Brentjp99 (completed)
Nine lives - Part IV
Continued (if any of you are still with me) from Part III
In the darkness, Ronald (not his real name) lies partially immersed in the mountain stream. The cold water has been rushing over him for over an hour. Sprawled on his back, he cannot move. He has tried to drag his jacket from his small pack, but pain has prevented him from pulling more than just the sleeve from the tightly zippered nylon bag. The forest canopy rustles ominously above. He has put his ‘phone down, having summoned help, it cannot serve him any more. His back stabs with ferocious pain, he suspects (correctly) that it is broken, and his shoulder angles out at an uncomfortable angle from where he landed on it after his skittering, sliding fall down slimy boulders. His stroll down the mountain path fading into unpleasant memory, he lies. And waits, alone, for rescue.
Grabbing a quick dinner of energy bars, we re-rig the Oryx, as ground crew rush to re-fuel the big helicopter. The night is long from being over. On the hardstand, beyond the hangars brilliantly lit with fluorescent light, we prepare to quickly brief for the next operation.
We have kept the same crew and team configuration, and everyone assumes their positions. The medics check their equipment; this is a seriously injured patient, and they will have to be deployed on the ground, and know it.
“Ysterplaat tower, this is Rescue one-one-seven, requesting permission departure South for Table Mountain. Rescue one-one-seven.”
“Rescue one-one-seven Ysterplaat tower on frequency XXX you’re clear for departure South wind three-five-five degrees ten knots report zone outbound, Squawk XXX, route over Kenilworth”
Airborne again. Fully night equipped, the crew will fly with night vision equipment (NVG’s). The back of the Oryx is a ghostly red and green colour, as the red tactical headlamps of the rescuers mingles with that of the green lumi-stick suspended from the ceiling of the cabin. Checks are harder, as vision is restricted. Focus is even more acute, and everyone is grateful we train this regularly, as there is much more scope for error in the gloom of the crowded cabin.
Outside the door, a red lumi-stick glows softly where it has been taped to the hoist-head, as the night-lights of the city streak by.
Navigation is now critical. It is dark, with no moon, and cloud cover has descended to cover the tops of the mountain buttresses, from which mountaineers most easily derive their bearings. We are bound for Skeleton gorge, a well-known hikers route, but I strain to see anything from my restricted position behind the pilots. I have briefed Brian on the basic appearance of the landmarks, but they are unable to identify anything clearly on the night-black massif. I tell them to route in over the botanical gardens, the lights of which can vaguely be seen far below.
As they turn, I glimpse it from the open side door. The familiar white rock buttress of Nursery ravine. I have often climbed here, and I know it very well indeed. “Brian, at your ten-o-clock, white rocks… bear right of that and slow into the dark ravine below-right of it.”
“That line dead ahead?” He asks, on the internal comms.
“Yes, that’s it… give it an extra two-hundred feet of height, and you’ll come in over the forest”.
The huge helicopter rattles in over the old trees, at the base of the rocky crags. Careful manoeuvring by the crew bring it to a hover close to a rock outcrop on the left. Once again, I indicate that Andy is to hoist down, accompanied by the senior medic. We watch as they descend into the blackness, the faint light of their headlamps dimming with the distance as they approach the ground. On the slope, they disconnect, and I watch as the red light of the lumi-stick on the hoist head emerges from the forest like a devilish apparition, and snakes up on the end of its cable to the helicopter.
We hoist more crew down. Lights move on the ground. The thunder of rotor blades tearing the dark mountain night. A flurry of field-treatment as the patient is ministered to, and stretchered, and finally hoisted up through the evergreen branches of the forest canopy. Extraction of the remaining team. Cramped aircraft, flurry of arms and rigging, the patient still in the stretcher, on the floor amongst us, vomiting copiously from the morphine, as the Oryx swings for the hospital.
Bright spotlights. A windsock. Red strobes flashing on the deck marked with the big red ‘H’. Orderlies with a gurney. The urgent rush down drab tiled corridors to the ER, and the final transfer of the patient to examination table, many hands rolling him, with squeals of pain, onto the bed. Blood on the floor, mixing with river water and dirty rigging straps, needles, soiled latex gloves and drip bag covers.
It is a cool evening, and I am sitting on my porch. It’s past midnight, but I cannot sleep. Not yet. I nurse a cigarette with a little whisky from the bottle as I reflect on the strange course of the day. Moths circling the halo of a lone streetlight remind me that it had begun with a dead bird. Everything is quite, quite still. I think about rescue; I think about luck; about the luck of nine lives. At my feet, I notice a small, dark curl on the paving. I bend down slowly for a closer look. It is a small snake, no more than 20cm in length, lying half-coiled and still soft, its tiny scales glistening dully in the streetlight. Its eyes stare up, and give no clue whatsoever as to how it came to be there.
It is quite dead.
Nine lives - Part IV
Continued (if any of you are still with me) from Part III
In the darkness, Ronald (not his real name) lies partially immersed in the mountain stream. The cold water has been rushing over him for over an hour. Sprawled on his back, he cannot move. He has tried to drag his jacket from his small pack, but pain has prevented him from pulling more than just the sleeve from the tightly zippered nylon bag. The forest canopy rustles ominously above. He has put his ‘phone down, having summoned help, it cannot serve him any more. His back stabs with ferocious pain, he suspects (correctly) that it is broken, and his shoulder angles out at an uncomfortable angle from where he landed on it after his skittering, sliding fall down slimy boulders. His stroll down the mountain path fading into unpleasant memory, he lies. And waits, alone, for rescue.
Grabbing a quick dinner of energy bars, we re-rig the Oryx, as ground crew rush to re-fuel the big helicopter. The night is long from being over. On the hardstand, beyond the hangars brilliantly lit with fluorescent light, we prepare to quickly brief for the next operation.
We have kept the same crew and team configuration, and everyone assumes their positions. The medics check their equipment; this is a seriously injured patient, and they will have to be deployed on the ground, and know it.
“Ysterplaat tower, this is Rescue one-one-seven, requesting permission departure South for Table Mountain. Rescue one-one-seven.”
“Rescue one-one-seven Ysterplaat tower on frequency XXX you’re clear for departure South wind three-five-five degrees ten knots report zone outbound, Squawk XXX, route over Kenilworth”
Airborne again. Fully night equipped, the crew will fly with night vision equipment (NVG’s). The back of the Oryx is a ghostly red and green colour, as the red tactical headlamps of the rescuers mingles with that of the green lumi-stick suspended from the ceiling of the cabin. Checks are harder, as vision is restricted. Focus is even more acute, and everyone is grateful we train this regularly, as there is much more scope for error in the gloom of the crowded cabin.
Outside the door, a red lumi-stick glows softly where it has been taped to the hoist-head, as the night-lights of the city streak by.
Navigation is now critical. It is dark, with no moon, and cloud cover has descended to cover the tops of the mountain buttresses, from which mountaineers most easily derive their bearings. We are bound for Skeleton gorge, a well-known hikers route, but I strain to see anything from my restricted position behind the pilots. I have briefed Brian on the basic appearance of the landmarks, but they are unable to identify anything clearly on the night-black massif. I tell them to route in over the botanical gardens, the lights of which can vaguely be seen far below.
As they turn, I glimpse it from the open side door. The familiar white rock buttress of Nursery ravine. I have often climbed here, and I know it very well indeed. “Brian, at your ten-o-clock, white rocks… bear right of that and slow into the dark ravine below-right of it.”
“That line dead ahead?” He asks, on the internal comms.
“Yes, that’s it… give it an extra two-hundred feet of height, and you’ll come in over the forest”.
The huge helicopter rattles in over the old trees, at the base of the rocky crags. Careful manoeuvring by the crew bring it to a hover close to a rock outcrop on the left. Once again, I indicate that Andy is to hoist down, accompanied by the senior medic. We watch as they descend into the blackness, the faint light of their headlamps dimming with the distance as they approach the ground. On the slope, they disconnect, and I watch as the red light of the lumi-stick on the hoist head emerges from the forest like a devilish apparition, and snakes up on the end of its cable to the helicopter.
We hoist more crew down. Lights move on the ground. The thunder of rotor blades tearing the dark mountain night. A flurry of field-treatment as the patient is ministered to, and stretchered, and finally hoisted up through the evergreen branches of the forest canopy. Extraction of the remaining team. Cramped aircraft, flurry of arms and rigging, the patient still in the stretcher, on the floor amongst us, vomiting copiously from the morphine, as the Oryx swings for the hospital.
Bright spotlights. A windsock. Red strobes flashing on the deck marked with the big red ‘H’. Orderlies with a gurney. The urgent rush down drab tiled corridors to the ER, and the final transfer of the patient to examination table, many hands rolling him, with squeals of pain, onto the bed. Blood on the floor, mixing with river water and dirty rigging straps, needles, soiled latex gloves and drip bag covers.
It is a cool evening, and I am sitting on my porch. It’s past midnight, but I cannot sleep. Not yet. I nurse a cigarette with a little whisky from the bottle as I reflect on the strange course of the day. Moths circling the halo of a lone streetlight remind me that it had begun with a dead bird. Everything is quite, quite still. I think about rescue; I think about luck; about the luck of nine lives. At my feet, I notice a small, dark curl on the paving. I bend down slowly for a closer look. It is a small snake, no more than 20cm in length, lying half-coiled and still soft, its tiny scales glistening dully in the streetlight. Its eyes stare up, and give no clue whatsoever as to how it came to be there.
It is quite dead.