Chapter 38
Pa wasn’t there.
He wasn’t at the school, he wasn’t at the bakery, he wasn’t at the airport.
I took Martha and I drove her to every single place Pa and I have visited the past forty days.
I went back to Saint Agnes again, hoping that Pa has been waiting for me after prom this whole evening.
No one was there. By the time I got back home, the sun was already peeking through.
Achi was waiting up for me and said she gave Ma the alibi that I was already sleeping. I didn’t have any energy left to care. When I sank into my bed, my mind just kept screaming about all the ways I let Pa down—and it forced me to snap into action.
That all led me here: a crowded dentist’s office first thing on a Sunday morning.
To my right, there are kids arguing over a PlayStation console, and to my left, another kid is crying after hearing they needed to get braces.
While all this is happening, there’s a Pitbull song about hooking up in hotels and motels blasting in the waiting room.
While Pitbull is shouting out names of different women, the receptionist calls out, “Annika Ilagan?” When I look up, she adds, “Dr. Go is ready to see you now.”
As she leads me to the designated cubicle, I rehearse the speech I have for Dr. Derrick.
I realize that everything went from bad to worse ever since he came into the picture.
Pa was becoming more real every time Ma remembered him, but how can she keep doing that if she’s getting married to someone else?
Well, there’s no wedding if the groom decides to back out first.
I’m thrown off when Dr. Derrick isn’t in the room. “Sorry, he’ll be with you in a moment,” the receptionist says in a voice that’s barely a whisper. “Let’s get you ready so you’ll be all set for your cleaning.
“Sorry,” she says again as she guides me to recline in the dentist chair. Gigi carefully straps a bib on me with a smiling tooth that says, Ready for my tooth-pics.
This is fine. I can still confront someone from this position.
“Annika!” Dr. Derrick startles when he walks in. He straps on a face mask, then lowers himself onto a rolling chair and scoots until he’s by my side. “I haven’t seen you in the clinic in a while.” He faces the receptionist. “Gigi, when was Annika’s last cleaning?”
“Oh, sorry!” Gigi flusters at this with her big puppy dog eyes and frantically goes through the records on her tablet. How am I supposed to yell at Dr. Derrick when Gigi’s around? The woman has apologized to me ten times in the past minute.
He then turns on an overhead lamp that assaults my eyesight. “Sorry, we’re working on dimming that,” he says, handing me a pair of goggles.
“Your wedding—” I manage to squeeze out before Gigi inserts a suction tube in my mouth with a small “Sorry!”
The rest of my words get muffled when Dr. Derrick switches on the drill.
“Were you talking about your last appointment?” he shouts above the noise.
I try answering him, but it sounds a lot more like “Mmmmrrrrrpppphhh.”
Gigi then informs him that my last cleaning was eighteen months ago.
“Eighteen months?!” Dr. Derrick’s eyes bulge out of their sockets.
Evidently, he’s more pressed about my gum health than anything wedding-related.
“Is our reminder system not working? Maybe our patients aren’t receiving their alerts.
” He instructs Gigi to take notes and focuses back on me.
“Anything you want us to address first?”
I pull out the suction tube before I speak.
“Can you not marry my mom?”
He opens his mouth to respond, then realizes that Gigi is still in the room with us. She’s paying close attention to her tablet. “Sorry, sir, should I note that under the patient’s medical history?”
Dr. Derrick dismisses Gigi and tells her to attend to checking the clinic’s reminder system first. Once we’re alone in the cubicle, Dr. Derrick shuts off the lamp and lowers his face mask.
“I feel like I owe you a conversation.”
“Please,” I start to beg. “Just focus on hating me and how much it’d suck to have me as a stepdaughter.”
His forehead scrunches when he listens to me. “I don’t hate you.”
“Of course you do.”
He immediately denies it. “That’s not true.”
“You don’t need to protect me.”
“I’m not protecting you; I’m telling you the truth.”
“So tell me the truth that you hate me.”
“But that’s not the truth,” Dr. Derrick still insists.
I rest my head back on the dentist chair. Why did Ma have to pick a guy that’s so difficult?!
“Beth and I already talked last night about calling off the wedding.”
… What?
He waits for me to sit up and fidgets with his striped purple tie as he explains, “She told me that she wasn’t ready to get married again. When we proposed to each other, I already told her that we can always have that conversation.”
The day Dr. Derrick asked her was, admittedly, the happiest I had seen Ma in years. Of course, I don’t tell him that.
“What do you mean you proposed to each other?”
Dr. Derrick sighs and places his hands on his lap. “Your mom and I had a mutual proposal,” he says.
I look at him, confused. “Who went down on one knee?”
“We were both sitting down,” he says, smiling. “Beth wanted to make sure we were able to hear each other clearly, discuss the logistics, the practical side of things. Also, I have really weak knees.”
“How romantic.”
“Very,” he agrees, not picking up on the sarcasm.
“If it’s mutual…” I pause, trying to follow. “How does that go? You just decide to ask each other at the same time?”
“Well, your mom already knew I wanted to marry her. I was pretty sure very early on. I’d had a ring with me just in case, but I didn’t want to rush things since…”
I nod when we both leave Pa unsaid.
“I’ve known your mom for many years. From the first time I asked her out, Beth emphasized that her children came before anything else,” he adds.
“Then one day, she asked me if I really saw myself marrying someone who already had two daughters. I told her yes. And then she asked me if I was capable of caring for you and Jackie like my own daughters; I told her I already did.”
Something inside my chest twists when I hear how sincere he sounds.
“Then she said marrying could be a good move for her girls. More stability and she didn’t want you to get affected about her being a single mom,” Dr. Derrick explains. “Your mom was … worried na nagkulang siya sa inyo by herself.”
Everything inside me immediately gets defensive. “Ma has done more than enough for us,” I argue.
“I agree.” He doesn’t deny it. “Families with a single good parent are better off than families with two bad ones.”
“So my mom asked you to marry her because of us … not because of you?”
“I’d like to think that I was a small factor.” He fills a paper cup from the chair’s faucet and leaves it by my side. There’s still this reflex that recoils at the idea of Dr. Derrick taking care of me, but I accept the water anyway.
“What are you gonna do now?” I ask him.
“I told your mom I still want to be with her.”
“Even if she never marries you?”
“As long as she’ll have me.” He sips from his cup, then adds, “Most importantly, if you’d have me.”
“Me?”
“Like you kids say, this is a safe space.” He sits with his legs crossed, ankle over knee. “I know you have some doubts about me and I want to improve.”
“Doubts? I don’t have any doubts?” I hear my voice getting increasingly pitchy.
Dr. Derrick keeps his gaze fixed on me.
“You promise you won’t take this out on my mom?”
He shakes his head and promises, “Safe space.”
That’s when I ask if he can pass me my bag.
“Do you have a secret list with your complaints about me?” he asks when I pull out my phone.
“Yes.”
His eyes widen at my answer, but he lets me go on.
“Point one: You take forever to make coffee.”
“Making a good cup of coffee is a process.”
“Yeah, let’s speed up the process,” I say firmly. “Point two: your gift-giving.”
“You didn’t like the Waterpik I gave you for Christmas?”
I didn’t even know he got me a present. “What did you get for Ma?”
“Same thing.”
He can sense me judging, so he adds, “They’re great for flossing hard-to-reach areas.”
“And you give the most boring-ass greeting cards.”
Dr. Derrick flinches (not sure if it’s from my criticism or my cursing).
“You could at least add a pun,” I suggest, pointing at my bib with the cartoon tooth. The gift comment looks like it stung so I save my purple tie thoughts so I can address the most offensive item.
“Point three: your family,” I read. “I don’t appreciate your mom talking about me and my sister.”
Concern floods his face. “When did that happen?”
“Before the ting hun. Auntie Baby and Auntie Grace overheard your mom. She warned you about us embarrassing your family and us not being proper.”
I see the moment when it clicks in his head.
But then he says, “That wasn’t about you and Jackie.”
“Auntie Baby says her chismis is ninety-nine point nine percent accurate.”
“This is the point one percent,” he tells me. “That message was meant for my mom’s sisters. I never told you that I’m sorry that my aunties were rude to you during the ting hun.”
… What do I say to that? I’ve envisioned confronting Dr. Derrick a million times.
Not once did I imagine getting an apology.
“My mom wanted to keep my aunties in check because she wanted to make a good impression on Beth and your family,” he explains.
“She’s scared I’d lose my shot at another wedding. ”
Excuse me?
“How many times do you plan on getting married?”
“Once.” He takes a moment and sighs deeply. “I was engaged to someone else years ago … She passed away a month before we were supposed to get married.”
A chill goes through my body when I process what he’s saying.
“That’s a lot of information, but I’m here to answer any questions you have too.”
Did I hear that right or did the suction tube do something to my ears?
I scan his face. “You’re okay with talking about it?”
“I’m supposed to be honest in a safe space, right?”
“My family never talks about my dad,” I admit before even thinking.
He sighs and his eyes flit to the ceiling. Maybe I pushed him … maybe the conversation went too far. I never expected Dr. Derrick to open up even more.
“It was a horrible accident,” Dr. Derrick shares.
“She had just passed her board exams. Running on no sleep, she had some drinks, and was in no state to be driving.” His voice shakes with regret.
“I—I can’t go through a night without seeing what the crash looked like…
” He shuts his eyes and shakes his head.
“I made sure her parents never found out.
“I told them I was the one who crashed the car,” he explains. “Made sure it was a closed casket, asked my friend who was a doctor to say she didn’t feel much pain. That it was immediate when she bumped her head on impact.”
“And they believe you were the one who was driving?”
“Yes.”
“Did they blame you?”
“They’ve refused to talk to me since.”
I sit there, stunned. “But that’s not what happened.”
“She and her parents had suffered enough,” he says. “People would have seen Bettina differently if they found out she had been drinking. All the good she brought into the world would have been reduced to a tragic mistake. Sometimes, we have to hide things to protect our families.”
“So you never told anyone the truth?”
“Not until I met your mother.”
My mind gets dizzy imagining how long he’s kept that all in.
“Bettina loved talking about the moon and the stars, so some part of me thinks she’s somewhere in the sky,” he says, pointing up.
His moon obsession was number seven on my list.
“… Do you really think Bettina hears you when you talk to the moon?”
He stares at the ceiling again, weighing his words. “If it’s possible for the moon to control the ocean’s tides, who’s to say that our dead loved ones can’t hear us?”
It sounds like something Pa would say.
“Dr. Derrick,” I prompt, and he turns to me.
“Does it … ever stop hurting?”
He returns my question with a sad smile. “Your family lost the love of your life, Annika,” he tells me without sugarcoating it. The fact that he doesn’t make one of those promises that “you’ll be okay soon” or “just give it time” tells me he really does get it.
“Was Bettina the love of your life?”
He considers the question. “A love of my life, yes,” he answers. “Although, when I think about the love of my life … the title would have to go to your mother.”
Disgusting, I almost say. It’s a miracle that the statement doesn’t make me puke.
“That’s the kind of stuff that should go on your cards.”
“Should I draw a tooth next to it?”
I bite back a smile. At least he’s learning.
“Annika,” he says. “This is still a safe space, correct?”
Lord, does he still have more trauma to unpack?
“The cavity on your right molar is very alarming,” he says with such a pained expression. “Can you please use the Waterpik I gave you?”
After the most painful dental cleaning I’ve ever had in my life, Dr. Derrick sends me home with a card that has a cartoon tooth cradling a heart. On the bottom, there’s an added pun: It’s okay to have fillings.