I
haven’t written anything for a while because I’ve been feeling a bit stressed
and despondent; although I can be brutally honest here up to a point, I still
feel I have to be careful what I say given that what I say is out in the public
domain. I was also hoping to bring news about bunkhouse funding; perhaps next month.
Today
has been one of those days that stops you in your tracks and makes you
re-evaluate what’s important and what’s not really worth stressing over.
One of the contractors working on the new temporary hostel accommodation
collapsed unconscious and fell into a hole he’d been digging; as the second
person on the scene I felt totally helpless – no clue what to do. He
looked in a bad way but his colleague and the Castle chef had him in the
recovery position, so I went for help. From there, everybody knew exactly
what to do – the right people appeared on the scene, the air rescue helicopter
was summoned and then ... an agonising wait. The minutes stretched out
excruciatingly into half an hour and still no tuk tuk tuk of approaching rotor
blades. The man on the ground came round and we all stood around trying
not to crowd him, but unwilling to leave until we knew what was
happening. The helicopter came, paramedics took over in their maddeningly
calm, unhurried way, everybody moved inside out of the cold; more
waiting. The helicopter left with our friend inside, we drank sweet tea
and talked over and over about what happened. Everybody did everything
right; the systems in place for just this sort of thing swung into action, yet
as the helicopter shrank steadily away from us, I think we all felt a bit
helpless.
We
don’t know if he’s going to be ok.
Nothing is quite the same. The things that seemed so important
when I woke up this morning don’t seem as pressing any more. These
contractors have been coming to the island off and on for a long time, they’ve
become our friends. It’s a terrible thing to see one of them so close to
death, to be so closely reminded that it will come to all of us at some point –
even to me. Everybody did everything right, hopefully a life was saved
today. We are all shaken by it. There’s nothing like a life or
death situation for giving back perspective, but I’m glad it doesn’t happen
very often.
