That's life

I suppose I should have guessed that a ‘down’ would come after that ‘up’ the other day. And it came today. I started off the day without enough sleep, feeling groggy and having to drink a cup of Nikki’s coffee before feeling awake. We had an exam, but I finished early and had time to study. Too much studying. My eyes began to hurt from using the computer too much, making me feel a little sick, so I didn’t eat lunch. Instead I drank some coke and went to lab.
No one was in a particular happy mood with Nellie today. Rebecca was feeling a little unwell and the air conditioner was working too well, so everyone was cold and sniffling underneath our surgical masks. We were working on the thorax and it was back-breaking work, leaning over her for hours with scalpel and forceps, delicately prying apart veins and muscles and nerves and all sorts of things. I’d left my shorts outside when I changed into my lab costume, and halfway through the afternoon it began to rain. I was too covered in slime to go out and get them, anyway, we were running out of gloves and I didn’t want to waste another pair. Vem complained about having to pee, and I suggested he just go and stand in the rain and pee, no one would know. It seemed like a good suggestion to me, but he didn’t find it funny.

We moved onto Nellie’s head. It had to be skinned, and I gritted my teeth and started helping Dr. Rust with the unsavory task. Due to the decomposition, we decided to take off all the skin and cartilage and only study the structures beneath. I began to cut off her right ear. Not many things bother me, but I looked up at Dr. Rust and said, “This is really hard.”
I can’t really explain very well, but there is something very very psychologically difficult about cutting off parts of a person’s body, especially on their face, even if they are very dead. I had to remove part of her nose, and cut around her lips, and it was one of those hours that is very sober and you try not to crack too many jokes but you have to crack a few because you know you’ll spazz out if you don’t.
All of us were exhausted, physically and emotionally, before the end of lab, and I asked Dr. Rust if we could end early. It was pouring rain outside by this time and we de-gowned and scrubbed and stood in the entrance-way, looking out at the rain and not wanting to go into it. My shorts were in a sopping heap outside the door and I struggled into them. We had planned on going shopping as I was out of food, but the man who was supposed to pick us up decided it was raining too hard, so we’d have to wait for another day. Brendan and Vem and I had planned to go running after class, too, but Vem was getting over a cold so they decided not to go. All of this had put me in a foul mood.
I started walking back towards our house, and the rain was pouring down harder now. The road was covered in water and by the time we made it back, we were soaking wet. You know those times when you feel like yelling swear words or hitting something? I decided that I would go run it off, forget about the rain since I was already wet. I put on my running shoes and headed out into the downpour. At first it felt amazing. Within a few minutes I was soaked to the bone and I splashed through the puddles and sprinted down the road. It began to rain harder and for the first time in two weeks, I felt wonderfully cool. Every few minutes the sky would light up and then crash with thunder. I ran and ran and ran, a long way. I ran down to the main road and down it for a mile or so, and finally stopped at the top of a big hill overlooking the ocean. There was no one in sight and I stood there, looking at the bleak grayness.

I had to pee. Of course there were no bathrooms in sight. You probably know what’s coming. My mind flashed back to what I had said to Vem and I thought, hey, that’s not a bad idea. So yes, dear reader, I stood at the side of a deserted road in the sprinkling rain and peed. And it was then that I heard a car engine start beside me. I turned with a gasp to see that the empty car next to me was really full. The couple in the front seat looked at me very coldly, and then they reversed and pulled out onto the road, driving away. I thought I could just die right then and there. I wondered if Antiguans get arrested for public urination, and if they would report me. I wondered if they had turned to each other and said, “Is that girl really peeing right in front of our car?”

Well, I turned around and started running home. I ran and ran. The rain grew harder. The wind picked up. Suddenly the road in front of me seemed to disappear. There was nothing but rushing water. I was up to my ankles, no, I was up to my knees. I tried to keep running, but had to slow to a walk. After a while the rain began to pour so hard that it was stinging my body everywhere it hit. I couldn’t see a thing. I turned my back to it and huddled over, praying that it would stop so I could keep going. I still had over a kilometer to go. The wind was so strong I thought it would blow me over. Finally the gust let up a bit and I turned and kept going. The water was rising fast, and it was flowing across the road carrying rocks and mud and roaring down the side of the hill in turbulent rivers.

A few times I wondered if I would make it. I struggled to stay upright in the river churning around my legs, mud splashing up on me. The university campus is up on a hill a bit, so when I finally got there I managed to climb out of the water. I knew that everyone else would be huddled up in their rooms, so I stopped by the cafeteria, looking like a drowned rat, and picked up the food they had ordered for dinner. I hadn’t ordered any because I’d thought we would go shopping.
When I got back to our bungalow the doors were open and everyone was talking. My roommate came out.
“Everyone’s rooms are flooding!” I ran to our doorway and the water had just stopped coursing in the back wall and was puddling everywhere, half of the room was covered. Shomaila had frantically thrown towels and bathmats all over but the brown mud was everywhere. Outside, the rain was still pouring.
“My clothes!” I shouted to Shomaila. “Can you get my clothes out of the closet!” Shomaila had unplugged our computers and had tried to get things off the floor, but she hadn’t known that I kept my clothes folded on the floor in the closet. She ran to get them while I went outside and behind our house to see what I could do.

The workmen who had been repairing our broken pipes had left the earth open and there was mud everywhere, with rivers rushing through it. I got right down in the dirt and wrestled rocks and chunks of grass out of the way to divert the water away from the back of the house and down the side of the house instead. The ground was soft and suddenly I sank up to my knees in the mud. It was like quicksand. I managed to get out and Shomaila was standing under the porch watching.

“Heather, all your clothes are soaked through!” She called. “I’m really sorry!”
I finished throwing mud and rocks around. The rain seemed to be letting up a bit. Apparently the water had stopped coming in through the walls.
I walked a few steps and looked down at my mud-spattered legs and now-brown shoes. I sat down on the stairs of the house, and after Shomaila had gone inside I put my head in my hands and I cried, the rain coursing down my face.
I had no dry clothes. I had no food. I was exhausted and filthy and the skies had opened up and were dumping everything on me. I felt very low.
What can you do? I was shivering with the cold and after a while I thought about how I didn’t want to be a quitter and give up, I wanted to be a finisher and a winner in life. If I let this get me down, what kind of an example would I be setting for everyone else? There was always hope. Hope is not about outside circumstances. Hope is about who God is, and that he never changes. He is always good. He is always there.
I took my clothes off on the porch and went into our room, wrapping up in a sarong. Shomaila and I used our wash basin and mopped up the floor. I rinsed out my clothes and Nikki found something that would work for another clothesline and I hung up all my clothes to dry. I showered all the mud off and found one dry pair of underwear and a sundress and Vem gave me a shirt. I heated up some cold pasta and sat on my bed underneath the hanging clothes. My room looks like a Laundromat, there are clothes and towels everywhere. The roof was leaking down the wall, too, so we moved the furniture away from it and stacked our books on the beds and tried to dry everything off with paper towels.
You know what? It’s okay. This is real life. It’s not always easy, and it’s not always fun. But God is still good. And I’m still hanging on, even though I don’t have anything to wear or eat tomorrow. I know that it will work out, somehow.