The Midnight Caller

 

Ed was a detail man for a Japanese pharmaceutical firm in the late '70s until he made supervisor. His pharma company operated two primary bases in Osaka and Tokyo and was one of the global leaders of the industry.

As a med-rep, Ed was required to do a lot of field work to track and maintain the sales of its products and introduce its new drugs for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and hypertension, to pharmacists and doctors.

He was based in Cagayan de Oro but traveled extensively to nearby provinces to explain the company’s product portfolio to prospective clients and/or replenish their orders.

One day he got so caught up in pushing their new drugs to a doctor in a far-flung barrio that he did not notice the time. By the time they wrapped up their deal, night had fallen and the doctor suggested that he just spend the night at his house, else he have trouble finding his way back to his temporary lodgings on the dark roads.

Ed readily agreed, considering he was not that familiar with the area, streetlights were non existent on those backroads and this was before the GPS navigation software app Waze was developed.

After an early dinner,  just as Ed was preparing to crash on the doctor’s living room couch, the doctor told him that if he were to hear someone knocking on the door late at night, to just ignore it.

This left him puzzled. This was at least fifteen years before the Department of Health created the Doctors to the Barrios program to address the lack of doctors practicing in rural communities and doctors in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas like this one were lucky if they could find a doctor for great distances around.

“What if it’s a real emergency, doctor?” he had persisted, “a matter of life and death?”

“Don’t let anyone in,” the doctor had firmly insisted. “No matter what you hear – no matter how desperate the caller may sound. Just. don’t. open. the. door.”

That’s a bit cold, Ed thought to himself. Can physicians really refuse to see a patient when they have taken the Hippocratic Oath and everything?

He shrugged thinking the doctor may have another reason for his strange instruction that he wasn’t willing to share and so decided to just prepare for bed, planning to make an early start of it the next day.

At  a little after midnight (by his watch), he was awakened by a soft scratching at the door. “Doktor, pasudla ko (doctor, let me in).”

He couldn’t tell if it was male or female, but whoever it was sounded like it was in great pain.

“Doktor, tabangi ko (doctor, help me!)” a little louder now.

Ed got up from the couch and was going to get the doctor when he remembered his instruction of the night before.

By this time, the knocking was getting louder and more frantic. “Doktor, ablihi kini nga pultahan karon (open this door right now)!”

Ed was going to let whoever was on the either side of the door in no matter what the doctor said at this point when the caller’s voice suddenly changed.

It became guttural and its speech was no longer even discernible, reduced to growling, snarling, hissing and gurgling.

The hairs on the back of Ed’s neck and his arms and legs stood on end and he rushed to the door of the doctor’s room, banging on it until the doctor flung it open.

“Whether you like it or not, and whatever it is you think is at your front door – Ed’s chest heaved as he said this – I am sleeping here tonight!”

And he proceeded to do just that, throwing his pillow and blanket on the doctor’s  bedroom floor.

The next day, as he walked out the front door to his car, Ed looked back and saw slashes and scratches on it, only these were too high up for an animal to have made unless it was a very big mountain cat standing on its hind legs, or a wild thing with very long fingernails. 

He shuddered inwardly at the thought of what he would have let in, had he ignored the doctor’s warning.

And although the sun was shining brightly by this time, Ed felt very cold. Like someone just walked over his grave. — LA, GMA News