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Unusual Fathers Day Celebration

I know I have to let it out, so please bear with me.

I am a happy person. My husband and I are both happy people. We’re raising 3 happy, cheerful, silly children. 

Today is fathers day. Exactly a week before, we’re planning on how to spend this day. Whether we will just eat out at night, or he’ll take a day off and watch movie with the family, or a simple food trip and Netflix series marathon at home. We couldn’t make up our minds. 

He went to work on a Saturday, night shift. I was so exhausted because I spent a whole day of selling our pre-loved clothes but I managed to make a simple video greeting for him before I finally sleep. 

6am, I was still asleep when my phone rang. I got a call from him telling me to follow him to the hospital because his abdominal pain is unbearable. He was on duty. The company rescue car brought him to the nearest hospital. I did my best to be there in no time. I brushed my teeth, washed my face in seconds, woke my eldest and told him to look after his siblings, got my bag, made sure I had my phone and my wallet, booked a Grab car and leave without changing my clothes. 

My knees are shaking. The driver is talking to me but I can barely speak. My voice cracks with every word. I noticed the driver looking at me in the rear-view mirror while I tried my best to speak asking him to please hustle up because my husband is at the hospital waiting for me. 

The Grab car has a TV, showing a Sunday mass. What a perfect timing! That’s the moment I knew that God is telling me that He’s with me. He may be reassuring me that everything will be okay. I felt a little relief. Just a little. All throughout the travel, I was just praying. Telling God that please let us pass through this lightly. Telling God to please make my husband feel better, and prayed that it is not something major. I know, deep in my heart, that we can get through this. I’m sure we can get through this. Maybe it is what they call, faith.

I arrived at the hospital’s emergency room, looked left and right trying to find my husband. I saw a dimmed face man, holding his left abdomen, seems like in excruciating pain, mburst into tears as soon as he saw me. I held back my tears, run onto him as fast as I could, as tough as I could. I have never seen the man of our house looking like this. Weak, vulnerable, and in extreme pain. He has nothing to say but “it’s really painful”.




I do not know what to do. This is the first time that I felt he needed my help. He needed me. The nurse injected him a pain reliever and two more medicine for abdominal pain.

There is no bed available. Only silver metal chairs full of patients. I knelt on the floor in front of him. I couldn’t say anything. I am just looking at him. He held my hand. Squeezed it a little somehow reassuring me that everything is going to be okay. He knows I have a spine problem so he even looked for a vacant seat for me. I said no. I’m okay. 

A couple of minutes, I feel the pain in my lower back so i decided to walk away and snatch a monoblock chair from the guard on duty. 

I sat beside him. I finally took the strength to talk and tell him that the pain will go away in no time because of the meds given to him. He looks so tired. He held my hand and lay his head on my shoulder. I wanted to burst into tears. I wanted to cry hard. I wanted to scream. I want to tell the world how scared I am at that very moment. 

There were plenty of patients in the ER. Different cases from mild to severe. From simply sitting down waiting to the one covered with blood. Suddenly a girl scream, calling her husband’s name and begging him to fight for his life because their children are waiting for him. She’s crying and shouting. I don’t have the strength to look into her direction because I myself will about to break down any minute. 

I held back my tears telling myself not to show any signs of weakness, almost cursing myself, telling me to compose myself and be strong. I know, this is not the time to be vulnerable.

The metal chair finally had enough space for one person to lie down. I let my husband to sleep on my lap. He’s snoring softly, maybe the pain has subsided. 

I looked all over his face. He has grown a lot older. His gray hairs are more visible. I have always known that God has blessed me with a one-of-a-kind man. A man that I do not deserve. A man who turned the world upside down just to see me and my kids happy and contented. Everything flashed back, from the time I first met him, to the time that we’re here, facing another challenge together for almost 20 beautiful years. 

All those years I held onto him. He is the one who is always strong. Stronger than me. Sturdier than I am. I was always this dependent wife, this pabebe and childish wife who cries over a box of donuts that he wasn't able to bring home during promos. I couldn't believe that I cried over a bar of chocolate that I couldn't find in the fridge. Yes, I am a cry baby. A spoiled brat. A demanding wife. But I know I have good traits too and I used to hear all of those from him. He also draws strength from me every once in a while, maybe I am just the more emotional, showy and vocal between the two of us. Maarte as a girl.


And maybe he was just pretending to be tough most of the time because he knows I am this paranoid and worrisome wife and mom.


We really know each other that much. We're going on twenty years together, that's why.


After A few hours which I didn't know how long, the doctor told us that we can go home and that it is just hyperacidity, while at the back of my mind, I know there is something more to this. They didn't conduct a lab test or an abdominal ultrasound either. But the husband urges me to go home because he was so tired and wanted to get enough rest at home.


While I am booking a Grab car, he chilled under a warm weather. His lips are pale. I can sense that there is something wrong so I begged him to go back to the ER while we were just a couple of meters away but he refused. He insisted to go home because according to him, he was just tired.


He has fever when we arrived home which is gone by now as I am writing this, beside him, while he's sleeping and while my tears flowing down my cheeks as silently as possible.

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