Sometime before dawn on the 24th, the waves began to strengthen behind me. The boat rushed forward. It was terrifying but at the same time exhilarating. Suddenly most of the planking was ripped out from under my feet, but before the lifeboat could sink it was dumped on this godforsaken pile of rocks. I don’t even know where I am: have no idea at all. Navigation not my strong point, ha-ha.
But I know what I have to do. This may be the last entry, but somehow I think I’ll make it. Haven’t I always’? And they are really doing marvelous things with prosthetics these days. I can get along with one foot quite nicely.
It’s time to see if I’m as good as I think I am. Luck.
February 5
Did it.
The pain was the part I was most worded about. I can stand pain, but I thought that in my weakened condition, a combination of hunger and agony might force unconsciousness before I could finish.
But the heroin solved that quite nicely.
I opened one of the bags and sniffed two healthy pinches from the surface of a flat rock, first the right nostril, then the left. it was like sniffing up some beautifully numbing ice that spread through the brain from the bottom up. I aspirated the heroin as soon as I finished writing in this diary yesterday–that was at 9:45. The next time I checked my watch the shadows had moved, leaving me partially in the sun, and the time was 12:41. I had nodded off. I had never dreamed that it could be so beautiful, and I can’t understand why I was so scornful before. The pain, the terror, the misery . . . they all disappear, leaving only a calm euphoria.
It was in this state that I operated.
There was, indeed, a great deal of pain, most of it in the early part of the operation. But the pain seemed disconnected from me, like somebody else’s pain. It bothered me, but it was also quite interesting. Can you understand that? If you’ve used a strong morphine-based drug yourself, perhaps you can. It does more than dull pain. It induces a state of mind. A serenity. I can understand whv people get hooked on it, although “hooked” seems an awfully strong word, used most commonly, of course, by those who have never tried it.
About halfway through, the pain started to become a more personal thing. Waves of faintness washed over me. I looked longingly at the open bag of white powder, but forced myself to look away. If I went on the nod again, I’d bleed to death as surely as if I’d fainted. I counted backward from a hundred instead.
Loss of blood was the most critical factor. As a surgeon, I was vitally aware of that. Not a drop could be spilled unnecessarily. If a patient hemorrhages during an operation in a hospital, you can give him blood. I had no such supplies. What was lost–and by the time I had finished, the sand beneath my leg was dark with it–was lost until my own internal factory could resupply. I had no clamps, no hemostats, no surgical thread.
I began the operation at exactly 12:45. I finished at 1:50, and immediately dosed myself with heroin, a bigger dose than before. I nodded into a gray, painless world and remained there until nearly five o’clock. When I came out of it, the sun was nearing the western horizon, beating a track of gold across the blue Pacific toward me. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful . . . all the pain was paid for in that one instant. An hour later I snorted a bit more, so as to fully enjoy and appreciate the sunset.
Shortly after dark I–
I–
Wait. Haven’t I told you I’d had nothing to eat for four days? And that the only help I could look to in the matter of replenishing my sapped vitality was my own body? Above all, haven’t i told you, over and over, that survival is a business of the mind? The superior mind? i won’t justify myself by saying you would have done the same thing. First of all, you’re probably not a surgeon. Even if you knew the mechanics of amputation, you might have botched the job so badly you would have bled to death anyway. And even if you had lived through the operation and the shock-trauma, the thought might never have entered your preconditioned head. Never mind. No one has to know. My last act before leaving the island will be to destroy this book.