Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

122 OUT OF CAPTIVITYJohnny had given me was gone, I had to ask again and again for more.Our medic was the guard Pollo. He would tell me that he wasn’t goingto get me any more of the medicine. I’d have to complain to the Frenchmanand he would have to talk to Sombra. Of course, that meant thatPollo would get in trouble for not doing his job—keeping us alive.A month into life at the New Camp, I developed an eye infection.My eye was red and puffy and itched and oozed a discharge. I’d hadconjunctivitis before and knew it was a nuisance but treatable. I askedfor eyedrops. Pollo brought them and administered them to me. Once!I tried to be patient and explain to him that an infection needed tobe treated with a course of antibiotics. A onetime application wasn’t amiracle cure. He administered it again for a couple of days and thenstopped again. Pollo was also the one who locked us up at night, so hewas no favorite of any of us. The fourth night of the eyedrops, Polloshowed up and locked Keith and Marc in their boxes. He came to myhooch, and I was expecting him to put the drops in my eyes and thenlock up. Instead he locked the chain and started to walk away.“Give me the damn medicine,” I yelled.He stopped and walked up to the chain-link window, his dark beadyeyes even darker and more sinister.“I don’t want to waste the medicine on you,” he replied.I lost it. I started screaming and cursing, while Pollo was returningfire. We shouted at each other for a few minutes. I was sure the Frenchmanand the other guerrillas could hear us, and I was waiting for someonewith some sense to come to sort things out. Pollo walked away intothe darkness and no one came. I was so angry I was shaking.Pollo’s arbitrary behavior pissed me off, but his walking away broughtto real life a dread fear that I’d been having since we’d been captured.I walked around a lot of the time with this sense that there was a blackhole nearby that I was going to disappear in. Being ignored was likebeing told I didn’t exist. Being told that he didn’t want to give me thedrug I needed was like being told I didn’t matter.