here? What is this place? Who are these people? What happens next? All good questions, but impossible to answer, so that when she pondered the possibilities she felt as if she were running blindly into the high concrete walls—again and again and again.
Then there were the thoughts of her family and the village, all that she had left behind when she stepped onto the bus that early morning beside the gulf. But these memories and visions were unbearably poignant, impossibly distant from the reality of the cell. She couldn’t dwell on home; it hurt too much.
“Marivic! I’m leaving! It’s my turn to go.”
Junior was calling to her over the wall. It was the morning of Marivic’s fifth day on the island, and she was eating breakfast. The silent man and woman had been in her cell already, the usual routine, and they had gone into Junior’s cell after they left hers.
“Marivic, did you hear me? I’ll be leaving in two days.“
“Did they tell you that?”
“No, they didn’t talk. Of course not. But they took some blood from my arm. Then they gave me an injection. That’s it. They’ve started the treatment.”
This was what Wilfredo had called it. The Goodbye Treatment. Fredo had been on the island for a month, in the cell that Marivic now occupied. During that time, two different inmates had come and gone in the adjoining cell. Each time there had been a break in the routine, a new pattern.
Day One: During their morning visit, before delivering the meal, one of the two foreigners would draw a blood sample and give an injection.
Day Two: An injection and blood sample in the morning, both repeated in the evening.
Day Three: Before dawn, one last injection. Then the men took you out the door. Gone, just that quickly.
That was The Goodbye Treatment. Now it was starting for Junior, and he was excited: “My God, finally. I’m so tired of this hole. I can’t wait to get out.”
“I’m glad,” Marivic said. But she didn’t sound convincing, and Junior caught the hesitant tone.
“Marivic, I don’t mean it that way. I’ll miss you. I’m just so tired of being here. You understand.”
“I don’t blame you for wanting to be gone.”
“Don’t worry, your turn will come soon.”
But Marivic wasn’t sure that she wanted her turn to come. Blood samples and injections—all just to leave the island? That and the daily medical exams, the concern about their health. What was that all about?
An instinctive suspicion nagged at her, just the way it had that early morning when she stepped off the bus and confronted the matrona and her thuggish companion. Something’s not quite right here, she wanted to tell Junior. Don’t you see it too?
But there was a difference, she thought. At the bus terminal, she could have acted on the instinct. Refused to go with the matrona. Turned and fled, if it came to that. Run like hell. She could have saved herself then. Not any longer. She couldn’t help herself now, and she definitely couldn’t help Junior.
“I’m happy for you,” Marivic said.
“You don’t sound happy.”
“I am. Really.”
“Good,” said Junior from the other side of the wall. “Don’t be jealous. You won’t be here much longer, either, I’m sure of it.”
The Goodbye Treatment continued for Junior, exactly on schedule. The second morning, an injection and a blood sample. The evening of the second day, again a blood sample and an injection. Junior and Marivic didn’t talk much after that. Junior was going in a few hours. They both understood it.
Marivic lay in the cell and tried to make sense of it all. Junior was going. But where? For what purpose? Why now instead of yesterday or tomorrow? Why were they even here at all? All this—the plane and the boat and the buildings and the guards—did all this exist just to provide a way station between Manila and some ultimate destination for a few unfortunate captives?
It didn’t make sense.
As she lay in the darkness, she thought about the glimpse of the island that she had gotten that first night as she peeked over the wall, through the wire grille. She remembered the path that ran past her cell wall, down the hill, to the dock.
Whether by boat or by floating plane, the dock seemed to be the point of entry and departure. This meant that Junior, when he left, would be on that path soon. If he was leaving.
She spoke in the darkness: “Junior? Are you awake?”