The Call of the Stage

A male nurse escorted Luscinia around the snaking sterile hallways, the latter’s pink dress as visible as a blotch of blood on a clean gauze. Luscinia’s eyes focused solely on the heels of the nurse’s sneakers. When those heels stopped, they stood before a door made of a solid piece of wood. The sign on its right read Room 214. The nurse raised a fist to knock on the wooden door, but Luscinia grabbed his wrist before he could make a sound. She dismissed the nurse and thanked him, smiling perfunctorily when he asked for her number.

Left alone, Luscinia faced the door as if it led to the gates to Hell. It might as well have been—neither sight nor sound came from the other side. Only the squeaking of occasional passerbys’ shoes confirmed that she had not gone deaf. 

With a deep breath, she reached out a tentative hand towards the handle. But as she exhaled, it was as if all the bones in her arm vanished with the air, and her hand fell limply beside her waist.

Her head snapped left and right, towards both ends of the hall, eyes searching. No one saw the flush on her cheeks. The white hallway was as deserted as the Saturday afternoon sky. She exhaled another breath. How quickly a girl can go from the top of the world to the middle of space, alone and unable to breathe! 

* * *

Only a few hours ago, Luscinia had been pacing around a dressing room. Given its small area, it was not difficult to finish a lap, especially since the other two participants she was sharing with had left. Her heart was pounding too fast and too loud for comfort, but it could not drown the distant applause coming from the studio. She grabbed a bottle of water from the top of the dresser. Her third bottle in the past hour. Please hang on, kidneys, she thought. Twisting the bottle cap, she placed the rim of the bottle an inch above her mouth, careful not to touch the lipstick or worse, spill water on the rented dress. But her hand trembled too much.

After a dozen laps around the dressing room, color returned to her skin. Luscinia sat in front of the small mirror and admired how gorgeous the makeup artist made her. She would never recognize the woman in the reflection if she saw her in their home infested with rats. Her parents would never have the luxury to spend their earnings on hair and makeup; their family of five could barely eat three meals a day. But now, her hair was as wavy as the waters of Siargao. Her face was as stunning as Kathryn Bernardo, her favorite actress. 

Her bare shoulders seemed too revealing, so Luscinia pushed her hair to cover them. But she changed her mind and pushed it behind her shoulders again. She tucked her hair behind one ear. Then both ears. But she decided it looked too weird, so she hid both ears instead. Over and over, she played around with her hair until she found the perfect position. In the end, she reverted it back to how the makeup artist did it.

A distant applause thundered outside the dressing room, and Luscinia's heart pounded again. It was twice as loud as the one received by the first participant. Not that that would determine the winner of the grand finals of "The Call of the Stage" for sure. That was still up to the judges. But they could still be influenced by the atmosphere in the room, right?

She clenched her fist, nails digging into flesh, which stopped the shaking. Luscinia could not lose. She would not lose. Her family needed the two million pesos prize money. Luscinia reminded herself of her secret weapon, repeating it like a mantra, and she relaxed. There was no way she would lose with that. 

After the semi-finals of "The Call of the Stage" concluded, she begged her childhood best friend to write her a song for the grand finals. Pol was the number one songwriter in the Philippines, and Luscinia fought anyone who said otherwise. The songs he uploaded on TikTok and YouTube received millions of views. His songs were often in the top ten of Spotify Philippines. Too bad he was tone-deaf. 

Pol loved singing ever since they were kids, but singing never loved him back. He wrote heart-wrenching lyrics and chilling music, but when it came to singing, he sounded no better than a squealing pig. So he sold his songs instead. Many famous singers owed their big breaks to Pol. It was also he who convinced Luscinia to join the biggest singing competition in the country after one drunken karaoke session. 

And so when her childhood best friend refused to write a song and urged her to use popular songs instead, she demanded, "It was your idea to join Call of the Stage! You better take responsibility or we're F.O." After a few hmphs from Luscinia, Pol finally caved. She had the best secret weapon in the competition.

A smile rose on Luscinia's lips at the image of Pol's reaction once she sang his song on live television—and won with it. But it was erased by the ring of her phone. Speak of the devil.

"Where the hell are you, stinking Pol? I've been waiting for hours! I swear I'm going to kill you when you get here—"

"Sorry," the one who answered on the other side was a woman, unfamiliar. "You’re the last call on this phone. Are you a friend of Mr. Apolinario Perez?"

"Yes, who's this?"

"This is Ofelia Yabut. I am a nurse at Makati Medical Center. I'm afraid Mr. Perez was in an accident."

Luscinia did not remember much of the nurse's words after that. It was an achievement that she did not drop the phone like in the movies. In real life, your brain operates on auto-pilot when you receive a big shock. She responded to the nurse's questions purely by instinct. But she barely heard the information the nurse said. Something about a flower shop and multiple stab wounds. Critical condition. Operating room.

As soon as the nurse hung up the phone, she raced to the door. Too much time had been wasted talking. But before she reached the door, it opened. A woman in her thirties, her hair tied in a bun, appeared. Her striped blouse and pencil skirt made her look more mature than her age. If it weren't for the headphones on her head and the clipboard in her arms, Luscinia would have thought she was a celebrity from the television station.

"You're next, Ms. Dimalanta," the woman said. Then she whispered, "I'm not supposed to say this, but I'm rooting for you."

With a wink, the woman left. And Luscinia remembered where she was. The Call of the Stage. The biggest singing competition in the country. Two million pesos prize money. Many sleepless nights she spent imagining what she would do with that much money.

She would buy her father a new tricycle; his old one was on the verge of collapse, and commuters were too afraid to ride in it unless they were desperate. She would treat her mother to a day in the spa and salon. She deserved it after years of supporting their family by washing strangers' clothes and cleaning houses. She would buy her family a new house, and they would no longer have to live in the squatters' area surrounded by rotting trash and dead rats. But most importantly, she would bring her youngest sibling to the hospital and give him the best treatment for his heart defect. Unlike the other participants, she did not have the luxury to compete in another nationwide singing contest.

But Pol, her childhood best friend, was battling death right now. How could she ignore him?

* * *

Summoning her courage, Luscinia pushed the steel handle down and leaned her weight on the solid wooden door. In the middle of the drab room sat Pol's parents beside a bed, where Pol's unmoving body rested, wires coming out of his body and hooked to machines. A long beeping noise echoed in the still room. Tears welled up in the corner of Luscinia's eyes, but she stopped them. Pol would not want her to cry. But when his mother screamed and sobbed, Luscinia's cheeks could not retain their dryness.

At least they arrived in time, Luscinia thought. She had immediately called Pol's parents after hearing what happened to their son three hours ago. She hoped they had arrived in time to see him breathing. She wished they had talked and laughed even a bit with their only son.  

But the black hole in Luscinia's heart expanded, and she wished it would eat her up. She was now a millionaire, but she lost something more important than money. What she felt for Pol was not just as a childhood friend; she learned that now. He was always there beside her, and she never realized how much he was a part of her life until he disappeared. No longer would she see Pol's smile. No longer would she hear Pol's laugh. No longer would she feel the ecstasy from hearing Pol's new songs.

Pol's songs.

She had performed his last song in the biggest singing competition in the country. It was probably on YouTube by now, garnering millions of views. Her voice brought his music to life, and as long as his music lived on, so would he. Pol still lived within her. Luscinia smiled at that thought.