21/09/2026
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ | The angel leaves the bedside
Thereโs always a looming, lingering pain every time I climb up the four flights of stairs leading up to my college. Itโs a sensation I feel emanating partly from my calves, and I like to think Iโve built muscles I never could have grown from a StairMaster thanks to my cursed schedule that confines me atop the SET Building.
For the most part, however, the pain tugs from the apex of my heart. It drops at every glance toward the beautiful, hospital-looking (๐บ๐ฆ๐ด, ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ตโ๐ด ๐ข ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ญ๐ช๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต) building of the College of Arts and Social Sciences.
Itโs routine for me to look and long for the college I always believed I belonged in, one where I wouldnโt feel so unique for speaking up, and one where having strong political views is the bare minimum.
Such a feeling often dissipates into the day as I climb further up the stairs, but today is most unfortunately not like any other. Itโs the 21st of September, and thereโs a rally for the Martial Law Commemoration an hour after my lecture demonstration with ๐๐ช๐ค๐ต๐ฐ๐ณ๐ช๐ข, the pregnant high-fidelity mannequin in a perpetual dorsal recumbent position at the nursing arts laboratory.
In my bag is my Maternal and Child Nursing workbook, the placard I designed over the weekend, and a black cardigan to layer above my white uniform since I donโt have enough space in my bag for an actual black outfit to change into.
It almost feels symbolic: the way I have to hide a part of the white to leave room for a message so dark it can only be written in the absence of color.
But poetic as that might be, the cardigan doesnโt actually hide much of anything. I raise my arms and more of the bottom hem of the uniform is exposed. Occasionally, the sleeves slide down and show more of the ivory cloth.
In the streets, the white uniform is even more unmistakable, actively fighting as a symbol, protesting a protest within a protest.
Its unblemished brightness, in and of itself, leaves no room for stains, pushing dirt into the light to be readily bleached away. Even more so, through the colorโs apparency, should the nursing student be reminded of the obligation to take Nightingaleโs lamp to the streets, rallying against the staining, tyrannical cycle that benefits from the Filipinoโs poor memory and the ๐๐ผ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฒ๐๐ฎ๐น ๐ป๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐๐ฒ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ป๐๐ฟ๐๐ฒโ๐ ๐ฑ๐ผ๐ฐ๐ถ๐น๐ถ๐๐.
Inaction is privilege, and to opt into a โpersonal interpretationโ of activism that never manifests into an outright intolerance of apoliticism is a white flagโs surrender, insensitive to the duty signaled by the identical but differently-coded uniformโs hue.
The privilege, not to fret, also comes twofold. A more noble one is offered, uniquely but unobligatorily, to the future nurse. Such is the power to transform the meaning of the nurseโs white into something just as empoweringโnot contrastingโas the rest of the crowdโs black clothing.
It is a privilege that, when taken, slowly transforms a profession long mistaken as a symbol of submission into one of unwavering integrity. Upholding the uniform outside the hospital is both a service to the tens of thousands of Filipinos arrested, tortured, and killed under the Marcos regime, and an obligation to the lives we continue to lose today from a broken healthcare system and a kleptocratic circus of a government. Taking this fight to the streets is for those physically unable to fight for themselves too, beginning a masterful weaving of social justice into the theory of hospital care.
To ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ๐จ๐ฆ๐ต might not have been a principle our nursing textbooks ever taught us, but thatโs because theyโre written by foreign authors who canโt relate to the magnitude of lives lost in the form of poorly conditioned health centers and underpaid nurses.
Everything is indeed political, and Iโve quickly come to realize that exercising the art of remembering is never reserved for a specific demographic. The system that affects all can only be overturned by all.
And, to shout โ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ข๐จ๐ข๐ช๐ฏโ is the 11th Caritas Process for the future Filipino nurse who cannot, in good conscience, remain simply at the bedsideโat least not under this political climate.
Written by Marielle Joyce Buot
Proofread by Kyla Quiban
Illustrated by Leoj Gabriel Malaluan
