when waiting means dying.

I got it all wrong when I thought that we females got the worse deal. Men got it worse. It took me a nice trip to the Emergency Room of a nearby hospital last Friday to figure that one out. After waiting 3 hours for a urinalysis and an ultrasound inspection, my brother was finally let go with nothing more than a prescription for over-the-counter painkillers. Had it not been for this scare, and everyone's fear that there would be no preceding Tanmantiong's to ever exist in this world and carry the name on, I would have been stuffing my face at Saisaki celebrating Jill's (and partly Nati's) birthday. I had not been to Saisaki in more than 5 years until last Friday. Still, the record stands that I have not eaten at Saisaki in more than 5 years and two days. I stayed just in time for Sam, RJ, Marts, Joe and Plep to arrive- and I was off for one of the longest nights of my life. All we did was wait. And a thought struck me as a woman who had a bruised eye and a bloody head was rolled in and not attended to until payment could be ensured from her companions. "I'm going to die before I get any medical help here."

I heard one of the attendants saying how "This is a private institution... bla bla blah." Cut to the chase and just tell the lady that her friend can't be helped if you don't have cash. This is a private institution, translation: Wala kaming paki basta may pera ka. Ouch. My brother, aunt and I were on the way out of the ER before the injured woman was finally admitted for a CT scan. And that's just for the scan. What if there had been internal bleeding all this time? Those 3 hours she waited, her life was ebbing away slowly like grains of sand through an hourglass. I was disgusted by the hospital system; shocked that humans who are supposedly our earthly saviors could possibly be so unfeeling towards those in need. Indirectly, it's as if they're saying that the rich deserve to live and that the less fortunate can be left to wilt. And they say they're "Number 1 in Patient Care." They're number one alright, number one with patients who don't care how much they spend on their Guccis and Ferragamos.