As a good neighbor, I was happy to be invited to the Heart Center for its golden anniversary celebration and inauguration of their Imelda R. Marcos Pavilion last week. Our house is 10 years older than the hospital, one of the best, if not the best hereabouts, if I believe members of my immediate family and friends who have been its patients over the years.

Generally, and due to my own private superstition, I don’t like stepping into a hospital; I’d rather send flowers to a patient than infect them with my smiles and well-wishes. But the Heart Center has been good to its neighbors – no electric and water service interruptions as we’re in a hospital zone, plus first-person accounts by satisfied, healthy-looking ex-patients extolling the virtues of a “young and competent” staff of doctors, nurses, chemists, attendants, etc.

What a pleasure to find the two Drs. Avenilo Aventura, father and son together, at one table sharing their separate histories as executive director of Heart Center, two generations apart. The younger Dr. Aventura welcomed Mrs. Marcos, led her to the VIP table, and we sat back to hear her speech, spoken from the heart, about a hospital that she was inspired to build when she was first lady in 1975, on Valentine’s Day.

My seatmate was Dr. William T. Chua, a cardiologist who is a part-time painter and sculptor. That iconic heart painted in red metal that greets visitors to Heart Center on the driveway on East Ave. is his work, and so is the four-in-a-series of metal sculptures depicting “Our Endless Missions” – patient care, education and training, research, lay education.

From now on, the IRM Pavilion (which used to be the lobby) will be where heart meets art. For starters, it will feature works by National Artists Cesar Legaspi, Ang Kiukok, Jose Joya, Arturo Luz, Juvenal Sanso, Romulo Olazo, Federico Alcuaz, Hernando Ocampo. Their masterpieces will join Vicente Manansala’s “Inang Bayan,” a mural featuring an IRM lookalike which he dedicated to Mrs. Marcos in the ‘70s and was declared an Important Cultural Property by the National Museum in 2011.

Let’s hope their precious, priceless masterpieces will not attract the wrong type of art lovers, the sort with itchy fingers and evil motives.