Entertainment

The friend I left behind

June 11, 2011 | 12:00am

I left Los Angeles on PR103 Wednesday night, June 8, with a heavy heart, so heavy that I was worried I would be charged for excess baggage.

You see, I left Manila Sunday night, June 5, to cover the opening of Dr. Vicki Belo’s first clinic in the US (at 1160 North Central Avenue, Suite 201, Glendale, California) with Leah Salterio, Vicki’s PR Girl, and I came home without her. She was at the neuro-ICU of the Glendale Adventist Medical Center fighting for her life after suffering a stroke (intra-hemorrhage, according to the nurse) that affected the left side of her brain, rendering the right side of her body immobile.

I learned what happened to Leah early Monday morning (7 a.m. LA Time; 10 p.m. Manila Time) when I woke up nursing a jetlag. I checked my celfone (in silent mode) and there was a missed call from Shirley. I texted Shirley that I was in L.A. and she texted back, “I know. How’s Leah?” I knew at once that something was wrong.

I called Vicki at the Peninsula suite she shared with her beloved Hayden Kho and she told me what happened as related to her by her make-up artist Marife Mordido (my Waray kababayan from Las Navas, Northern Samar).

Leah and I were the last to come out of the LAX customs area because the seven pieces of luggage between us had to be checked. The PAL flight arrived at past 9:30 Sunday night and we left the airport way past 11 o’clock. We were fetched by the husband of the caretaker of Vicki’s house in Glendale. I begged off from the invitation for us to have late dinner at a Chinese restaurant and asked to be dropped at the Thompson Hotel in Beverly Hills.

According to Marife, Leah and Dilo Camara (the ABS-CBN guy who covered the Belo event) had dinner of lechon kawali, pansit and more at Vicki’s house where they were staying. Then Leah took a bath. She collapsed at the bathroom. Marife and Vicki’s caretaker helped Leah to her feet, brought her to a sofa, dressed her up and called 911. In a jiffy, Leah was rushed to the Glendale Adventist Medical Center with a blood clot in her brain. Her blood pressure was 220/140.

Leah, 46, told me that she slept for nine hours during the flight. Did she forget to take her medication for hypertension, the same ailment that, she told me at the Mabuhay Lounge while we were waiting for our flight to LA, made her blood pressure rise to 240/140 three months earlier in Manila? (She did take the medicine after the late dinner.)

I asked my friend Tim Evans (of the US Immigration) to accompany me to the hospital as soon as I learned what happened. There, we saw Leah intubated and sedated, her eyes closed. I took out my Padre Pio istampita and massaged Leah’s arm and forehead with it. (Movie writer Ed de Leon also suffered a stroke that landed him at the ICU and he attributed much of his recovery from his novena to Padre Pio of whom Ed is a devotee.) She wasn’t moving. I called her name. She wasn’t responding but I saw quiet tears rolling down her cheek from her left eye.

I couldn’t believe that something so tragic, something so shattering could happen to a friend (a single parent), not in a country thousands of miles from her two children (Limo, 20, and Ashley, 19). But it did.

Wednesday afternoon on the way to LAX for my flight home, the same one Leah was supposed to take, I asked Tim and another friend, immigration lawyer Jemela Nettles, to accompany me to the Glendale Adventist Medical Center to say goodbye to Leah who remained at the neuro-ICU still intubated. I told Leah to get up already, time to go home, while again massaging her arm and forehead with another Padre Pio istampita. I held her left arm and told her to press it if she recognized me. She did, very weakly! Then, still calling her name and telling her my name, I asked her to open her eyes to see if she recognized me. She also, very slowly! Again, I saw quiet tears welling in her eyes which looked so sad that I felt the world was caving in on us. Tim and Jemela pointed to the heart monitor and the needle was moving fast. That was a good sign that Leah recognized us.

Before I left, I whispered to Leah, “You have always been a fighter, a survivor. Hang on, don’t give up! I know you have several deadlines to meet but they don’t include the Big One. Huwag kang bibitaw!”

The flight back home was the saddest one I have ever taken. I flew to LA with my friend and I was flying back without her. Leah sat on No. 33A on the PR102 flight to LA. I thought I saw her fast asleep, lost to the world, when I saw it on my way to my seat. I felt her absence even more.

Postscript: Vicki texted me the following message at 12 noon yesterday, a few hours after I arrived — “Hi, Ricky. Leah doing better today. Seems to recognize people and has no more breathing tube. Keep praying.”

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A much-awaited family reunion

The Santoses finally have their long-delayed reunion last May 30 at Batangas Gov. Vilma Santos and husband Sen. Ralph Recto’s house in Ayala Alabang. Vilma’s siblings Tess and Winnie (and their own families, 11 of them all in all) came home for the event since their Mama Milagros couldn’t travel to the US. From left: Tess, Vilma, Joel, Winnie and Emyline, with Mama Santos (seated). On June 4, the family went to Punta Fuego where Ralph played the piano with son Ryan on the drums, while (from left) Vilma, Tess, Emyline, Maricar Magalona-Martinez (family friend) and Vilma’s Girl Friday Aida Fandialan watched approvingly.