Nicanor and the Hospital

What other people might not know is that Nicanor wished he had Gorbachev as his surname. Nicanor Gorbachev he thought sounded right on. And no one would miss that it sounded right on.

Nicanor had many more of these thoughts. He thought he was clairvoyant. He thought tattoos should be studied to fully understand man's evolution, he thought every chocolate bar should be eaten with a single mouthful and so on and so forth. He is not exactly a weird chum, he was actually part of his high school's top tier clique (they called him Nicky), and he won't appear to you as someone with floor-length ideals. But inside Nicanor's mind were indeed high and mighty ideals. He carried them identified one by one in his head and he never forgot. So that one day, any day, should he come across anyone who was willing and hot-blooded to discuss his thoughts, we would be armed and ready to prove their every detail.

And one such thought was his thought about the hospital. The edifice, the stark white building. Our Nicanor thought every building's design should serve its general purpose. He liked nice looking airports because they did very well in both welcoming you in and reminding you to come back. He thought that they should always look nice so that you are pulled in, even from the aircraft. He thought the pawnshop design was sufficient as it serves the need for a quick buck, and just like a sari-sari store, it is designed for the quick transaction. And so, in the case of hospitals, what was their general purpose? It was for healing --- and Nicanor never thought that hospital designs facilitated healing.

Because of this nagging belief, Nicanor developed a knack for visiting hospitals. He couldn't quite tell if his growing obsession was for the search of a true hospital or was to add to his mental database of hospital design failures. But whichever the case may be, Nicanor never missed a chance to go to the hospital. He visited every sick relative, he attended each hospital visitation mission and elevated any simple ailment to one that needed hospital care, (Of course, the emotional reasons of the first two instances took precedence over his obsession. Feeding his interest on the hospital structure was a bonus to attending to his social obligations.) At every excursion, he would look around, gaze his eyes around the hospital features and observe. And time and time again, he would come across an anomaly, or so he thought. Emergency rooms should be bigger, as a great majority of trips to the hospital are for emergencies. Cafeterias should be a focal point as nourishment is a part of healing, not only for the patients but for the caregivers / relatives as well. Recovery rooms should embrace the outdoors, reception areas should have more that three active counters and hospital rooms should mimic a regular house's bedroom. All of which, Nicanor thought facilitated healing. This staunch believer first came about the hospital design obsession as a little boy, when he wondered why sick people were never served his grandmother's chicken soup. This allowed him to see contradictions in the hospital setting, in the hospital building's design.

And this ensued for years. And as he continued visiting hospitals, he had become so used to seeing the same contradictions, the same anomalies, the same wrong placements that strong frustration suddenly set in. It was frustration upon frustration, leading him to think new thoughts about patient welfare, generic medicines, nurse's wages, etcetera, etcetera. It had engulfed him so bad that he knew he had to stop. So, against what he had been so used to in the past, he strove hard to avoid any new trips to the hospital. No more visits to his aunt who had just given birth to the clan's youngest member, he'll just catch them at their home. No more hospital visitations, he'll make up with barrio medical missions. And no more over-estimated headaches. He would have to be diagnosed with cancer before he sets foot in a hospital once again, that is if there were no available alternative medicine facility. And so, this heightened dislike for the hospital kept Nicanor from getting sick. He watched his health with a passion, so as not to catch the slightest bit of a cold that could escalate, he feared, into something that might drive him straight to the hated hospital.

In the end, Nicanor still has not forgotten his obsession, just as he has not forgotten any of his mighty ideals. He has just curbed it, diverted it into another brand-new obsession that, quite frankly has led to this: the hospital kept Nicanor healed.