Mountain Flowers by Sean Wright

Author:Sean Wright [Wright, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780615837345
Google: Fy16ngEACAAJ
Amazon: 0615837344
Publisher: Purple Cap Publications
Published: 2013-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

I sat up quickly and gauged the surroundings until my mind calmed and the sleepy fog lifted. I slouched on the leather couch in the common room. Lunch had put me to sleep. Even under the roof and the spinning rotors of a huge fan overhead, the heat from the midday sun outside had soaked my back in sweat while I slept and stuck me to the leather couch like a Band-Aid. I peeled myself forward to stand, but my muscles burned as if on fire and they groaned and cracked like a stone giant waking from a millennium long slumber. On either side of me and on the other couches small groups of people spoke in various languages as they ate. No one noticed, or cared, if I slept there.

I realized Jared had left. I couldn’t help but feel bad for sleeping during the middle of the day—it seemed like a selfish thing to do. I could actually smell myself. I stunk badly and needed a shower. What time was it? It felt like I’d slept for days, and I didn’t know how much time had passed.

Outside, under the sun, the compound ran at full speed. Huge semi-trucks held generators, trucks came in and out loaded with people, doctors scurried from bus to bus, and across the field hundreds of people worked at the dorms. I felt like I’d missed a lot, but after looking at my watch I realized only thirty minutes had passed since leaving for lunch.

After I took just a few steps into the field, the sun whipped its heated tentacles onto my neck as a loud buzzing noise came from overhead. I looked up and saw it: a blue helicopter paced toward us from the west. It stopped above me and hovered for a moment before slowly getting bigger as it descended while keeping completely stable. Tall grasses pushed out in all directions that rippled like waves on a stormy day. As soon as it touched down a small team came out of the main building and met several people carrying stretchers from the helicopter. Once they cleared the rotors it shot back into the sky and raced west as fast as it could, undoubtedly bound for Port-au-Prince.

What a transition in the last eighteen hours. When we’d first arrived, the ground was littered with people bleeding and dying from untreated wounds that the night hid and the dirt worsened. What had started as just a few doctors and a handful of nurses had transformed into teams with buses, generators, and medicine. The chaos of the night before seemed almost a distant dream as I heard the site organizers bark out orders to throngs of volunteers who’d arrived in the morning. The night before I’d helped in surgery; now I couldn’t even get in that wing of the building. I’d like to admit that I felt relieved over the transition, but in truth the new compound brought on depression. I wanted to help with the patients, not be told to stand back as new volunteers shuffled in.

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