The New Dentists

Courtney C. Chua

It only takes a few seconds for the scene to register in your mind, but the pain that you feel as your heart breaks slowly and excruciatingly remains behind your eyelids forever. Your feet move automatically to get to your destination, to the stairs beyond the man sitting in the middle of the overpass.

It is Saturday and almost Christmas. You had to suffer through crowds and lines of people since you went out of the house at around eight in the morning, and it’s no different now. It is seven P.M. and the overpass is full of people walking with you, walking past you, going up the stairs, going down the stairs, and no one stops.

You see three young ladies in their saleslady outfits, either ready to start their shift or glad to end it. They laugh with lipstick and cover their mouths with their hands and red nail polish and you watch as they simply pass by the man that sits hunched on a mat on the floor.

You’re getting closer now, and you squint your eyes because the man is hugging something and you don’t know what. You think it looks like a watermelon because it’s big and round but watermelons aren’t gray. There are over a thousand possible things you think about that the man may be holding because men don’t just sit on the floor of overpasses hugging watermelons.

The wind blows by and there might be no snow in your country but there is still the Christmas breeze and you shiver a little, wishing you brought your jacket with you.

The man looks cold, with those dirty brown shorts of his and that thin white shirt, and the way he hugs that big, gray, round thing as if it was his lifeline.

Your feet are on automatic now, walking towards that staircase that’ll lead you away from this annoying crowd of faceless people because you get fidgety when surrounded by too many strangers. You’re still so far from home and you promised your dad you’d be home early today. So you keep on walking faster and faster until there is nothing but momentum carrying you.

You reach the man and you walk past him, and he blurs in your vision but you saw it and it’s enough and you close your eyes and hear your heart break into a million pieces because the man is hugging his child and he’s hugging it so close to him that you don’t even see his face anymore because his nose is buried in the child’s neck.

It is not even a child, it is a baby and you know it cannot possibly be normal for a baby’s head to be so big like that. The man is holding the baby close to him, cradles him or her (you don’t know) gently in his lap and in his arms, and keeps his head and shoulders down like he’s crying.

You don’t see his face nor the baby’s when you crane your head to the side but you do see the little pouch on the floor in front of them, open, asking for a little bit of money, a little bit of help, grace, and a whole lot of love.

The overpass is full of people going north, going south, going up, going down, but not a single one stops and offers help in the form of a coin.

There is something in you that dies a little but your feet are on automatic and before you know it, you’re up the stairs and in the train station. You only have more or less eighty pesos in your wallet, and you still need to take two trains and a jeep to get home and you know you could have at least offered a twenty peso bill but you think it’s too late to turn back now and you’ve been on the streets since eight in the morning and it’s seven in the evening and your feet are killing you and you’re already on the train.

But you know it’s never too late to turn back.

But you really are on the train now and you’re three stations away and still you wonder if you should go back because if you’re not going to help the man and the child, then who will?

Out of all the people that passed by the man in the overpass, not a single one gave an effort to stop for a few minutes to keep him from dying inside with just a few words of encouragement or a single peso coin.

You watch Quezon City pass by you from the window of the train and you see the lights and think it’s Christmas, so where’s the Christmas spirit?

Beside you, the girl does a sign of the cross and you watch from the corner of your eye as her hand moves from her forehead to her tummy to her shoulders.

You don’t know what she prayed about, but she reminded you of God and you feel ashamed that you forgot.

So you pray.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

You pray for the man and his child to be given grace. You pray for their health and their well-being. You pray for their Christmas. Most of all, you pray for God to give you grace and all those other people that simply walked by so that you may be able to push the breaks once your feet moves again on automatic.

Two train rides and an hour later, you’re on the jeepney ride home but it’s no use.

It only took a few seconds for the cruel scene to register in your mind, but you know that the pain that you felt when your heart broke slowly and excruciatingly as the man held the child tighter to his body will remain behind your eyelids forever.

Courtney is a third year high school student from St. Paul University, Quezon City.