“Gregorio, Forgive us all”

Based from our health, our lives

By: Book Project Committee, NEHCC, NCCP

It was a weltering hot that afternoon – not unusual in the Philippines, but not a
time for hurrying either. That’s why I knew something was wrong when a man came
hurrying up the stairs of the convento.

The man was Gregorio and he told me his wife, Lina, who was pregnant was sick
with cholera. He and a friend had carried her for four hours from their mountain home
using a hammock as stretcher. When they arrived at the town of Togoc, they found the
doctor had gone.

Togoc is one of the several parishes situated in the mountains in the island of
Negros with the population of 20,000 people. The pastor there now Fr. Eugenio, tell me
that they have no doctor, though they still have dilapidated clinic. When I was there,
about a year ago, a doctor sometimes visited us.

Gregorio wanted to borrow our vehicle to take his wife to the hospital in the
lowlands-a-two-hour ride over a rocky road. I explained to him that Fr. Hilario had taken
the jeepney, but I would go with him to the clinic anyhow to see what could be done. We
found Lina lying at the clinic crying out in pain.

Obviously, she desperately needed help. So, we hurried out to search for the
young doctor assigned to Togoc for six month’s rural training. But he was away in an
outlying and so we waited for what seemed like ages before he came back. He
immediately wrote out a prescription for Gregorio, who ran barefoot along the road to a
little shop stocked with pitifully small supplies of medicines. He was back in few
minutes, only to say that the shop didn’t have the medicine. The doctor wrote another
prescription. Gregorio sped away again, only to return once more- breathless and
empty-handed.

We need dextrose, said the doctor but there is none here in town. All of us
fanned out through, the neighborhood asking people if they had any. Finally, a woman
produced a half-filled bottle left over from what her husband used before he died. I
brought it to the doctor.
He looked up exasperated and said, “the clinic has no dextrose needle. We’ll
have to take her down to Kabankalan.”

Doc, you know she’ll die on the way, I said “isn’t there anything you can do? He
then tried to give the dextrose with a large needle, but the vein in her arms and legs had
collapsed. He tried the veins on the neck. That was no good either.

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 We all stood there helpless as Lina screamed in pain. Gregorio was mute with
confusion: their little child was wandering around the bed. Finally, the doctor gave her
some Coca Cola-the only medicine available. Once more the doctor insisted Lina would
have to journey down to Kabankalan. Since the priest wouldn’t be back, there was
nothing else to do but start the haggling for a rented jeepney. It would be expensive and
Gregorio had nothing, but we were in no position to haggle with a life at stake.

Gregorio laid Lina on the same hammock that he had used to carry her down the
mountain, and strung it up inside the jeepney. All the time she cried out in pain. We had
no sedatives to calm her with. The doctor sat beside Gregorio.

Before they left, I whispered to Lina to be brave, there would be help. “Hang-on”,
I said.

The jeepney moved slowly, bouncing along that terrible road until it slowly
disappeared from sight. I whispered a hopeless prayer as if God who forgives would
also at a stroke, undo the accumulated effects of our unjust system.

Hen Fr. Hilario got back to the convento the following afternoon, I poured out the
story to him. As we were talking, Gregorio appeared at the door. He looked as if he had
walked the whole way back which was over 30 kilometers.

His face told the story – Lina had died halfway down the journey. She had
begged to stop the jeepney; the pain being too much. They stopped, and as they did,
she died and so also taking the life of the child inside.

And now followed a strange development. The doctor and the driver insisted that
maybe she was still alive! They would not heed Gregorio’s pleas to return to Togoc. So,
the jeepney continued on and deposited Gregorio and his dead wife at a doctor’s house
clinic in a large barrio!

The doctor was not there, and the housewife naturally got mad at Gregorio for
bringing a dead patient. But the jeepney driver would not carry Gregorio and Lina any
further.” Against the law”, he said, and, “of course it would be bad luck too”.

The young doctor must have had very little understanding of just how destitute
Gregorio was – how desperately poor most of our people are – because what he did
next still amazes me. He went on the Kabankalan with the jeepney driver and asked an
expensive Western-style funeral home to take care of the corpse. For Gregorio, who
had to pay for the expenses was better than leave his wife in an unfriendly house.

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 Now Gregorio stood there numb and exhausted. What else could he do? The
funeral home would not return the body till he paid the bills for embalming and for
bringing the body back to Togoc. It was 8,000 pesos. This was more than any amount
Gregorio had ever held in his whole life. Just think that 250 pesos worth of medicine
would have saved the life of both Lina and her baby! It was the end as far as I was
concerned. But not for Gregorio. He would borrow the money from us and sell his land
to pay us!

I suggested we send down our vehicle for the body, but there was a question
about that being illegal. And then, would Perfecto our faithful driver overcome the same
superstitious fear of carrying a dead body in his vehicle?

Apart from that, said, Fr. Hilario, “Our beat-up vehicle might never make it down
and up again.”

Gregorio watched us argue. He was beyond feeling.

Finally, we decided to consult Perfecto. When Fr. Hilario left. Gregorio pleaded,
“Father, don’t leave Lina in Kabankalan” – and he wept.

Perfecto was brief and to the point - The vehicle will make it down, and we’ll get it
welded there. Then I’ll drive it back – I’m not afraid to carry a dead body”.

Then we planned how to deal with the funeral home – there would be some
brutal bargaining to do.

When we brought Lina back to Togoc, Gregorio asked for the lid to be taken off
the coffin so he could be photographed with his child and wife for the last time.

Gregorio, do you blame yourself for poverty, for Lina’s death? Will you ever
escape from the shadow of failure, that is not your fault?