Overtime in Limbo
Inspired by Hello World (2019).
The metallic taste hits my tongue again. 4 AM. Like clockwork. Three years into my auditing job in Dublin, and this haunting ritual persists. I grab my phone, mindlessly opening Facebook to check my family's updates back in Pampanga, trying to ignore how the shadows in my cramped studio apartment seem to breathe.
My coffee mug from last night's overtime sits unwashed in the sink. Funny how even as an OFW, some habits from my previous job in Makati never fade. The steam still rises from it, though I swear I finished that coffee hours ago.
The streetlight outside flickers, and for a moment, the walls of my apartment ripple like water. Must be the fatigue, I tell myself. Tax season is brutal here, and these midnight reconciliations are messing with my head. But something feels off about tonight.
My phone shows a missed call from my sister. Strange – she knows I'm usually deep asleep at this hour. Below it, an unread message: "Kuya, please wake up. We miss you."
The family photo on my desk catches my eye – the one from my last day in Manila. I'm wearing my favorite navy blue long sleeves, the one I bought specifically for my first job interview abroad. But wait. Something's wrong. In my memory, I was standing between Mama and Papa, but in the photo, I'm... not there at all?
A notification pops up on my laptop screen: "Excel has encountered an error." But the text keeps changing:
"Patient status: Critical"
"Room 4A: Anomalous activity detected"
"Time of incident: 4:00 AM"
The room spins. My hands pass through my keyboard. The familiar Dublin street noise fades into a distant echo, replaced by something more rhythmic, more mechanical. The walls of my apartment begin to blur, like watercolors running down a canvas.
My phone lights up one last time. A series of messages from my sister floods in:
"Kuya, I'm sitting next to you right now"
"Your hand just moved again"
"It always happens at 4 AM"
"That's when you last messaged us"
"'Boarding now, sis. Next time I message, I'll be in Dublin Airport.'"
"The plane never made it across the Pacific"
"But your mind... it kept going"
"Created a whole life you were meant to have"
The Dublin streetlights flicker violently now, each flash revealing glimpses of fluorescent hospital lights. My carefully organized spreadsheets, my morning coffee routine, my three years of memories in Ireland – they're all dissolving like morning mist. The walls of my apartment peel away in strips, revealing the sterile white reality I've been hiding from.
I try to grasp my desk, but my hand passes through it. In the window's reflection, I watch my navy blue sleeves fade into a hospital gown. The steady beep of medical equipment grows louder, more insistent, drowning out the last echoes of Dublin's night sounds.
The last numbers I see on my phone before it dissolves: 4:01 AM.
Some dreams, I realize, are so beautiful that our minds would rather live in them than face the truth.
In Room 4A of San Fernandino Hospital, I open my eyes for the first time in three years. The morning sun casts unfamiliar shadows through palm leaves, so different from the Dublin streetlights I thought I knew. My sister's hand is warm in mine – the first real thing I've felt since that final message at the airport.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the space between reality and dreams, an Excel sheet flickers on a phantom laptop in a Dublin apartment that never was, its cursor blinking eternally at 4 AM, waiting for a life that never landed.
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