Kaban ni D_BystandeR: KINSA SI DR. FRAN???

Dr. Fran  was a good friend of mine and I came to know him one morning while  me and my co-employee of Escano Lines who was my neighbor in D. Jakosalem St., Cebu City were jogging in the oval of Abellana National School. We were only good for 7 rounds and we took a rest but we noticed a man with athletic-built-body who kept on circling the oval and we  opined we already saw him jogging ahead of us before we started our jog.

He has a long curly hair and wearing glasses and with his muscled build structure from a distance we surmised that he  was younger than us (I was as that time a young man at 31 and my friend was probably in his late thirties. We waited until he drained his last energy where I noticed his sweats were streaming down his elbows like tiny streams of water flowing freely and as he was doing his jog with that long stride I could only imagine that he could be a professional runner much younger than us, and his exhaustive breathing cycle could be heard like a whistling of a train travelling a steep hillside.

Finding him finally taking a rest with his white towel on hand, we approached him and extended our friendly greetings to him. It did not take us so much to win his friendship into a having a friendly conversation with us for we noticed he was an approachable fellow. Knowing we just started our jogging exercise in Abellana oval for only a couple of days and confiding to him we only made 7 rounds in the oval, he gave us an encouraging remark saying we were better off for a good start because it is not usual for beginners to reach 7 rounds. And we told him from a distance we thought he could be younger than us because of his staying power to make lots of rounds and with those longer and faster strides only a professional runner can do.

He gave us his big smile perhaps elated in the thought that we had made a younger guess about his age. "To tell  you the truth I am now 49 and my wife, Dra. Velasquez (That's what I remembered him telling us about his wife and maybe Velasquez was her maiden name before they got married because normally a wife assumes the family name of her husband.) is now making 11 rounds in the oval. For me, I make 25 rounds and that's enough for me," he humbly confided to us with a wink of an eye and a beaming smile. That was how I could still picture Dr. Fran in my mind  even up to this date. And my personal relation with him as a friend could best find evidence in the fact that there were times I would ask him what medicine to give to my young kids on their early teens at that time when one of them has a persistent cough or a slight fever and he would tell me to go with him in front of Abellana School where his white car was parked and he would open the baggage compartment of his car at the back and grabbed a prescription booklet and wrote the medicine with its corresponding dosage.

That was how he treated me as his close friend where ordinarily no physician will give you a prescription for your ailing child unless you bring him to his clinic where you will be billed the corresponding doctor's fee, but for me it's given free! And the last time I saw him was inside the Cebu Maternity House when my wife delivered our 4th child (Jonathan, nicknamed Bimbo, born on Jan. 17/76 who is now working in Iraq as a safety engineer (H2S Engineer) in an oil rig company located in the Middle East) I saw him in his colored-green doctor's garb with a white cloth mask covering his mouth but I could still recognize him as Dr. Fran, my good friend, as he responded with a nod of his head with that signature smile he used to give me when we met each other at the oval of Abellana School when I gestured at him with my hand. He was briskly making his steps on the double as his sturdy hands grabbed that heavy oxygen tank probably he was on duty attending to a mother inside the delivery room where his steps guided him. And maybe a few months after that or in the early 80s when what stunned me was to learn that he already passed away as I was reading the headlines of a local newspaper.

 I could only say to murmur a few lines of prayer and made a sign of the cross to signify my acknowledgment to a man whom I consider my close friend who just recently succumbed to accept his last call from the Lord Almighty. He was the last man I know who worked as Director of that Cebu Maternity House which now has another name known as Cebu Puericulture Center and Maternity House (CPCMH). And that was the story of my life I cannot forget that happened 38 years ago.