CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Time. A strange commodity in the jungle. With no clocks, calendars, or watches, and no way to note the passage of time, it passed quickly and easily—each day melting into the other.
I adapted to wake with the light, and when it became dark, simply slept.
I discovered and enjoyed the freedom provided by my natural circadian rhythm without the artificiality and intrusion of electricity.
My stateside life had become much too obsessed with time.
My work schedule had demanded and created an obsession for it, and yet, there never seemed to be enough time. Here, there seemed an abundance.
The days lengthened under the friendly sun, and the work required just to feed ourselves overflowed each hour with so much activity, it often seemed like one day was several by the time I laid my head down at night.
I followed my body’s cues for meals. Because of the manual labor, I was always hungry, and my physique had leaned out in noticeable ways.
Time was slow, but it was also fast—how could those opposing truths be reconciled?
Already here for nearly a month, my only solid evidence relied on the body-clock of my cycle. My last one occurred on my travels to Makia, the couple days there…then the kidnapping…
When it came, I was shocked!—like being awakened from a dream. Like the camera-focus of my vision zeroed in quickly, and suddenly—all else blurred.
The Papua New Guinea jungle had been my home now for a solid month. How was that even possible?
I knew how.
I had gotten lost in the company of Jahnu. He stayed away less and less over the last couple weeks and we often found ourselves spending the dark hours of each evening together.
After the last meal of the day, when everyone else had gone to their beds, we sat talking, hesitant to leave each other’s company.
We watched the stars appear. With no electricity to dim their brightness, the intensity of their brilliance was other-worldly and I could see the shape of The Milky Way barreling across the sky in blue, purple, and orange hues.
I pointed at what I thought might be the Big Dipper, but Jahnu knew more about the stars than I did.
“‘Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?’ It is the Lord speaking to Job,” Jahnu spoke softly, his voice a velvet cadence in my ear.
“How would he know about the Seven Sisters, as they are called,” he counted them out for me, lying closely so my eye could follow his out-stretched arm, “unless the Lord truly speak to him?”
“What is Mazzaroth?” I asked curious.
“It is this,” he waved his arm across the expanse. “It is the constellations.”
“And Arcturus?” I asked, trying to pronounce it correctly.
He pointed to a bright, slightly-orange star.
“Arcturus is one of the brightest stars in the sky. All these you can see from anywhere in the world. God asks Job these questions to show him His power, to remind him that He is the One Who controls our lives, not us. I have had to remind myself of this a time or two.”
We shared a cup of the fermented drink that I found was some sort of pineapple wine. We lay next to each other in the grass, the night sky our blanket. Our fingers brushing against each other, our hearts pounding, and still, not once did I tell him about Greg or ask when I would be able to go home.
To be honest, I found a small part of me didn’t want to return, as crazy as that sounded to admit.
I had found something here—something I had been missing from my life all along.
Purpose? Meaning? No, those words did not quite capture what I was feeling.
Freedom? Yes, it was freedom. Freedom to be myself.
Freedom from the alarm clock. From my job.
From responsibilities and expectations. I relished in it until I was lost and transformed, found and remade.
But freedom was a paradox, and I knew I couldn’t go on like this forever.
At some point, I would have to wake up from this dream and face reality.
But I pushed away those rational thoughts, and allowed myself to get swept up in another word I never expected.
I was falling in love.
The realization left my insides tied up in knots. When I was with him I felt alive. When we were apart, he filled my thoughts until I felt I might go crazy with obsession. The more of my heart I gave away to Jahnu, the easier it was to forget about home. But I knew I couldn’t forget forever.
We talked long into the night, only returning to our separate beds when our eyes could not stay open and our stories held long interludes.
“And, where did this one come from?” I asked tracing my finger over the long scar on Jahnu’s right shoulder. The cut on his left arm was healing, but looked like it would leave its own scar. Another scar, another story.
“De Kapul Eagle,” he said, thoughtfully.
“An eagle? What happened?”
“When I was sixteen seasons, my father and I found their nest near the tribe. They are a dangerous bird. Swooped down on the children one day in the yard. That’s how we knew they were probably nesting nearby.
We found their nest and their egg,” Jahnu shrugged.
“I got too close. She was protecting her child.”
“What did you do after she attacked you?”
“Left them alone,” he shrugged. “We waited for their chick to hatch and then they moved on, but the children were not allowed outside alone until we knew they were gone.”
I envisioned a giant jungle-eagle swooping down and grasping one of the little toddlers around their tiny arms, taking off with them for their dinner, and shivered at the thought.
I had almost been another giant fowl’s dinner when the Cassowary had attacked me, and the memory made me shiver again.
Jahnu scooted closer, mistaking my movement for cold, and wrapped his arm around me so I could lay on his uninjured shoulder.
“How old are you now?” I asked, after a while.
“I don’t think you’ve ever told me.” He was a dichotomy of character.
In essence he was intrepid and boyish, but carried within him a weighty substance of sagacity and stoicism.
His wide-lipped smile mixed with the black and silvery scruff of his beard gave a visual representation of this contradiction.
“I do not know for certain,” he shrugged, laying in the grass. “Somewhere close to forty seasons. Afta a while, I stop counting, ‘cause really, I do not want to know.” We both laughed.
“What made you decide to become a nurse?” I didn’t speak for several seconds unsure if I wanted to open this part of me. Vulnerability was weakness, but Jahnu had a way of pulling down my walls like no one else did.
“My brother, Jonathan.”
“Your brother who died? Was he a doctor?”
“No, he was a swimmer. Probably could’ve made it to the Olympics…
he was still alive when they brought him to the hospital after his accident.
I sat at his bedside for two days begging God to save him.
I watched the nurses coming in and out of his room and I don’t know, I guess it stuck with me.
They were so kind. They cared. My world was in chaos and it was like they were the only ones fighting with me to save his life…
I guess I wanted to be like that for other people. ”
“I begged God for my father and Alupa as well, but he took them. Do you blame God for not saving him?” Jahnu asked, like he’d also struggled with the thought. How could I tell him I actually blamed myself?
“When Jonathan died I blamed the doctors for not saving him, the paramedics and highway patrol for not getting to the scene fast enough. They said there were no other drivers involved—that he was distracted, and overcompensated on the highway and lost control…” tears began to well in my throat and Jahnu’s arm tightened around me.
“When I heard that, I worried he’d been texting me on his phone since I refused to say goodbye when he left.
But my Mom said his phone was unrecoverable.
For twenty years I haven’t been able to shake this feeling that his death was somehow my fault.
” I’d felt the same when my dad left, too—surely I was to blame in some way.
But Jonathan had set me straight and he’d been there to watch out for me, care for me, protect me, but then I’d messed that up, too.
“It was not your fault,” Jahnu said, coming quickly to my rescue.
“How do you know?” Tears rolled across my temples and into my hair. I hadn’t cried for Jonathan since the day he died. Not truly grieved him. I hadn’t let myself.
His comforting words continued. “There was no evidence of this thought, no truth in it. Sometimes things happen in life and you have no control over them, but you do have control in how you see them. You are believing a lie and it is keeping you in pain from the past.”
“How can I heal from all the hurt and pain of the past? It seems impossible.”
Jahnu was quiet. The jungle night life rose around us.
“You tell me that in your work it is better not to feel, but to heal you must feel…you must let the pain be, and not fight against it. What do you tell your patients when they are hurt? You tell them to rest and stay still until the wound heals, yes? Yet, when we are hurt we do not want to stay still. We become restless, but wounds do not heal in movement. Pain becomes trapped when we do not hold it—hold it with compassion and love, the way I am holding you now.”
“I don’t know if I can. I’ve never let myself to go there. I’m afraid I wouldn’t come back—afraid I’d drown.”
“I will hold you up.”