a catheter was being forced up my nostril. The mercury in my thermometer must've gone up two notches higher. So I stopped trying to make mental semantic analysis. If I had stayed there two hours more, I would've had irreparable brain damage. Not that I don't have it yet.

There were three interns standing beside the doctor, intently watching her as she scribbled generic names for her patients. I wonder how many interns that hospital needs for a major operation, or better yet, how many people they need to screw a light bulb in place.

When it was already my turn, the doctor asked standard questions while filling out a form. She then suggested urinalysis and blood test. She gave me a piece of brown paper and sent me off to their laboratory, which looked a lot more presentable than the emergency room. It was as inviting as a jail warden's office. It wasn’t much but it was, at least, less sickening than the emergency room with its huge grammatically-challenged sign. After handing in my urine sample and extending my right hand for her to prick, I was advised to return after an hour for the results.

I immediately dragged my mother out of the place. Let's go somewhere less suffocating, I said, let's go to the grocer's, the wet market, the butcher's shop, any place that's far from this hospital.

That's how I ended up at the grocer's.