My Friendly Headache
It was two or three weeks after the hurricane that my friendly headache arrived. It was waiting for me first thing one morning, as gentle as the breeze.
Something odd to be found in “timelessness” where tension was unknown. Except my friendly headache wasn’t like the headaches of “somewhere else”. It hardly hurt. And it was so considerate – sometimes just above my eyes, then at the back of my head, occasionally on top.
So helpful it made me feel guilty dismissing the friendly headache with two paracetamols that shouldn’t have been allowed. I was letting “timelessness” down. Yet my friendly headache never took offence. It returned in the evening, again in the morning, again and again.
My friendly headache wasn’t alarming. Strange it had come, stranger it kept returning, yet nothing more. It was doing no harm. And like the antiseptic cream, I had a good paracetamol supply. I hadn’t had to use it before. Anyway, the headache would soon be gone like the boil.
Except it didn’t. Two weeks or so later my friendly headache started to change, increasingly disturbed. It was a Friday. I’d planned to cross the island next morning and had to think again. Never mind. Instead, I spend the time with the students of one of the “bush-sets”, the one closest to my home.
Things were worse on Monday morning. I felt cold. It was like after it rained, except it hadn’t. I even found the clothes I’d worn on my journey, a bit warmer than the others.
By then, my friendly headache wasn’t friendly at all. Indeed, I didn’t feel well, hot and cold. Though most likely that was good news. At last, whatever was going on inside was coming to a head. Sweat it out overnight and that would be that.
Paradise Blown
Except it didn’t. Instead, his brain blew – and most likely blew me in at the same time so I’m taking over.
He’d been asleep as intended. It was 9.50pm on Monday 10th February 1969. And already he was out of bed, out of his home, running in the forest, running in a frenzied attempt to get ahead of the pain even if only for the tiniest fraction of a moment.
Inevitably, he failed. Yet he kept on trying, kept on running. There was no alternative. He’d nothing else to try.
The pain was brutally overwhelming, his fingers screaming at his head. He’d never imagined pain like it before. It wouldn’t let go, trying to break into his skull. So, he kept running, running ridiculously. Though the thought of being so ridiculous just perhaps lessened the pain even if only for the tiniest fraction of a moment.
He was back at his home with his paracetamols. How many pills could he take each day, eight or 16, the pain was already bending his mind? Then on top of it he remembered the frantic gap when he wouldn’t be allowed any more till the following day.
Not that it mattered. His two paracetamols returned even faster than he’d swallowed them down, now coated in lime tasted vomit – by then limes were the only fresh fruit available. He tried again with the same result. Water on its own performed the same way. There was no point in trying again. The vomiting continued till his supply ran out.
The pain made him think of earthquakes. His headache exceeded the 10 points maximum on the Richter earthquake scale. And thinking the thought also eased the pain even if only for another tiniest fraction of a moment.
Then he remembered the expression “not giving something even to his worst enemy”. He didn’t have any worst enemies, yet again thinking the thought gave him the same tiniest fraction of relief. Except he’d already run out of pain restricting expressions. Best go back to earthquakes and try to remember as many of them as he could.
He went back to bed and hid his head under the bedclothes, or rather single sheet, the pillow on top. It made no difference, or rather worse. Except somehow he’d got his feet higher than his head as he struggled with the mosquito net, and the pain eased just a tiny bit more than previously and for longer, perhaps even as much as 20 minutes before he was back in the forest running. The mosquito net was now meaningless. His pain was so bad some mosquito bites couldn’t add anything more.
By then he was exhausted. His running had been absurd. So, what to do?
Perhaps call someone? Yet who and where and how? There was no phone, only a radio link at 4.00pm every afternoon from the secondary school to the mainland wherever that might be. Call someone here at the school? That would wake everyone else up. Go and find someone? Yet who and why? It was now 1.00 am, halfway through the “timelessness” night. And what could anyone do?
It was ridiculous again. He’d come all this way to try to be useful, only to end up running around in the middle of the night looking for sympathy for himself – and due to nothing more than a bad headache. Watch out. He was massively exaggerating, perhaps exaggerating as he was so far away?
The question was dangerous. It helped him to pull himself together. Face reality. There was nothing he or anyone else could do till morning and by then his headache would have gone. Imagine his embarrassment, his shame, if he kept on making such a fuss?
Pain v. Refrain
Except the pain, unlike the hurricane, kept howling, with sleep out of the question. Also out of the question was trying to teach in the morning. For a moment his failure added to the pain, though only for a moment. The pain was too intense to think anything beyond.
Then a thought was beginning to form itself, not completely unlike the breeze. The breeze could never assuage the heat, yet it could hold it back just enough to make things manageable. Now a kind of pain refrain, though in no way effective unlike the breeze, not at all. However, by continually working on it he had something else for his mind to think about besides the pain itself.
The pain refrain was in three parts. The first two arrived almost together, the third a little later when the other two started to struggle. And as his inability to sleep continued for five days and nights, he had to keep working at it all the time.
First, however painful the pain might be, he couldn’t be ill. A bad headache yes, even in “timelessness”, though nothing more. He went through his childhood illnesses and inoculations. Then non-smoker, only an occasional drink, canoeing champion, just about as good a specimen of healthiness as to be found[mjm1] .
And sick of what? He was aware that cancer could strike the young as well as later and there were some ghastly illnesses and disabilities reserved for children. Though that was absurd in “timelessness” and he withdrew the thought.
The refrain moved on and said it all – Uki, “timelessness”, it was where he was, where he wanted to be, by then there was nothing else, he belonged in a “sort-of” way. Lying in his bed he could see the forest, the ocean, the sky day and night, both in his mind and for real. There was nothing or nowhere else.
Finally, what began to take over as the pain refused to go, not even ease. What if it kept on and on? He had no sense of what might happen next. Manyana. What would be would be, and without any expectation of anything like the islanders. Just once he imagined an ambulance, then immediately it disappeared, not even a thought of a hospital.
The impossibility was his having to leave. Imagine the shame and utter failure. Would they ever let him back when he recovered a few days later, perhaps even by the time he got to wherever they might send him? What made things even worse if that was possible, he remembered he was being paid, him a volunteer. The Solomons still had no university graduates of its own, and he was told he would be debasing the graduate currency if he refused. “Volunteer” meant nothing. And look at him now?
The refrain had a performance of its own. It had to be followed in order. A long pause always required a return to the beginning. Which was a kind-of relief, the beginning less disturbing than the end.
He hid in his home during the day, too ashamed to be seen. Night-time was easier, the forest again. A student who’d followed him into the forest in the hurricane insisted staying with him for his protection, sleeping the sleep of the just on the floor of his other room. He had to take immense care to avoid the student when he went in and out of his home, not even realising that I’d arrived.
The Headteacher and the Stranger
Next afternoon the headteacher of the secondary school came to see him. Clearly, someone had followed the forest track to report something had happened.
The visit would have been to assess whether his condition required a report over the radio link to the mainland later on. At the same time, the headteacher came equipped to give him a painkilling injection from the family’s medical supply. The injection made no difference, not that it seemed to bother him. It was as if pain was a natural part of “timelessness”, whereas an injection with the equipment required didn’t belong.
Though the headteacher did him another immense favour, somehow taking away a cat that looked in from time to time to have its next round of kittens in his tin cupboard.
It was the following afternoon that the stranger arrived. Where the stranger came from he never knew, yet the two of them had one of those conversations when words would have blurred the clarity of what was being exchanged.
Indeed, they appeared to have no language in common, yet that made the experience even more complete. It became one of those moments when he could take part and observe at the same time.
The stranger, an islander though not from Uki, most likely would be called a paramedic today, though nothing was done to suggest it was the case. Not that it had mattered. The stranger’s eyes said it all. They were confirming that the white man lying on the bed claiming ill health was doing so as an excuse to get away from the “timelessness” that he couldn’t cope with.
In reply, what had just become his half-eyes were pleading that it wasn’t the case. They knew exactly what the stranger was thinking and they would have thought precisely the same if they’d been in the stranger’s place. Yet on this occasion the stranger was wrong. He was the exception that proved the rule. He was desperate to stay.
The silent conversation didn’t last long and the stranger had gone. No examination, no medication, no taking him away, nothing. Yet as he was still in “timelessness”, again it gave him no greater concern.
Journey 2 – Alangaula to Brisbane
Whatever the stranger’s eyes had seen in his own half-eyes, they led to the first of his two lifesaving journeys, this one 13 days 10 hours and 2,400 miles as against 75 minutes and 35 miles 10 weeks later, both unique.
Alanguala to the “Local Hospital”
They took him away the following day. He was on a stretcher as for most of the journey. The students carrying him were also members of the hurricane team a few weeks ago. All around him were abject failure, humiliation, misery, despair, a world fallen apart.
“Local Hospital”
They carried him along the forest track for the final time and on to the “local hospital” close to the secondary school. The “local hospital”? The “local hospital” was fully entitled to an apology and an explanation as to why he’d claimed there’d been no medical facilities on Uki.
Inside was a small hospital ward, meticulously clean with two of the four beds already occupied. However, there appeared nothing by way of medication or treatment, certainly nothing for him. He sensed one of the New Zealand teachers at the secondary school had some nurse training. Though there seemed nothing more.
One of his two fellow patients was an islander with his wife beside him. In the evening they slipped away as silently as by then he’d learned to assume. The other patient was also a New Zealand teacher, this one with a pain that was highly vocal unlike his own. He felt sorry for the teacher and ashamed of himself. Till the following afternoon, the Friday after his brain blew, when the teacher left noisily in time for the weekend.
That night he was asking himself why was everyone asleep, while he, despite being in such pain, had learned to do without it? Think of all the time everyone else was wasting.
Soon after he finally fell asleep and wasn’t aware of anything for a day and a half. The refrain had done a remarkable job keeping him going. The remain of this journey’s a series of clips, sometimes nothing more than a single image, even only a blur, or more likely a brief scene.
Headmaster’s Home
The headteacher, generous once again and presumably fully aware of the limitations of the “local hospital”, had had him moved to the family home. The clip is midday Sunday, a luxurious bed, a delicious plate of scrambled eggs from the secondary school’s tiny farmyard, then him returning it as fast as his paracetamols six days earlier. Unfortunately, there’s no clip of him apologising and helping to clear up. He's no idea when he started eating and drinking again.
Wading Away from “Timelessness”
The greatest misery of all was next morning. They took him away from “timelessness”. It was a grey day, at least a grey day in his mind. There was no welcoming bay at the secondary school. The clip shows him wading to a dingy to be rowed to a boat much larger and faster than the workhorses.
Almost the Worst
Shortly after he sees himself on that boat heading for Kira Kira. He’s taking a final glance of Uki, this time from its other side, the one away from Alanguala. He quickly turns away due to his distress. He’s standing and therefore checking his pain. Is it still here or gone already? What if it already has? He’s relieved, it still is. Yet how ridiculous, instantly shifting from being desperate to stay to being keen to be gone.
Kira Kira Airstrip
The next clip’s him sitting beside the pilot of a light plane with two other passengers behind him waiting to take off. He senses their annoyance, probably having had to wait a long time for him to arrive. Something’s certainly wrong with him as there’s no clip of his flying over the ocean at a low altitude.
Honiara Hospital [image 19]
Next, he’s walking into Honiara Hospital, small, meticulously clean, a single room, someone visiting he’d met when waiting for “the Badley”.