Chapter Text
The elevator opened on the 27th floor, and Aiah inhaled a strong scent of lemongrass air purifier from the hallway. She checked the time from her wristwatch: 12:28PM.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
”2710. 2710. 2710” she muttered over and over.
Still slightly disoriented from her long shift, she roughly navigated through the dimly lit condominium.
After a series of back and forth, a dizzying number of turns, and one very annoyed look from a teenager she bumped into, she finally reached the unit and gave three soft knocks on the door.
“Ate, you’re late.”
“Sorry, Soph. Alam mo naman.” Aiah gave her a half-hug as she came in. “I worked for 36 hours straight. Grabe.”
Sophia hugged her back, squeezing Aiah harder between her arms.
“I missed you!” Sophia exclaimed. “Come, come. I ordered lunch.”
On the dining table, they sat across from each other. Sophia took out the food from the paperbag one by one—rice, caldereta, and sizzling adobo. Aiah’s favorite.
“So,” Sophie said as she examined each container. “How are you?”
“Ikaw muna,” Aiah said, giving Sophia her familiar playful grin, “This place is nice. And I heard you’re seeing someone. Look at you, growing up so fast.”
“Where did you even hear that?”
“I see the tabloids. People are very nosy.”
Sophia rolled her eyes, but she didn't stop smiling. “I’m being private, Ate. How’s tita?”
“Mama’s stressed about her Kambingan, as usual. How’s your mom?”
“Still a shopaholic, and…I think she wants to be a Buddhist now” Sophia said mid-bite, after a brief pause, she continued, “You’re not going to ask me about dad?”
Aiah made a gagging sound, making Sophie laugh. “Okay. How’s your dad?”
Sophia rolled her eyes. She resented the way Aiah refers to him as her father instead of theirs. It’s been the task she’d assigned herself since she was a kid, the family fixer, as she liked to call it. Although, apparently, she hasn’t been doing a very good job.
“Our dad,” there’s tension between them now, but not strong enough to sway Aiah, “You really have to stop doing that, you know.”
Aiah and Sophia led very different lives when they were growing up. Aiah was raised by a single mother in a modest home in Pampanga—concrete walls, small kitchen, Sundays filled with AM news. She helped her mother manage their kambingan, a small eatery that had been passed down from her grandmother. Aiah learned early how to chop vegetables, prepare marinades, and serve customers with a smile. It wasn’t much. But it was decent, and it was theirs. She was her mother’s only child, and while she sometimes longed for the luxuries only her father could offer, she knew that her mother’s strength and hard work to keep their little business running was enough to keep them going.
Sophia on the other hand, grew up in a very different world. She was raised in a home where appearances mattered more than anything else—gated houses, polished floors, imported furniture, the walls adorned with plaques and framed photos of political dinners. As the daughter of a congressman who owned half the city, she learned early how to fit in, how to stand out just enough to be noticed, but never too much to disrupt the peace.
They saw each other on weekends, hurried summers, or whenever their worlds allowed it. One raised in the simmering heat of their kambigan’s grill, the other in air-conditioned rooms with politicians and business deals. One in hand-me-down uniforms, the other in brand-new dresses every week. And yet, somehow, they fit. Aiah would braid Sophia’s hair, teach her to cook simple meals from memory, and Sophia would share stories of glamorous life —the shopping malls or the boys who admired her— and she’d save her snacks for Aiah’s long ride home.
They shared secrets. Wrote letters. Fought. Made up.
Now, in their twenties, they lived in the same city, yet led wildly different lives—one in the fraying chaos of an ER, the other in glossy magazine spreads and stylists' hands. But the calls still came. The late-night texts. The unspoken code between sisters who grew up in two different worlds, but never stopped believing they were part of the same one.
Their father kept Aiah at arms length, more for his publicity than anything else. She was his daughter from a life he rarely acknowledged in public— nothing more, nothing less. Just another inconvenient truth he chooses to ignore. Still, the occasional gifts came, formal greetings at family functions. There were calculated smiles, but there was no real affection, and Aiah had learned not to expect warmth from him. She stopped trying to earn it a long time ago.
“I’m not doing anything,” Aiah said defensively, still keeping her playfulness intact. “We’re just—”
“I know, I know.” Sophia cut her off, “You’re on the opposite sides of the political spectrum. It’s all so boring.” She waved her hand between them like she was trying to dismiss Aiah completely.
Aiah laughed anyway. “See? You get it,” she said. “We can just talk about your secret boyfriend.”
Before Sophia could answer, Aiah’s beeper rang, “Sorry, Soph,” she said apologetically, slowly standing up from the table. “I have to go. Understaffed sa ER.”
“At least take these,” with a resigned sigh, Sophia offered the unopened sushi container, “Don’t starve yourself.”
“Love you. I’ll text you!” Aiah mumbled as she bolted out the door.
When the ER calls, you run—and you run like hell. And Aiah has been running for two years. This is her life now—the flickering fluorescent lights, endless phone ringing, beeping monitors, the sound of stretchers rolling in. It’s fast-paced, it’s non-stop. Lunch has become more of a luxury than a basic right. Sleep? Aiah has forgotten what that’s like. Bathroom breaks? Let’s just say she has learned to appreciate adult diapers at the ripe age of 24.
And she’d seen almost everything—broken limbs from vehicular accidents, drug overdose, cardiac arrests, severe burns. One moment she’s peacefully suturing a small cut, and the next, she’s performing CPR. Two years may not seem very long, but she’s lost more patients than she could count. It was hard the first time, the second and third, even harder, still. But eventually, she learned to live with it. She wasn’t immune, she wasn’t numb. Far from it. She’s learned to take all cases—the saves and the losses—as little inspirations, little reminders of why she pushes through day in and day out.
She had to, anyway. If she wants to go to med school without her father’s help.
“Arceta,” Maloi called out, darting toward her with a patient’s chart in hand. “Bed 6. Minor laceration.”
Aiah grabbed the chart and walks away, but Maloi stopped her by giving her another unsolicited advice:
“Cute siya,” Maloi winked, “flirt a little, okay?”
”That's your 911?!”