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By Francis Earl A. Cueto, Reporter
It was almost like a scene straight from a movie
screen. Relatives of victims of Friday’s Makati mall explosion
flocked to Makati Medical Center hoping to find their kith and kin
whom they feared could have been among those killed and injured in
the Glorietta 2 bombing.
Chaos and confusion were marked on the faces of
those looking for loved ones. Some were angry for not having the
attention of hospital attendants–nor could they get information.
Everybody was in a state of panic and hospital personnel were
evidently harassed by all the emotional commotion and the pain of
the victims.
Others just cried in the hospital corners,
quietly letting their teardrops fall and praying for the best.
The journalists were in a state of nervous
frenzy and overpowering pity for the victims. They shouted in each
other’s ears to get a better position and angle for their shoots
and interviews, hoping to outscoop each other. Victims, friends and
families just want to go home, rest, and take themselves away from a
harrowing incident.
There were close to 500 souls, both survivors
and people desperately looking for family members, media, and the
inevitable onlookers and vendors crammed at the entrance of the
Emergency Room of the hospital.
The vendors were positioned near the hospital
entrance. Almost shamefully, they were raking some sale from those
waiting for word about their loved ones. Even with a few more coins
in their pockets, all said they would have preferred that the
incident had not taken place.
“I’m raking in good selling my bottled water
and cigarettes here, but there are many suffering innocent people. I
am both happy and sad,” vendor Esteban Adriano told The Manila
Times in Filipino.
Edralyn Domingo, a resident of Mandaluyong City,
arrived at the hospital about 8;45 p.m., frantically looking for son
Paul. She lost contact with him at 2 p.m. on the same day that an
explosion ripped the Glorietta 2 Mall apart.
The frantic mother painstakingly monitored the
news, hoping not to see or hear that his son was among those
trapped, injured or worse, dead from the blast.
“I don’t really know what to do. I lost
contact with him with his cellular phone and he has not returned
home,” she told the Times.
Paul left home with friends to go to the mall
and watch a movie.
It was a little past 9 p.m. when she received a
call in her cellular phone. Edralyn said it was her son, calling her
using his friend’s mobile phone.
Apparently, Paul lost his cellular phone during
the commotion, as a teary-eyed Edralyn told The Times that she was
going home, but felt sad for the others still waiting to get word
from their loved ones.
At the Makati Medical Center, the scene was
surreal, heavy with the agony of the relatives of the dead and the
wounded, the pain of the injured, and the almost catatonic joy of
those about to be discharged. All were together in a painfully
discomfiting frieze.
Some endured injuries graver than the others and
had to stay longer for their condition to be diagnosed more
thoroughly.
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