Santiago encounters a man-of-war . . .
The clouds over the land now rose like mountains and the coast was only a long green line with the gray blue hills behind it. The water was a dark blue now, so dark that it was almost purple. As he looked down into it he saw the red sifting of the plankton in the dark water and the strange light the sun made now. He watched his lines to see them go straight down out of sight into the water and he was happy to see so much plankton because it meant fish. The strange light the sun made in the water, now that the sun was higher, meant good weather and so did the shape of the clouds over the land. But the bird was almost out of sight now and nothing showed on the surface of the water but some patches of yellow, sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war floating close beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind it in the water."Agua mala," the man said. "You whore."
From where he swung lightly against his oars he looked down into the water and saw the tiny fish that were coloured like the trailing filaments and swam between them and under the small shade the bubble made as it drifted. They were immune to its poison. But men were not and when some of the filaments would catch on a line and rest there slimy and purple while the old man was working a fish, he would have welts and sores on his arms and hands of the sort that poison ivy or poison oak can give. But these poisonings from the agua mala came quickly and struck like a whiplash.
The translation of agua mala is "bad water." Santiago is referring to the poison created by the Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish. Stings that can cause wounds on the old man's arms and hands as fast as a whiplash, as Hemingway writes. Sickness can happen like that.
It can also happen slowly, over days or months or years.
My sister, Rose, has Alzheimer's, terrible asthma, and, for the six or seven months, chronic kidney infections. She has slowly been leaving us for a long time. At Christmas, she sat at the table eating ground up ham and cookies. She even managed to smile once, and it was one of the best gifts of the day.
Yet, her health seems to change as quickly as Upper Peninsula weather. Sunny one minute. The next, blizzard warning. This afternoon, I received a call from my oldest sister saying Rose wasn't really responding or moving that much, and she was breathing shallowly. I told my oldest sister to call an ambulance for her. That was around 3 p.m.
At around 9:30 p.m., my oldest sister called me again. Rose is still in the ER at the local hospital. She's been diagnosed with sepsis, double pneumonia, and kidney failure. Currently, Rose is on two IV antibiotics. The doctor asked my sister if our family had thought about hospice care. My sister told him that we wanted no extreme life-sustaining measures. No ventilators or chest compressions. Rose was going to be transferred to the ICU shortly.
That phone call was about two hours ago. I haven't received any more updates, which I will count as a good sign for now.
I don't know what the future holds these next couple days. Nobody does. However, I'm hoping for some rest for Rose. That's about all I can do. Her body has been putting up a good fight for a long, long time. There's always hope.
Saint Marty just isn't sure what that hope looks like.
❤️
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