I’ll never forget the eerie light in the eye of the storm. That experience is a lifetime great. I’d felt like I was in a washing machine in the storm any moment sure to die and now was in this calm mixed up sea without wind and eerie light.
I forgave everyone I’d ever known because alone I had no one to blame. I listened to myself and concluded I’d never needed to divorce a woman but rather should have divorced myself. I was such a whiner and so full of fear and self pity.
There were incredible days that went on forever of tropical sunny days with fair winds and following seas. The trade winds are a gift of God and feel like heaven to a sailor. What a wonder and joy!
Smelling Hawaii was a miracle. Land smells like peat and flowers and musky. I’d thought the current that flowed down around the islands was going to take me south and past them. I’d been aiming for Hawaii and made land fall at Kona. I came into the harbour and dropped the anchor and felt like I was on hardwood after weeks of constant motion at sea. I slept for a dozen hours and awoke still feeling like I was still on hardwood. The dog and cat were ecstatic but I couldn’t let them ashore. So sad.
I’d stay for a few weeks to make repairs, and waiting for the new autopilot computer. It died on the last day.
When I headed out again I was immediately caught with a lee shore blow that kept me against the land and required I use my Diesel engine to keep off the shore and circle Kona. The lava at night molten red rolling into the sea steaming was a Hellish sight a hundred yards to my right. I was afraid. I was was up all night staying off this hellish shore wind blowing me in while my trusty diesel kept me off. I rounded the southern side and headed west only to have the wind stop. I’d motor on a couple of hundred miles but no wind. I was bobbing about at sea. I’d used half my fuel and had a thousand miles to go to the next island fuel depot. The weather channel said that there was an unusual doldrums that had taken the west pacific and winds weren’t expected for a week or two. I wasn’t enjoying this. I was afraid I’d not have a job when I eventually got to Saipan. I turned back.
I put the boat on land and took what I needed on the plane, a shopping cart of luggage, plus Stuart and Angel. The rest of my necessary ‘stuff’ especially expensive boating electronics I shipped on to Saipan.
I flew into Saipan and loved the airport. It was great to see Willi and Anita and learn that I had a job waiting. I was very low in funds, this adventure and expedition taken all my reserve.
The first day when I entered the hospital I was immediately accosted by a very angry belligerent suited man,
“You’re the new psychiatrist?”
“Yes,”
“I’m with the government. You have to write an order for my wife to fly to Hawai to have her bunion removed.” He was waving papers in front of me and pushing a pen at me , there in the hall.
“I”m a psychiatrist. That’s a surgical decision.”
“The surgeon’s here is no good. I don’t trust the surgeon. She needs to go to Hawaii.”
“It’s not something for me to do. I can’t write an order without seeing her or the chart or talking to the surgeon. “
“You will do as you’re told right here and right now, mister or you’re not going to practice medicine in Saipan. Unless you sign this paper right now you can’t work in Saipan. So turn around and get back on the plane and get out of my country. You do as I tell you or leave.”
I’d just spent a couple of months and all my funds to get here. I expected my Mastercard could handle the trip back to Hawaii. I’d have to sail south to Australia where there was definitely work. I’d catch fish. I was packing my bags and getting ready to leave when Willi and the head of the hospital, a marvellously wise Canadian doctor found me.
“What’s the matter.”
“I’m packing up to leave. I was told by the government to get out because I wouldn’t sign an order for a patient I’d not seen to fly to Hawaii for her bunion repair.”
“That bastard. He’s so corrupt he’ll do anything to get a free trip for his family to Hawaii. He’s asked every doctor on the island and the surgeons say it’s not kosher. They’ve threatened to quit too if he continues to bully them. “
‘Don’t pack your bags yet.”
So Willi not wanting to lose his psychiatrist that day, exhausted from three months of on call, disappointed in this government official who’d not be doing this to an American doctor but thinking he could bully new arrival Canadian, ambushing me before I even get into the ward, well, he was a deeply sick man and Willi knew his family suffered greatly from living with such a man. He wrote a consult to a Hawaiian psychiatrist. The family got their vacation. Saipan got another psychiatrist.
I’d only arrived on the ward when the American psychiatrist returned then accosted me and said, “I”ve decided to return so how soon before you can leave.”
I was astonished. This man had left and had offended a number of people so wasn’t wanted further and now he was trying to get me to leave. I was again ready to get on the plane but now another man from the government, a truly lovely man, asked me to stay.
I’d been 24 hours on the island and had the roller coaster of emotions which if I’d not worked in the aboriginal reserves of the north I’d be wholly unprepared for. Yet I knew ‘tribal’ culture and knew that the first man was the old way of threat and bullying and the new man was the new leader who would ensure millions of dollars came to the islands because he understood threats only went so far. Everyone indeed respected me for my willingness to leave rather than sacrifice my integrity. I felt badly that the hospital and Willi had to then come up with a novel idea to solve what was solely a political problem. It would be a recurring theme I’d see on the island. A few individuals would be repeatedly willing to sacrifice the whole for their personal greed while there were these other amazing individuals who sacrificed themselves repeatedly for their community. The Marianas Commonwealth was a conglomeration of tribes so tribal conflicts were added. The Chamorah were the majority with Carolingian minority but there were other tribal peoples along with Americans, Canadians, and others. I loved to know the senatorial community leaders who had great vision and always worked for the best of all. I’d sit in meetings and go to church with these wise altruistic people while the others , the greedy self centred ones, were popular at the liquor store and gambling casino.
Saipan got an award from Bud for ‘most beer drunk’ and a regular minority contingent thought this was the greatest achievement. I’d meet others who were war hero’s, Olympic competitors, genius and great chefs, navigators and truly amazing people. Yet there were those who thought drinking the most beer was an equal achievement to putting a man on the moon. I was again in a small society and able to watch the dynamics and gossip. The Chomorran doctors were amazing. Brilliant and so deeply caring. The hospital it self was spectacular. The administration was the best I’d ever work with. The surgeons were incredible. The internists amazing. Willi was a true mensch. We had the best nurses on the psychiatry ward. It was a heavenly place to work. Truly paradise. I loved helping with the women who wanted a club house for the schizophrenics. I’d teach dance and drama in addition to doing all the regular psychiatry.
I’d also fly to the other islands. I’d appear in court and lunch with the judge. I loved this Texan genius whose mind worked like Lincoln. It was a delight to discuss politics and law and the island with him and initiate laws for the psychotic and dangerous. There was no asylum yet we had a group of dangerously insane non compliant schizophrenics at home with their families. Family was amazing on the islands. Mothers were the back bone of the society and fathers really were honorable men. I learned to love the Chomorran and Carolinian people as well as the Filipino nurses we worked with. Everyone was serious and pitched in for emergencies but once they were over it was beach time, dancing, karaoke and always dining. Everyone loved to eat and the food on the island was the best in the world.
Saipan was to Japan what Hawaii was to the US so we had the most amazing hotels with the greatest chefs and best facilities. I’d love to sit at dawn or dusk in these beach cafe’s watching the sun rise or set. The colours were glorious.
Everyone helped me. Willi’s Pentecostal church and minister were especially fine. I had a second hand car and a lovely two bedroom apartment with the finest neighbours. I’d golf every other weekend with Willi. Anita loved to golf too. When I wasn’t golfing I was scuba diving. The Grotto was one of the scuba diving wonders of the pacific, cave diving with sharks. Then wreck diving on WWII planes and tanks and rift diving. The diving was incredible. I loved all the multi coloured fish and their interest in me and their surroundings. It was paradise underwater and above water..
I’d play my poor rhythm guitar with a famous local jazz guitarist who living in my building. Each weekend we’d have a fiesta on Saturday, making music and smorgasboard and dancing. There would be great island fairs.
I’d be lonely and invite Laura to join me. She’d fly over and stay with me for an idyllic month. She sure looked spectacular in a bikini on the white sands of Managaha.. I’d work and she’d lie on the beach sun tanning. She describes it as a time of her life. She loved Stuart and Stuart was so pleased to see her. He’d done his time in quarantine with me visitting him every day to throw ball. It was so sad those first months because he was so lonely when I came. He’d had to do jail time because an arrogant Vancouver veterinarian had made a gross error. Thankfully Cats are Us had done the right thing for Angel and she was able to come home with me. I’d throw ball for an hour for Stuart in quarantine, the Saipan vet, a lovely caring man, but Stuart would be so sad to see me leave. He was such a proud litttle guy. When he’d done his hard time and was free we’d got out on my roof where I’d read holding a book with one hand while throwing the tennis ball with the other hand hour after hour. We’d have these great walks too. He was now so glad there was Laura to join him.
A very peculiar girl pushed her face into Stuarts. He’d not liked her and growled and backed away into the furthest corner. I was running to separate them I”d told her to leave him alone as he didn’t like strangers when he’d come over with a friend. But she grabbed him in the corner where he’d backed and pushed her face into his. I don’t know if he bit her or her roughness and thrusting her face caught his teeth but suddenly she was bleeding from the lip and Stuart was the ‘bad dog’.
Thankfully my colleagues at the hospital instantly told me to ask my neighbour. He was an ENT but his ‘secret’ was that he was a cosmetic surgeon. He was in love with his pediatrician wife, followed her to the island where she was doing good and saving little lives, her lifelong goal. Having become jaded with the cosmetic surgery which had made them independently wealthy he was solely doing medical surgical life saving work now and didn’t want it known that he was a plastic surgeon. “I’d be swamped if people found out”, he’d tell me. Now I asked him in this emergency. He saw the lady immediately and not only a perfect repair of her lip that night but improved on her already great beauty much to the appreciation of the lady. She wasn’t at all malicious but really was a darling air head. She told us that she ‘couldn’t understand it, this was the third time dogs have bit me. But I so love to hold them and nuzzle with them.”
I was terrified for Stuart and not a little afraid of being sued in the US.
My overhead costs were little and taxes were so low and costs in America were so much less than Canada. It was a true eye opener to see what everything cost in reality without the outrageous gouging of Canadian taxation. I’d pay 10% income tax too. But doctors on the island weren’t rich. There is so much disinformation in Canada about America. I met some of the poorest best doctors in the US but I also met some of the richest on the mainland. The reason so many Canadians worked in the Marianas and other American territories is that the doctors carrying huge debts for medical education couldn’t afford to work in the territories which couldn’t compete with mainland.
I’d have countless incredible experiences in the Marianas Islands. I’ve written about them elsewhere. So many experiences in this extraordinary place where the greatest WWII fighting between the Americans and Japanese had occured because once it was captured the neighbouring island of Tinia became the most used military run way in the history of the war. The Americans with an air strip finally in range of Japan flew constant bombing flights. Suicide cliff on Saipan is among the famous monuments there visitted by Americans and Japanese. Tinia where I’d do fly in clinics and save a little girls life to the thanks of the community was the site where the Enola Gay flew from to bomb Hiroshima.
I’d survive a Typhoon when all my windows would be blown out with Angel and Stuart hiding under the bed through out. I’ll carry forever the memory of a palm tree being uprooted and flying over my car as I drove to the hospital to help in the emergency. It was wonderful to see the people and their government come together to clean up after the wreckage. I’d been able to share the power with my neighbours of my generator I’d brought from my boat so no one’s freezers thawed in the days we were without power.
The ex pat community from Canada was great. Lots of parties. Lots of gossip and generally a real selection of outstanding unique individuals who were adventurers. The married couples were the best in so many ways especially those with children. Their love was deep like Willi and Anita and they were so often doctors who wanted to serve.
When I came a few of us from our club met with these incredible local stalwarts who were truly joyous and free. These few amazing individuals, true back bone of the society, met on the beach under coconut trees sharing and praying together. By the time I left there were some 50 of us and they’d throw a moving party for me thanking me for my time there. My medical and scientific support was so appreciated given the financial competition from the gambling and drinking crowd. We did good work and I loved joining with these amazing high minded local individuals who’d been so much longer working in the trenches on behalf of their community. but my mother was sick and I feared she’d die soon. I was flying back and forth to see her worrying.
I’d befriended this beautiful young brilliant lithe genius, a lawyer there who’d written several books, spoke several languages, played mandolin and wanted to learn to dance. Ballroom dancing was big on the island. We became great friends making music together and talking about characters and all the while I taught her dancing. She loved ballroom dancing. She was a quick study too. Such elegant form and so flexible. She’d continue to take lessons and join the ballroom dance club on the island. Asked what her own great achievement was , she’d say it was making nutritious biscuits from anything in the refrigerator. She was vegetarian and made the heaviest most nutritious biscuits that could best be described as ‘weapons grade’.
She’d visit me in Vancouver and I’d be the ‘tourist’ guide showing her all the sites I loved about the city and environs. We’d dance to the blues bands at the Yale, so much fun.
Years later she’d call me and remind me that I’d told her I wanted to go to Russia but would never go without someone who spoke Russian. She’d been married to a Russian doctor and spoke Russian and now wanted to return to see family. I was invited to accompany her and jumped at the opportunity. A great trip Moscow and St. Petersburg with a beautiful brilliant ‘guide’. I truly am blessed. I have such fond memories of the museums and churches but especially loved sharing a train car with an old Russian she chatted with all day before we slept the night her above and me below and him above on the other side with I believe his son below. The Russian train was a delight with the memory of the beautiful young woman talking so animatedly with this twinkling eyed old old Russian so happy. She’d been raised Catholic but become an aetheist and thanked me for sharing my love of the churches. I dragged her through the greatest there and shared my joy at seeing the painting of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt in the Winter palace. She said she’d seen religion as the enemy but thanks to me now appreciated religion differently and felt she could be closer to her mother who was truly devout.
She’d marry an Alaska Native leader and have a child whose definitely growing big nurtured by his mothers nutritious vegan biscuits that would put meat on a skeleton.
She was so talented and gifted like the others I knew in Saipan. I”d help one doctor who sailed his yacht from Mexico here losing his engine half way across. We’d tinker on boats.
Willi and Anita would invite me to join them in the evening when they’d have nightly swims in their compound They’d bought the loveliest townhouse. In the tropical weather the evening scents were glorious.
I loved writing in Saipan. I’d write as I am now for an hour or so every morning. I’d play guitar and learn more songs. I’d really relax. I’d have the most interesting cases and work with the finest nurses. They loved to ball room dance, sing Karaoke and we all loved to eat the island smorgasbord feasts.
It was sad it came to an end.I had an emergency in which I did my part with textbook excellence. I’m a top trained emergency psychiatrist, but there was a very bad new little administrator who was utterly incompetent in the peculiar cross cultural emergency and marital drama where no one was at risk but everyone but the nurse and I behaved badly. This new administrator would lie and blame me and say I’d done ‘nothing’. “He should have given her a needle” she said. She’d shouted at me during the crisis ‘give her a needle’ and I’d told her to leave. A mother holding her baby lovingly , the baby in no distress, (always observe) but the mother screaming in Japanese at the husband who was wringing his hands and not knowing what to do. Finally the nurse arrived and I asked her to ‘please take the baby’ When the nurse had the baby and the woman was agreeable we gave her an injection and she calmed down and we transferred her to the psychiatry ward.
There was an investigation which struck me as most unusual but the administrator who’d been screaming and let all the schizophrenic patients come into the office to watch the patient keening attacked me. Thankfully the nurses who were highly competent backed me 100% but I thought, damn this is dangerous if I’m being question on something I’m a leading expert in. I’d been the supervisor in the Vancouver General Psychiatry Emergency for a year and done countless emergencies as a fly in doctor in the north. The week before this, Emergency doctors at the hospitla had left because a lawyer had paid the administrative staff to watch for something they could sue them for and report to him. . They were on retainer to an ambulance chaser. Those doctors left that day without notice appalled that the administration would allow such a travesty and put doctors at such risk.
Here, I an Emergency Psychiatrist, who’d done everything right, but simply had to tell the new administrator to leave the room because she was hysterical and upsetting the patient more. I’d told her too to ‘take the chronic patients with you you let in”. She’d left the door open to the chronic ward and these brain damaged dangerous and schizophrenic patients had followed her almost like zombies because she was utterly a fool.
She didn’t like my ‘tone’. How dare I order her to leave. I couldn’t do anything but ‘watch the mother and the baby to ensure that the child remained placid and well and breathing and assured that the mother was no risk to her child. The truth would out and the husband’s ultra wealthy parents had told him to take the baby and divorce the mother or he’d be disinherited. The father and his wife had had a dispute. Th husband was caught in the middle. His parents didn’t like his ‘poor’ wife who had ‘feminist’ ideas. . He’d man up after this display confront his father and remain with his wife whose Oscar winning performance saved her baby and her marriage and gave her man some backbone He became the father’s very successful corporate head in the Pacific, the parents remaining in Japan while the wife, he and child remained in the islands. They would have ‘formal visits’ back and forth thereafter. It would have all been better if I’d spoken Japanese. So much of my work depended on translation but we were blessed to have so many staff in the hospital who spoke so many languages. I’d always be able to get an interpreter but not necessarily in an emergency. Only later did we have our translator, this lovely woman who would help me sleuth the back story from this young couple.
Meanwhile the hospital government administrator was trying to back her staff and I said exactly what had occurred and when asked why “I’d not given her a needle”asked.
“Has anyone tried to give a needle to a moving woman holding a baby?”.
“ How long would the haldol or even benzodiazepine take to work once the injection is made if it can made when it was unnessary.”
“But what would the woman do to the baby then since we had a screaming hysterical administrator and a dozen schizophrenics in the room and I hadn’t a nurse at that time.”
The nurse, a great lady, arrived and we solved the problem. The only issue was the Japanese lady spent all her time screaming at her husband, a soliloguy which saved her child. I admired her when I finally understood the Shakespearean significance. The young man trapped between his wife and father and loving the son who the grandfather wanted without his mother was classic.
The new administrator was ‘black’. I was called racist for saying she was negligent and incompetent to let the patients into the office, especially one big dangerous fellow, and to not follow my orders to get the patients out and leave but instead began telling me how to do my business when she was utterly a fool.
I certainly wasn’t racist and while I appreciated the ‘special status’ the blacks now had in government I’d have done nothing different. Really, nothing. Mother and child and husband all survived.I did excellent work and the nurse did excellent work. The rest of the folk there behaved badly and the situation probably wouldn’t have occured if we had an ambulance to transfer the patient to the hospital rather than have them brought to me in the outpatient department a car ride from the emergency. I just felt unsupported and had been told by the DEA that my life was already targeted because so many patietns were giving up drugs and alcohol after I identified their addiction and got them into treatment.
I often don’t have much holding me anywhere. I truly am a bit of a free spirit and figure I’m where God wants me to be so if that changes I am happy to go. I’ve not found a lot worth unnecessary fighting about.
I was already feeling guilty not being closer to my mother. There was a sea change in the government. I’d had my dog Stuart poisoned by drug dealers who wanted me as Medical Review Officer to lie about their positive urines to get jobs in government. I refused as did the South African doctor. Our dogs were dead days later. We were both the Medical Review Officers for the hospital. You couldn’t get a job without a clean urine. The addiction was so severe that these criminals couldn’t stay clean for a month to get a clean urine and get a job. They wanted to get government jobs , much sought after for pension and security but also wanted to be able to steal from the pharmacy.
The other MRO doctor had before coming here been a Navy Seal commando in South Africa.
He told me, “don’t worry. It will be taken care of. You don’t just kill a doctor’s dog.” I thought of Stuart and how I’d failed him.
The man who bragged about killing our dogs died of an accident some weeks later.
I left always regretting it but thankful for the time I’d now be able to spend with my mother and father in the final months of her life. She’d been admitted to hospital and Dad in winter was taking a two hour bus ride to see her, bundling her up and then pushing her in a wheelchair in a large circle about the hospital so she could sit outside and watch and listen to the birds. My father and mother were saints. They might well have been Franciscan monks. My mother always loved to feed the wee birds in winter when it was 40 below and there was no food. She’d always kept a full feeder outside our kitchen window. I will never forget that image of love, the old crippled man pushing his wife through snow drifts so they could sit and feed the birds outside the hospital in the coldest of Winnipeg winter.
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