June 8, 2010

Mother left. After a year of relying her life on oxygen tanks and life-eating medicines, she had moved on. I wasn't there. I was on duty. Casually checking up on my patients and making sure they're okay, making sure they'd live on. The bitter irony of being able to save hundreds of lives besides my mother's. No one was there for her when she passed away. My sister who was practically making her eternal life out of pure misery in her husband's tight grasps couldn't even say a single hello to us for the past years since she married the beast. My father wasn't there either, not something I'd be surprised for. He's probably sank himself in a sea of alcohol. Dead drunk every sunrise and sunset, alcohol eventually consuming his everything. But I won't cry, I won't.

In a bar near the hospital he works at, Jung Hwan practically spends all of his Friday nights, sulking himself in the bright and alive neon lights, with girls dancing, almost , hanging themselves in poles set up in each table the bar has, with angry drunkards wasting their money on alcohol they can't further consume and with endless chattering of married men trying to get away from their frustrated married life.

He's not drunk, not yet, a bottle of vodka wasn't enough to make him fall. His inborn high tolerance to alcohol seems to be his savior at times when he feels like this, depressed and worn out. 

"Tough day?"

Sun Woo, an orthopedic and a close friend of Jung Hwan. He smokes. He drinks. He loves girls. Only his dedication to his job would be considered passionate about him, although being a friend could also be one. 

He was sitting on a lounge, with a glass of tequila in his right and a near-to-the- cigarette on his left. A scary ghost of smoke exits from his mouth soon after he inhaled smoke in his lungs. 

"Can you tell?" Jung Hwan was all the more annoyed rather than relieved that Sun Woo concluded his day was tough. It made him feel like he can't take the stress, that he was too weak. And for him, being weak wasn't a good impression. "Someone crashed into my camaro today. I'm having troubles placing my doubts with the young or with the useless guards patrolling over the hospital's paid parking."

"Damn man, that was a Chevy, right?" Sun Woo crushed his cigarette on the blue glass ash tray with several other pinky-length, lifeless cigarettes. 

"2010 release." He pointed out before pouring another round of vodka in his shot glass.

If there's one thing that his pile of money could go, it's with cars. He has developed a passion for those engines ever since he was young. The time when his father used to buy him all sorts of toy cars from plastic to steel toy cars either fueled up with battery or not.

"That's real , man. How do you make the idiot pay up?" Sun Woo now lights up another cigarette trapped in his pale pair of lips, which is a bit of a mystery since he's a smoker.

"She left a note in my car saying she'd pay up as soon as she get her paycheck this month."

An old man crashed on the aisle beside Jung Hwan, an empty bottle of whiskey trapped in his grip, his moustache annoying and thick, obviously wet from the excessive drinking of alcohol. It was not long after before two waiters came to help the old man up to his feet followed by an apology to those who saw.

"You mean it was a girl who crashed your camaro?" Sun Woo was now in high spirits as if the sound of a 'she' lighted up his engine of interest. The scene from just a while ago happened like a person just sneezed in front of the crowd, pointless and uninteresting.

"I presumed it was a girl judging by her pink neon piece of tree product." Jung Hwan smiled.

"Dude, I have several pink sticky notes by my office, it's not very unusual for a man to have it, y'know." Sun Woo tapped his cigarette, letting some ashes fall endlessly on the marble floor.

"Unusual? Since when did pink become the new ?" Jung Hwan laughed. "Anyway, in all majority of my predictions, 87.5% of them are true."

"Then might as well shift your job into crystal balls and ." 

New singers climb up the stage. For some reason, Jung Hwan has a secret over jazzy nights and it is probably incomparable with the strippers present in the club. He likes the sound of saxophone, flute, guitars and some badass drums playing altogether in jazzy harmony. It's his stress-reliever, a concrete definition of his kind of night minus the secondhand smoke and the angry drunkards. 

Even though Sun Woo was competing with Jung Hwan's attention by showing off some of his women stored in his phone, probably admiring the fact that his contacts are in full storage with eight percent coming from family, twelve percent coming from friends and hospital ties and the eighty percent coming from women who he met randomly, his patient or not, Jung Hwan's focus was going nowhere from the stage. 

There she was, sitting idly on a high chair, wearing clothes she was forced to wear and make-up that doesn't even fit her pretty face. The thick eyeliner covering her little eyes seemed to be her savior from her recent sea of tears, probably about money or how-to-stay-alive s. But if there's one thing very admirable about this girl besides her innocence and behind-the-stage simplicity, it's her voice. She was a performer, a singer, if that's how she would like to address herself as, and she's been in this business for quite some time now, working for the family she never dreamt of having. Yes, she was not a legitimate child, she grew up not with the mother who bore her but with a woman who was infertile and wanted a child. For several years she had hoped to be with her real parents, but the painful fact that her mother almost had her aborted makes her think twice. 

June 1, 2013

If I could sum up my whole day in three words, it would be: Blood, Cigarettes and Pink Neon Paper. There's an in-patient who yelled at me today because he heard my orders of not serving him solid foods after his gallblader stones removal. Basically, I was slapped because of a professional reason and I couldn't slap him back because he was old and because he was fresh out of surgery. Sun Woo crashed over at my place today and I know this isn't new. I probably have over a hundred entries in this about him making a mess in my apartment everytime he loses sanity over alcohol. And may I remind you I took the responsibility of paying over $200 over the alcohol he consumed and $20 for his car's overnight stay over the hospital's unsecured parking lot. I called my noona today and as usual, she cried. I'm not going to explain why, because it would definitely be an eye sore to me when I re-read these entries in the future. But in case I forget, here's a clue for myself: Suicide. My new camaro got her first bump today. I'm not quite sure if it's a woman who did it, but I'm betting Sun Woo that it's a she. She left a note saying she'd pay up when her paycheck comes, not so sure how she'd be able to. I left my car over at Bernardo's and they said she'd be free in three days if I pay up $800. Not a good and negotiable price, but I was tricked into it, so it's somehow my fault as well. Anyway, my whole day was close to hell and I can probably see my future crumbling down. But I won't cry, I wont.

A week of disdainful existence in the hospital scene, Jung Hwan planned to end his week over a visit at his mother's grave. Somehow, he thought his mother deserves a visit once in a while. It was the eight of June, three years after she died of liver cancer. 

The clouds were already heavy since this morning and Jung Hwan knew that, but he was too stubborn to think that he wouldn't need it. But the heavens seem to want him to learn so the clouds poured out their anger and watered the earth with heavy drops of rain. Still being as stubborn as ever, he ran towards the paid parking lot he hated the most with his coat hovered over his head by his left hand and his suitcase tucked safely between his chest and his right arm. Big drops of water colored his coat dark and a few more of it would make him soaked under the rain. Water clung onto his leather shoes like fungi and he felt bad about it because it was bought from Italy, purely handmade piece of leather.

Not long after he ran out to the rain, he saw a figure standing beside his car, with a light print of chickens and chicks coloring the single umbrella being washed by the rain. It didn't take long for Jung Hwan to finally ring an idea that this person might be the one who crashed his camaro last week. And judging by the umbrella, his 87.5% theory can be proved to court. It was a woman, indeed.

"You know you're standing out alone in the middle of the rain?" Jung Hwan nearly shouted, trying to compete with the noise of raindrops. Eyelashes almost dripping with rain water.

The girl, half surprised and half expecting, turned around and revealed herself to be the angelic singer at the bar Jung Hwan spent most of his free nights out. Simple shirt, blue jeans and a pair of soaked beige loafers, nothing was more than enough to see her finally with simple clothes on. 

"I'm sorry, but I just really feel that I- that I should pay you up with the damage I've done as soon as possible." She reasoned out, both hands tightly grasping the thin shaft of her chicken umbrella.

"I know this is too much to ask for you, but I'm currently in a no-umbrella-in-a-heavy-rain crisis and if it's okay, can you just hop on inside my car and make your negotiations there?"

The girl was taken aback by the idea of her getting inside the car of a man she barely knew, but at this point, she knew she can't complain.

"I guess I can." She nodded.

Jung Hwan immediately fished his pocket for his keys and with one click, the camaro lighted up and unsecured itself. It took the both of the