The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [47]
The next day, they set off swimming toward a large cluster of rocks. But the rocks were farther away than they had looked. Three-quarters of the way into the adventure, Oscar and the therapist grew weary and contemplated turning back to shore. Instead, they decided to finish swimming out to the rocks and hitch a ride back to shore on a passing boat. When they finally made it, they slumped onto the rocks and looked around for a ride, but by then the last boat had left and the ocean was very rough. Trapped between the reef and large waves, they were forced to swim the long way back to shore. The doctor struggled and then started to fail, simply too exhausted to swim any farther. Exerting every last bit of energy, Oscar dragged the doctor through the water and safely back to the beach. They sat catching their breath for some time, and then the doctor went back to his guesthouse to sleep.
We didn’t see the doctor again for a few days, but when he did emerge he clearly wasn’t the same man. Gone were his permanent smile and upbeat personality. A darker, depressed fellow sat before us. He told us that the swim had depleted him of critical nutrients and medications that were keeping him stable. He had a medical condition, and the swim had nearly killed him.
Oscar laid the doctor down on his bed, sat next to him with a piece of paper and pen, and began asking the therapist the same questions that he had asked Oscar a few days earlier. I had to run to the bathroom to hide my irreverent laughter. The sight of Oscar being anyone’s therapist was hilarious. The next morning at breakfast Oscar declared that he knew things were bad when he ended up having his therapist as his patient.
So far, our volunteers had been excellent. They had dropped out of the sky from all over the world and we hadn’t had a single problem. That was, until a sevety-five-year-old evangelical Texan man I’ll call Jerry wandered into camp singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Jerry had obsessive-compulsive disorder, which meant that he did quite an excellent job at cleaning the hospital, but when, late one rainy night, he broke into the Peraliya village storage shed and decided to make it his home, I knew we were in trouble. We had a rule that no volunteers stayed in the village at night; we all lived in Hikkaduwa. The next morning we arrived to find Jerry walking around in front of small schoolchildren in nothing but his underwear. His clothes were hanging in the sun to dry. It was clear that we were going to have to ask him to leave the village.
Oscar, Bruce, and Donny were supposed to have the chat with Jerry, but in the end they were all too chicken, so I had to break the news to him myself. I explained that he couldn’t live in the village. He responded that he would sleep across the road at the beach. I made many attempts to persuade him until I finally had to insist that he leave. He did leave, cursing my name under his breath. I had never had to do anything like that before, but I knew it had been the right thing when we heard rumors later on that he had “gotten into some trouble” with kids farther down the coast.
A team of New York Mount Sinai Medical Center students and their teachers suddenly showed up without warning, as most visitors were inclined to do. I was thrilled; I had no doubt that I could turn the hospital over to them and take a break. New Yorkers were among the most competent people I had ever met. Knowing that they’d immediately get to work, Oscar and I decided to go for a motocross bike ride for the day. We raced to the other side of Galle and began riding off the beaten track along all sorts of fun jungle trails. We found hidden Buddhist temples and spectacular views of the coast. We followed a very rough trail all the way down a steep mountain, where we discovered a tiny private beach that looked as though it had been spun