A few days before Edmund and I flew to California on May 22, Antonia took an emergency leave. She said her husband called asking her to come home to look for their daughter. Their 21-year-old only child left home at 6 am on Thursday, May 16 and hasn’t come back. She was not responding to phone calls. She told her father that she would be visiting her former workmate.
I asked if she has a boyfriend, none that they know of. Antonia’s daughter is smart and never gave her parents any worry, till now. Antonia left immediately to Bicol to locate her daughter.
Antonia came back after a few days with great news. They have located their daughter.
So what happened?
Their daughter went to see her female workmate. I forgot her name so I would refer to her as Jenna. When it was time for them to split, Jenna started feeling faint. She asked Antonia’s daughter to bring her to the bus station. When she was about to get on the bus, she told Antonia’s daughter to accompany her till she gets home to Sorsogon because she was really not feeling well.
Antonia’s daughter rode the bus with Jenna without messaging her parents of her whereabouts.
Jenna slept while they were on the bus. Antonia’s noticed that she was looking very pale. Then after a while, she noticed Jenna’s face turned so white. Antonia’s daughter tried to wake her friend up but she was not responding. She was stiff. Antonia’s daughter yelled to the bus conductor to help her. She thinks Jenna could be dead already. The bus made an emergency stop at a hospital where the nurses and doctor declared the friend as dead on arrival.
Antonia’s daughter contacted the parents. The mom told her that her daughter had leukemia but they didn’t think it was that serious.
When Antonia, her husband, and sister-in-law went to see the barangay, the woman there told them that “si Jenna namatay kasama ang anak mo”. Hearing that, Antonia’s sister-in-law fainted, her husband started wailing “naku po bakit mo kami iniwan?”
But Antonia, the smarter one, picked up what the woman meant, that only Jenna had died.
