Aug. 2nd, 2005

saltdawg: (halo)
We passed the Acores three days ago. I was in the hydraulic room out on deck cleaning an eighth of an inch of caked hydraulic fluid and cargo dust and grain off of the machinery. I was cleaning grease off of the bulkheads, and chipping rust scale from the deck. It was an almost perfect day at sea. Cool, like the high sixties in the wind, and the seas had picked up just enough for a gentle roll that let you know that you were actually at sea, but not enough so that you’d have to practice the old adage: “one hand for the ship, one hand for yourself.” I was in the hydraulic room that supplies power to the hatch covers so that the actual opening of each hold goes so smooth that, theoretically, one man can open or close a hatch all by himself. Just two levers, and they fold up like lover doors in a summer home by the beach. In only a minute or so. On the tug-n-barge, the opening of hatches was an operation involving an inordinately loud gantry and at least two men. And a lot of scrambling on the deck, not to mention aggravated shouting on the first three tries to set the hatch covers. I was in the hydraulic room and it was near perfect outside. The wind was blowing maybe ten knots on the bow and the dormant crater of the island of Corvo was drifting by, at fifteen knots, four miles away.

I was in the hydraulic room and it was hot. It was a small space, and even though we are in warmer latitudes, the heaters were still running. The sun was beating down on the “storm grey” overhead and heating the little box even more. The only ventilation was the open hatch in the lee, facing aft. And to make things just that more miserable I was cleaning all the caked gunk with a five gallon bucket of water and degreaser. In order to do a decent job, I needed to be liberal with the water, which pooled on the rusty deck. Pooled and then heated. Evaporating into that ubiquitous “oppressive humidity” which clung to the heavy carhart jeans making them even heavier and more uncomfortable.

I was uncomfortable and covered in slimy gunk and caustic cleaners and rust. But I was feeling good. I had finally been able to get some antibiotics from Corny, the second mate. I got my grubby paws on a vial of “keflex” and the agony of my (undiagnosed) strep was ebbing with each breath. I was able to actually enjoy a cigarette or five, dangling from the chapped corner of my mouth, as I scrub scrub scrubbed the shit off of the hydraulic system. I was feeling better and glad to be out of quarantine for the first time in three days. The cough was still there, but it wasn’t agonizing and forcibly shallow. I was finally able to PRODUCE, and my chest was feeling less and less like there were shrinking leather bands around my ribs. Despite the vigor I was putting into smoking that pack of cigarettes.

The job itself was one of those jobs I love to draw. The kind of jobs that the other AB’s jibe at me about because they find it tedious and, well, beneath them, or something. It was the kind of job that I love to do because it was a solitary job, and I knew that I had the time to get it done right. See, this ship is headed into the shipyard at the end of this hitch. That’s why we are going to red china. To lay her up in the yard. So there aren’t going to be any “projects” on this trip. No big chipping and painting ordeals. No grinding and welding. No Sawzalls and pipe wrenches. At least not yet. This trip is all about busy work. Straightening, rearranging, cleaning. Attention to all the little things that get pushed out of the way in the face of “big” jobs that make a mate feel like he’s “gotten some work” out of us. Crap that really doesn’t have to be done, but makes him look good when he can say to the mate that’s relieving him: “My boys painted the entire superstructure, motherfucker…” And it’s these little cleaning type jobs that are the ones that I always want to get into, but am never allowed. The hydraulic room bothered me from the first day I signed articles on this bucket. On the research vessel I was responsible for a number of hydraulic systems, and I always took great care to see that they were clean and free of the very type of filth I was cleaning. And no, not because I’m some kind of anal retentive clean nut. It bothered me because I learned the hard way that filth caked on your gear for ages tends to hide and belie any imperfections or imminent failures in the system. A clean hydraulic system will tell you exactly where your next problem is. Hydraulic systems tend to weep where they hurt the most.

We ran out of actual ship’s work on the second, my last day out on deck before I was quarantined. And by ship’s work, I mean the things that the mate, the chief mate, the Lil’ feller, believes really need to get done on a regular basis. The first day after departing Galveston we hosed all the errant piles of grain from the deck with the fire hoses. In the rain. A job, I am quite sure, had a great deal to do with my descent into the agonizing sore throat in question. The night we departed I woke up with a little discomfort in my pipes, something I chalked up to inhaling the Hydrogen Phosphide from the cargo hold vents as I buttoned them up before we left, after the pesticide workers placed the pellets in socks and turned on the blowers in each hold.

That night, during the midwatch I stand on the bridge with Corny, I asked him if I could have possibly gotten dosed by the Phosphide. No, he said, The pellets don’t activate for 24 hours after they are out of the canisters. So I just chalked it up to post-nasal drip from all the grain dust packed into my sinuses. The next midwatch, after the cold and wet day spent hosing the deck down, I could tell that something was really burrowing in. Already it was difficult (read: Painful) to swallow. My voice was becoming hoarse.

We didn’t really speak for these four hours and I didn’t mention my condition. He was busy making astronomical calculations that I really need to learn how to do. Someday. The next day was spent greasing and over greasing machinery out on deck, and that night I couldn’t even speak without my tonsils feeling like I was swallowing shards of glass. That night it was about two hours before he finally asked me if everything was OK. Is anything bothering you? He asked. Timidly. No, I rasped. Well, are you feeling OK? With a little more confidence. No, not at all. I told him. Usually I am a bit of a stoic when it comes to personal illness. Deny, deny, deny. That is, unless I can tell that I’m hit by something larger than my hypochondria and odd little rituals and superstitions. For the first time in at least two years I knew that I was sick to the point that I needed medication. Well, for my corporeal being at least. Well, are you feeling OK? He asked with a little more confidence. No, not at all, I told him, my voice all over the place cracking and rasping at the same time.

For the next two or three days he kept his distance from me up on the bridge. He’d spend as much time as possible out on the bridge wing, leaving both doors wide open. Even when we ploughed through fogbanks so thick that the damp came through the cracks around the hatches and warped the logbook and made the ink drool all over the pages. Those nights were all just about the same. I’d relieve Tennessee and Corny would relieve Bright eyes, and we’d be up there in the near dark for a while gathering our night vision and eventually he’d (timidly) ask me how I was feeling. Worse, I’d say every night. Worse. And it was true. I had to stop eating and even water was going down like wood alcohol. I was even coughing up blood and when I’d shine a flashlight into my mouth I could see bright white polka dots like so many outcroppings of fungus in that dark, hot and wet cave. Worse, I’d tell him, My throat is killing me. But he doesn’t know me from Adam. He doesn’t know how I am and I never told him that I thought I needed antibiotics. He’d ask me if I had a fever and I’d tell him I couldn’t tell because of my sunburn. And that was about all he wanted to hear. He’d give me the bridge and duck into the chart room to correct charts or plot a course or whatever he could think of to get away from me. And when I had to cough those agonizing coughs he’d make a remark about how being a SMOKER probably wasn’t helping. It was too physically painful to tell him that I hadn’t had more than three cigarettes in four days. In any case, when I showed up for watch at 0000 Saturday, he disappeared from the bridge for about fifteen minutes. When he came back he was acting all cagey and asking me questions about where my UHF radio was and weather I was a heavy sleeper or not. I think he could tell that I was annoyed with him. And if he did, I don’t know what he reckoned my reasons were. I was annoyed that he was forcing me to SPEAK when I had told him that it was terribly uncomfortable, not to mention that he should have known, simply from the way I sounded. I was making noises that really can’t be compared to an actual human voice. I was annoyed with him because he was the medical officer and I’d made it clear that I was ill above and beyond and he hadn’t made any overtures of medicinal relief. I was annoyed and immediately humiliated because of it when he put a bottle of Robitussin DM down on the window ledge and swiftly moved away. Here he said. Here, take this bottle of cough medicine and grab your UHF and get some rest. I tried to protest…I tried to tell him for the fifth time that I didn’t have a cold, but a strep throat…He didn’t think that the splotches in my throat were an infection…I tried to protest and tell him that all I needed were some freaking antibiotics, and I’d be able to stand my watch just fine. A sore throat don’t stop me from LOOKING for chrissakes. But it was just too much effort. Too much pain. I took the bottle and went to my rack. And I slugged down a few mouthfuls of the DM before I passed out. If he ever tried to get me on the radio, I don’t know. I was OUT.

The next morning I got up, none the better for the rest and cough medicine. In fact, worse off for it. I had woken around 0600 and took another gulp of the DM, And then another while I was still laying down when my alarm went off for my day watch at 0900. And then, just like cough medicine does, it hit me like a 15# sledge when I stood up. I was woozy and nauseous and, well, stoned. As it happened, I my relief, McNut, met me with a distinctive awkward lack of comment about my absence from the bridge (he relieves me at 0400, and then I relieve him at 1000.) He tersely told me that I had to help Tennessee up on crane #4 with yet more over-greasing. I had a little difficulty getting up the ladder and the seas were just so so that up, three ladders up, you could feel ‘em in your gut. Which wasn’t sitting well with the leaden DM down in there… But before we could get very far, or rather, before I got very far, all sluggish, nauseous and stoned, The Lil’ Feller appeared. Hey Motherfucker, how you feeling? Worse, I croaked. Has that motherfucker taken your temperature yet, you running a fever motherfucker? Uhhh, naw. I dunno… He rattled off a string of curses about how Corny wasn’t up to snuff, about how this was making him look bad because he hadn’t known I was sick and the Old Man was asking questions. He told me to go back to bed and how he’d make corny take my temperature around noon. Grateful that I didn’t have to climb all seventy odd feet of the crane woozy and stoned, I retired.

My temp was 101 point something. They told me to get some rest, drink fluids and all that crap. Corny shoved an envelope full of vitamin C under my door, And I didn’t come back out until Tuesday. Not that I was feeling any better, but because I felt obligated to get back to work. I was still running a fever, but I was off the DM. It wasn’t helping any, I was still coughing those tiny shallow coughs which couldn’t even get near the congestion pooling in my lungs. In any case I took my temp again at noon, and I was 101 point something again. My voice was still negligible and I was hell-bent on getting me some drugs. I was going on eight days dogged by this and nothing was improving. I told the second mate about my temp, and he said that he’d have to talk to the Lil’ Feller when he woke up. That night when I got up on the bridge, Corny had a couple of bottles of a-year-since-expired antibiotics, which he turned over to me as they were uranium rods and I was straight outta Palestine.

And so I took the bottles and took some of the Keflex. That’s what they gave me after my appendix came out, so I figured it’d knock the shit out of my system. And it did. When I woke up three days ago, my voice was already coming back, and when I took the first pill of the day, I knew I’d be eating lunch after my first couple of hours in the Hydraulic room.

Three days ago we were four nautical miles from the crater they call Corvo, and I was just starting to feel better. And I was just starting the job that would find me scrubbing the last of the gunk out of crevasses on hydraulic pumps with my newest old toothbrush yesterday.

When we came in for grub at noon, the second mate, corny, the medical officer, was standing there with the first round of anti-malarials for us to take. We were three days past the Azores, and a week out of Libya. He had a clipboard in hand for us to sign that we had taken the Larium horse-pill to prevent malaria. I didn’t mention anything about the fact that malaria is only a danger in sub-Saharan Africa. I didn’t mention anything about my experiences with that particular drug. I just took the clipboard and signed my name next to my name and a little chicken-scratch I made to read “declined”. These shiny new $25.00 pills were being handed out like Gob-stoppers. I didn’t have to think twice about it. I’ll take the risk of catching fucking malaria. I signed and declined on his clipboard, ate a little and lumbered into this icebox pig-sty cabin and took another expired Keflex tasting like so much sulfur and orange peels. The taste didn’t linger, and it went down smooth and painlessly. And I had another three hours to make sure the deck hydraulics can weep when they aren’t feeling well. Weep where they hurt, so that we can treat them before things get really bad. So we can treat them and keep the hatches folding up and down just like a Chinese fan.

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saltdawg

February 2011

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