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<img loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-2/ninoy-in-texas-sm.webp" alt="Ninoy in Texas" />
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(Ninoy Aquino in Texas)
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Aquinophiles insist that it was only because Ninoy Aquino was in grave danger of dying from a non-romantic disorder of the heart that President Ferdinand  E. Marcos relented to allow the death convict to leave prison, and only temporarily, for a heart bypass operation in Texas. Some even allege that Marcos waited until Ninoy was on the verge of death, before letting him leave for treatment.
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Ninoy did little to correct this malignant lie, for why should he publicly acknowledge that the Marcoses, too, were capable of humanitarianism and generosity?
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In fact, Ninoy himself authored this canard, when he charged President Marcos in August 1980:
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"I faced death in your detention camp when your army doctors diagnosed my heart ailment as mere muscle spasm, only to be told by doctors in the United States that I could have died from the heart attacks while I was languishing in your jail."
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In private, however, Ninoy did admit the truth to at least one friend, veteran writer-journalist Vic Barranco. In the first week of January 1980, or four months before Ninoy actually left for America, he told Barranco: 
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"Marcos has offered me the status of an exile."
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 Ninoy was then enjoying the comforts of home, on the last days of an extended "furlough" from detention for the Yuletide break and the belated celebration of the 25th anniversary of his marriage to Corazon "Cory" Cojuangco.
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Barranco recalled: 
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"He said he was considering the president's [Marcos] offer very carefully. Ninoy has received scholarship grants from several universities, like Harvard, Princeton, Montreal, University of California, Los Angeles, Tokyo Imperial University and Oxford."
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"It's a likely go for me. I want to take that scholarship in political science, probably in Harvard."
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It was after the furlough, back in detention in Fort Bonifacio, that he felt chest pains while exercising. This was already in March 1980. On May 5, 1980, he was taken to the Philippine Heart Center for Asia, one of the edifices he had maligned so much for being a project of then-First Lady Imelda Romualdez-Marcos. There, he was diagnosed as having a heart disorder that required a triple bypass operation. As was characteristic of Ninoy, privacy was the rule in those rare times that he felt compelled to give credit to any or both of the first couple. 
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On his discharge from the Heart Center for Asia, he left a handwritten letter addressed to Dr. Jesus Aventura, the hospital director. The letter read:
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"In the past, I've been most critical of the First Lady's project. Now that I've seen what she has done here at the Heart Center, I take back all my harsh words, hoping that I do not choke. Mrs. Marcos deserves all the credit for giving our people such an institution like your Heart Center. It is indeed ironical that one of her bitterest critics would be a beneficiary of her foresight. When the ultimate mist of controversy is melted by the rising sun, her works for our people will find final recognition."
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As Barranco pointed out, Ninoy was just waiting for the presidential order for his exile, when the cardiac problem supervened. In that event, it would have been unseemly for Marcos to issue the exile order. The world would have been aghast, for wasn't it enough that Ninoy had been sentenced to death by musketry, and now was facing death from a fatal disorder? An exile order would have been taken as a supreme cruelty, and a superfluous one at that. And so it was made to appear that Ninoy went to America only on medical leave.
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The exile order never came. With the three-month medical leave about to expire, an exasperated Ninoy finally had to publicly declare himself a self-exile on August 4, 1980, in the course of addressing the Asia Society in New York.
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<strong>Sources</strong>: 
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Ninoy's letter to Mrs. Marcos by Cecilio T. Arillo, December 12, 2016 (<a href="https://goo.gl/ik43Bv" class="news_link source-visit-count" target="_blank" title="Source">Business Mirror</a>)
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(This article is adapted from the source listed above.  We are unable to grant permission for any kind of reproduction other than social media shares.)
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Ninoy Aquino's letter taking back harsh words on First Lady Imelda Marcos