Longlong

The Niugini night is warm and still. The silver moon lights banks of cloud – become enchanted realms – above the earth and sea. It is nineteen seventy-five, the year of independence, and Dr Thomas walks down the hill to his hospital on the shore, to make his bedtime round.

            He is puzzled to see a gathering at the entrance, of men around an open truck. He hears low voices speaking earnestly.

            ‘Good night,’ he calls.

            ‘Yes. Good night.’

            They give no direct indication of what they are doing there, but as he passes he hears a sudden thud and grunt. ‘Get down, you!’ someone mutters, but not to him.

            He passes on in, leaving them to let him know what they want in their own good time.

The wards in the Australian-run hospital are all at peace. The sleeping sick and their relatives share beds and floor, grass mats and flowered pillows and mothers’ arms, and breathe and dream. A shy nurse accompanies him, carrying a flickering spirit lamp. He knows her and likes her. All she does is good, he thinks.

Later, crossing the mottled lawn between the buildings, he hears the shriek of rusty wheels rotating and sees the group of men crowding along a concrete walkway pushing a wheelchair bumpily. The wheelchair occupant flings his arms about. The group halts from time to time to grapple with him and hold him down. A rope stretches from his feet to one man who walks ahead, drawing the rest behind him.

‘Good night,’ Dr Thomas calls to them again.

Some look embarrassed as he approaches, including one of the male nurses he recognises among them.

‘He’s being admitted?’

‘He longlong,’ they say jointly, making as if to press on with what they are doing. ‘He smoke marihuana.’

Dr Thomas steps nearer and stares into the face of the longlong, a small wiry man who grimaces and pops his eyes at him.

‘Hullo,’ Dr Thomas says.

‘Hullo-hullo.’ The longlong gives a sudden lunge.

The crowd springs back and forward again, to hold him. The rope jerks, and they continue on their way.

‘You need help?’

‘Good night,’ they say.

Dr Thomas follows, watching over them, smiling to himself at the little man to whose welfare so many of them are attending.

Once they reach the men’s ward they spread eagle their charge on a bed in a single room.

‘Let him go now. Lose the rope,’ calls Dr Thomas.

‘Let doctor in,’ says the charge nurse, Andrew, his favorite.

The others make way reluctantly for the doctor to reach the bed. He feels old and possibly redundant, but grateful to Andrew for his help. Being stoned is not normally a medical disease.

The others release their hold on the man, also uncertainly, untie the rope and step back as from a snake they have emptied from its bag. The longlong stays motionless for one second, thrashes about blindly for several more, grabbing at the air, then stops.

‘Hullo,’ Dr Thomas tries again.

‘Hullo-hullo.’

‘You smoke marihuana?’

‘Smoke mawana! Smoke mawana!’ He chuckles hoarsely.

The onlookers approve.

He sneezes like a little boy.

The onlookers laugh.

He stands up on the bed. ‘Me king!’ he says. ‘You all rubbish men! Something-nothing men!’

They laugh again.

He falls neatly onto the bed, curls up in a ball and flutters his eyelids.

‘We must take his blood pressure,’ Andrew says.

True,’ the others reply.

All wait while Andrew brings the apparatus. His hands tremble wrapping the cuff around the longlong’s arm. All are silent. They hear each squelch as Andrew pumps the air into the rubber bag and they watch the column of mercury rise. They hear the hiss as the air is released and the measure taken. The longlong hisses too.

‘One twenty on eighty,’ Andrew announces firmly. ‘Now we must give him sedative.’

‘True,’ the others say again.

Andrew goes out and returns with two tablets and a plastic cup of water. ‘Up,’ he says.

The longlong sits up.

‘Drink .’

The longlong takes the tablets in one hand and the brimming cup in the other. His eyes rove around the room.

All wait.

He puts the tablets carefully on his tongue and washes them down with the water at a single swallow.

All voice approval and relax.

‘Now we must leave him to sleep,’ Andrew says.

‘Ah, yes,’ everyone agrees. ‘Leave him now to sleep.’

A tough-looking teenage boy comes forward to say he is the longlong’s friend. ‘His relative give him the bad smoke then run away,’ he explains earnestly. ‘I can stay with him.’

So that is settled too.

Dr Thomas finishes his rounds and, as he climbs the hill, he remembers, ‘Me king!’ and smiles again

The moonlit clouds still hang in the sky above the sparkling sea.

            ‘Good night,’ he wishes them all again, more aware than usual that his medical practice here has not been so much a matter of administering a service to fellow adults, as being an indulgent grandfather half the time, to mischievous children. ‘But would they see it that way?’ he wonders now. ‘What is the future for them now?’