20. Flying Out
My sister said to me once to listen to the whispers of your body, because if you ignore them, they’ll start screaming at you. I recalled this after I realised that every step I took on my sore foot became a scream. Even so, I was prepared to keep working until my week out, which was still a week away.
When the General Manager flew into the lodge, he asked how I was and I said good, except my foot was a bit sore. I couldn’t stop hobbling, no matter how hard I tried to walk a normal step. After two weeks of walking on it, and particularly after the Quintin visit, I had adapted my walk so I balanced on my right side of the boot, using my big toe and heel as support.
He suggested I come back with them in the helicopter to Queenstown and he would drop me off at the hospital. The plan was to get it X-rayed and then if all good, get me back up there the following day. I was confident that I’d be back!
The helicopter flight over to Queenstown was incredible. It was a sunny day and the view stretched out as far as the eye could see. We flew just above the rugged mountain ranges and I felt a slight sense of anxiety as there wasn’t much keeping us in the air or protecting us should we fall. It was a work helicopter after all… none of the trimmings of a commercial plane that falsely gives you a greater sense of safety.
We flew past a small heart-shaped lake or tarn and I thought of my family, wondering if I would be seeing them earlier than expected.
I was in a helicopter with four men and whilst they talked about work stuff through the headset, all I could think about was all the possible outcomes depending on the injury. The helicopter landed and the boss dropped me off at the hospital, which was located near the airport. I was seen almost straight away and the foot x-rayed.
Dang. Are you sure, I asked the radiographer?
A break is a break, the lady said after viewing the third X-ray image she took. You’ll have to talk to the Dr about what happens next.
As I waited in the reception room, the boy next to me vomited all over the floor after the nurse made him take an anti-nausea pill under the tongue. I got up and hobbled over to another chair before the gag-reflex kicked in. The Dr called my name twice before he saw me hobbling over and I followed him through the double doors.
After several visits to Tauranga hospital (with family members) and waiting hours upon hours to be seen… I could not fault the service at Queenstown hospital. It was super fast and staff seemed less run off their feet! Maybe I was lucky with the timing.
So you had the accident two weeks ago? the Dr enquired. And you’ve been walking on it? You must have good supportive shoes! Well, stay off it for the next four weeks if you want it to heal, he told me.
You’ll have to get another X-ray in a month… His voice drifted off as I began adding up the weeks before my overseas travels began at the end of the following month.
The foot was put into a moon boot and other than some painkillers, that was it. Goodbye!
What? Oh… okay. Out on my own… think! Where to now? I’m not ready!
I dialled up a taxi and one arrived very promptly and took me to the work’s hostel, where I’d be staying until my car arrived from Te Anau. Luckily a lodgee would be going out in a couple of days and could drive it up.
The following day I hobbled down to the office and essentially handed over some ACC documentation and after a quick chat, they said goodbye.
Wait… what? What now?
I didn’t get to say goodbye to the mountain, the other lodgees, or my life that was up there for the past five months. I’m not ready!
It felt like I had been released from prison and no-one was there to collect me. I had become institutionalised up there on the mountain… work, get fed, sleep, work… how was I going to suddenly cope with life on the “outside?”
I didn’t finish!
The only consolation was that I only had three weeks of work left, and apparently I’ll get some ACC payments in lieu of lost wages.
Ironically I got a sandfly bite last night after I exited a bar called the Beech Tree and chuckled to myself with these reminders of life up the mountain. I guess I will always have those memories to take with me, I reminisced.
Will you come back? asked a guide, who I saw at a cafe after I had left the office. I had told the office staff there that I would not go back as a lodgee or as a relief. They said I would be known thereafter as the Pomp Relief Manager that walked to and from Quintin with a broken foot.
I doubt I’m coming back, I told the guide. My body really struggled up there. It was both challenging and exhilarating, I told him. I haven’t quite balanced everything in my head yet. Yesterday I was living up a mountain and today I’m here.
I loved being one with nature, eating snow berries and being out in the elements. I will miss hanging with the other lodgees, eating together every night at 5:30pm, dancing in the rage cave until the generators turned off at 10pm, chatting over a glass of wine with the girls. I already miss them.
I now have massive calf muscles, thanks to all those stairs at Pompolona, and I’m as fit as a fiddle, except for my broken foot. I’ve mostly forgotten about the annoying pesty sandflies that bit every piece of exposed skin and I’ve never looked so pale after a summer (what summer?).
Once my car arrived, I drove up to Christchurch and caught the ferry across to Wellington the following day. Before I knew it I was back home, albeit it, with a broken foot.
Dedicated to the Operations Manager, who died of cancer a few months later.