Surrender

CHAPTER THREE

The rain had been falling since morning, not hard, but steady, like the sky couldn’t make up its mind whether to cry or move on.

Jessica was wiping down tables at Tambay Table, the restaurant nearly empty after the lunch rush. Her hands moved automatically, her mind somewhere else, deadlines, midterms, and the lingering ache in her legs. She’d been saving every tip she could, hiding the folded bills inside her notebook, the one that carried her dreams and her doubts.

Then her phone buzzed in her apron pocket.Mamang.

Her stomach tightened. Her mother rarely called during the day. Calls from Nueva Ecija always meant something.

She stepped outside the back door, the rain misting the alleyway. “Mang?”

Her mother’s voice came through, trembling but steady.“Jess… it’s Liza. We took her to the hospital this morning. She couldn’t breathe again.”

Jessica’s breath hitched. “How bad is it?”

“She’s stable now, but the doctor said she needs to be confined for a few days. They won’t admit her without a deposit, thirty thousand pesos. Your Papang tried to ask help from the barangay office, but…” Her mother’s voice broke for a second. “They said they can only give medicine, not cash.”

Jessica pressed her palm to her forehead, the world blurring in gray drizzle. “Thirty thousand…” she whispered. That was almost her tuition for this coming semester. Her rent. Her entire safety net for the next two months.

Her mother continued, voice cracking through the weak signal. “I don’t know where to get it anymore, Jess. We already owe the pharmacy, and your father’s tricycle broke down again. The hospital won’t let us sign a promissory note. They want the deposit now.”

Jessica looked out at the rain-soaked street, her throat tight. The hum of Manila traffic felt suddenly cruel, the noise of a city that didn’t care who was drowning in silence.

“I’ll send something,” she said quickly, though her chest clenched at the words. “I still have some savings. Maybe… maybe I can ask my manager for an advance, or pick up extra shifts.”

“Jess, no, that’s your tuition—”

“Mamang,” Jessica interrupted softly. “Liza needs it more.”

There was a pause. Jessica could hear her mother trying to hold her breath steady. “You’ve always been so good, Jess. I’m sorry… this shouldn’t be your burden.”

Jessica forced a smile that her mother couldn’t see. “It’s not a burden, Mang. It’s family.”

When the call ended, she just stood there, her phone heavy in her hand, the rain tapping against the tin roof above her.

She thought of her little sister’s fragile chest rising and falling, of her father pacing outside a hospital room, of her mother counting every coin like a prayer.

Thirty thousand pesos.

She opened her wallet: four hundred pesos and a few coins.

In her notebook back at the dorm, she had about ten thousand saved, her tuition fund, carefully folded and hidden between lecture notes. Not enough, not even half the battle.

The realization hit her with a cold clarity: She would have to find the rest. But where?

That night, back at the dorm, the air was thick with the smell of rain and instant noodles. Bea was scrolling through her phone; Jessa was asleep early; Ate Mara sat by the window, smoking out the crack of the glass.

Jessica sat on her bed, staring at her notebook. The pages that once carried her dreams now felt like a weight.

Ate Mara glanced over. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Jessica didn’t answer at first. She just whispered, “My sister’s in the hospital. They need a deposit, thirty thousand pesos.”

Mara exhaled smoke, the glow of her cigarette briefly lighting her face. “That’s a cruel number.”

Jessica nodded, eyes stinging. “I don’t know how I’ll find it.”

Mara’s voice softened. “You’ll find a way. We always do. But Manila doesn’t give without taking something first.”

Jessica looked down at her hands, rough from work, trembling. “Then it’ll have to take what it wants. I just need to help them.”

Mara didn’t respond. She only nodded, a slow, knowing gesture, and turned back to the window, her reflection lost in the rain.

Jessica lay awake long after the lights went out.

The sounds of the city outside, tricycles, laughter, thunder, faded into a distant hum. She pressed her notebook against her chest again.

Tomorrow, she told herself, she would send the money. Somehow.

But for the first time since coming to Manila, she felt the edge of something she had never faced before: the fear of being completely out of choices.