First part

DOC Donny was the only survivor of the original group of five doctors who had manned this barrio medical clinic set up by Anton Mike for the past 10 years or so ago.

Restituto’s memories are coming in clear to him now. His close friend Doc Greg had already left them like the others with the usual reason- that a fellowship was awaiting them in a hospital in the US, or in Europe. This at least assuaged a feeling of guilt whether expressed or not, that their Hippocrates oath to humanity had not turned hypocritical. But later Doc Donny found out that Doc Greg instead of going to a foreign country, had actually transferred to a hospital in Davao, Mindanao. Doc Greg had been with them from the start when the clinic was practically only a shed with bare g. i. roofing sheets over their heads, to the time when the building was expanded to include a covered waiting shed. He had been very close to the elder doctor Restituto, especially during the critical times when the elder one was seriously ill, yet when Doc Greg left, Donny noticed he left with resentment.

As if by some secret joke, these young interns doctor friends from PGH called each other by nicknames derived from their surnames; thus Doc Donny from Donato instead of his first name Rolando, Doc Greg from Gregorio instead of Liberato, and now Dencio whom Restituto Pangilinan had helped go through medical school, they gave the moniker Doc Runny, from his surname Reynoso, or with a chuckle, Doc Runnynose, who however insisted on being called simply Dencio. Restituto the oldest among them was called Doc Pangjie (from Pangie—lineman) because that was the nickname given him by his American colleagues while he was there in Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

One late Sunday afternoon when the volunteer doctors and Restituto were about to go back to Manila, the clinic being closed as early as three in the afternoon, Cayetano the group’s driver, was late in coming back from his house where their Toyota Hi-ace van was parked. He took Doc Panjie aside from the pretext of asking to see if the medical supplies were not yet spoiling but actually wanted to ask something. None of the volunteer doctors wanted to stay overnight in the late Doc Flor’s house after his death, not because they were afraid the PC soldiers would get them the way they did Doc Flor, who after all the PC investigation “was found guilty of comforting the enemy or consorting with the enemy” by treating the men of the hills, the NPAs. As if these volunteer doctors in the barrio were instructed to first ask the patients who came to the clinic to declare under oath that they were not rebels from the hills.
Doc Flor’s house was then made into a storehouse, and the yard had grown into a miniature botanical garden, where the barrio people would come and get herbs and other medicinal plants.

Doc Donny once recounted to Restituto about those people who came to get some herbs . . . “You know, they would stop by the window or by the door and say out loud, not at all whispering. ‘Apo doctor, may I come in and get some of your plants?’ and then when they got out of the backyard mini forest, they would also stop by the same window or by the front door, and bade their goodbye and thanks, as they had been doing all the years when the doctor was still around.”

Then the volunteer doctors stayed at Cayetano’s house if they had to stay overnight, or during lunchtime if they had to be back that same day Saturday. Cayetano, the driver of the Toyota van and the caretaker of Doc Flor’s house was already aboard in the van waiting, wanted to warn Restituto about some people checking on them again the way they did a week before Dr Flor was done in by the PC, but he Restituto waved him aside.

“Dencio, better let me know what other supplies you’ll need for next week.” Then turning to Cayetano, he said, “Request Mang Andro to help us about the disposition of the clinic and the lot on which it stands. Remember his son the lawyer?”

Mang Andro the caretaker of the erstwhile Don Aurelio Aaron Acurantes hacienda and his son lawyer Claudius Rogacion facilitated the transfer of the barrio medical clinic to the municipal government. And so the turn-over of the barrio medical clinic was a load off Restituto’s back, not because the missionary spirit had been diminished in him but because of the emotional strain in its maintenance had become overwhelming after the death of his friend Anton, who had the means, material and emotional, to maintain the clinic. While he had steeled himself against the onslaught of negative emotions towards the Acurantes family, he nevertheless could not eschew the mess of entangling relationships the Acuranteses had somehow ensnared him in a biblical Cain and Abel relationship in Anton and his elder brother Manuel Alfredo. For one he had to credit his late friend Anton, Miguel Antonio Acurantes, Mike to those peasants who worked with him in the soil, for setting up the barrio medical clinic, in answer to then Dr Juan Flavier, the then Secretary of Health who called upon the young doctors to serve first the people of the barrio before flying off to serve the dollar country. On the other hand and more importantly, it was Anton who had instilled an “otherness” in him which made him see the patient beyond the imbalance of a broken body, but he had not quite recognized the X factor beyond the sum of man’s physical and mental parts. And yet Anton’s altruism had somehow slid into a chain of events leading to his death.

From the first year or so of their volunteer medical services to the barrio people in Galugod West of Nueva Ecija, Restituto Pangilinan now recalls, he had been ambivalent towards them.

While he did not expect profuse demonstration of gratitude from them, he noted an insolence, skepticism, gross ingratitude among many of the patients. Of course, there were the downright dishonest ones who’d ask for a bottle of cough syrup and then sell this to buy a bottle of lambanog liquor, and the ones who’d sneer at the doctor’s explanation of germs and poor sanitation.

“Our old man the herbolario says it’s the bad spirit which blows ill wind and enters the body that causes the swelling.”

To be continued