Let the River Run
Copyright© 2026 by Jody Daniel
Chapter 5
I never did get that chance to unwind. The shower, the hamburger, the coffee—those were just pit stops, not rest. By the time I got back to the flight line at Skukuza, Gustav was already walking toward me with that look that meant another task was about to land in my lap.
Seven tourists still needed to get out to Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport.
The AS350 could move people efficiently, but seven with luggage in this heat and density altitude? That was pushing it. The call went out for the triple-two.
By then the ground crew had already swung into action. The Bell 222 stood on the apron looking scrubbed and ready, mud streaks washed off, windscreens cleaned, fuel caps sealed. Someone had even wiped down the skids. That kind of quiet efficiency is what keeps operations moving when the tempo doesn’t let up.
I checked the fuel—tanks topped. Oil pressures good. No new nicks on the leading edges of the main and tail rotors. The ritual of the walk-around steadied me again, pulling me back into procedure. My logbook showed two hours fourteen minutes already flown for the day, most of it low-level in marginal weather. Not a huge number on paper, but every minute had been dense.
I grabbed a cold drink and a pre-packed sandwich from the ops fridge and ate standing up, leaning against the fuselage. No appetite, just fuel for the body.
The tourists were waiting under the shade netting, their bags in a neat row, wide-brimmed hats and that slightly dazed look people get when a holiday turns into an evacuation.
They climbed aboard with that mix of excitement and nervous chatter, camera straps still around their necks like talismans. I gave them the short safety brief—seatbelts, headsets, no loose items, stay clear of the rotors—and then we were spooling up again.
The turbines wound into that rising whine, rotors blurring, the machine alive once more.
As we lifted out over the soaked bush, I realised I was operating on momentum alone. No decompression, no mental reset—just task to task, checklist to checklist. The Sabie still lay out there somewhere below, brown and swollen, but this time I kept the nose up and the altitude higher, giving the tourists their view while keeping myself clear of the details.
Another shuttle. Another responsibility. Unwinding would have to wait.
The flight to KMI had been a reprieve. Seven tourists, wide-eyed and clutching their expensive cameras, marvelled at the flooded landscape I was already sick of looking at. After dropping them at the terminal, I’d pushed the triple-two on to Nelspruit, the air thinning as the ground rose toward the escarpment.
Now, the sky was a deep, bruised indigo, and the streetlights of the city looked like spilled embers against the dark hills. Silver cities rise, the early dusk lights the streets that lead them, and sirens call them on a song.
Alone in a strange city and I suddenly had an idea. Let’s fly on the edge and let the river run.
I booked into a guesthouse and then went to my room. A nice room. Comfortable and with that feeling of home away from home. Well, better than the bungalow at Skukuza.
A quick shower. Splash on some after-scrap-anti-pig-lotion and a squirt or two of anti-dead-donkey-asshole. Then hair combed and into my overnight crash bag for jeans and takkies, short sleeve shirt and off I went.
I stood in the foyer of the Mbombela General hospital, feeling entirely out of place. In my left hand, I held a bunch of proteas—sturdy, waxy things that looked like they could survive a rotor-wash.
The sliding glass doors hissed shut behind me, cutting off the evening traffic.
Inside, the atmosphere was different. There was no wind, no Jet-A1, no distant roar of water. Instead, there was the rhythmic throb of a floor polisher somewhere down the hall and the muted chime of a nursing station’s call-bell. The air was chilled, scrubbed clean by filters, and heavy with the scent of floor wax and industrial disinfectant.
I checked the room number I got from reception. 302.
As I walked, the soft squeak of my soles on the linoleum felt loud, almost intrusive. I passed a waiting room where a television murmured in the corner, its blue light flickering against the faces of people waiting for news on loved ones.
I reached Room 302 and stopped. Through the narrow observation window the room was dim, lit only by the soft green glow of the monitors and a muted night light in the corner. The corridor behind me smelled of disinfectant and floor polish, but inside the room there was only that sterile stillness hospitals seem to cultivate.
There she was.
I took a breath, adjusted the proteas so they didn’t look like I’d just pulled them out of a rotor wash, and pushed the door open. The hinges gave a faint metallic groan that sounded far louder to me than it actually was. For the first time since hauling her out of the floodplain, I wasn’t moving at a hundred knots. No checklist. No torque needle. Not even a horizon to hold.
She looked different from the image burned into my memory. The grey pallor of near-drowning was gone, replaced by normal colour, though she was still pale against the white pillow. The oxygen mask had been swapped for thin nasal prongs. Her breathing wasn’t that wet, ragged whistle anymore—just slow, measured, the rise and fall of the blanket like a metronome. A plethora of pipes connected to her left arm, dripping fluid into her body from overhead clear plastic bags.
I suddenly became very aware of myself. I must have looked like I’d taken a wrong turn out of the bush and ended up in the wrong building.
I was just a man with some flowers, wondering if she would even remember the face of the pilot who’d told her to keep breathing.
Her eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, then settled on me. There was a pause—long enough for me to consider retreating and pretending I’d come to the wrong room.
“Hello...” she said, her voice thin but steady. “I know you from somewhere...”
“I was ... in the vicinity and just wanted to pop in and see how you’re doing,” I heard myself say, instantly aware of how ridiculous that sounded. In the vicinity. As if people casually wandered into hospital rooms after work.
“You’re the pilot,” she said, not asking.
Then she tried to sit up and immediately went into a fit of coughing that doubled her over. It wasn’t the drowning rattle anymore, but it still sounded like broken glass in a tin.
“Hey—easy. Lie down. Don’t exert yourself,” I said, taking a step forward and then stopping, unsure whether touching her would be appropriate.
“No ... I have to ... sit up a bit,” she insisted between breaths. “I’ve been at this angle for two days...”
She pressed the bed control and the motor whined softly as the backrest lifted. I grabbed the pillow, suddenly all thumbs, and stuck it behind her head.
“Let me—uh—put this behind your head. It will help ease your position.”
“Still keeping up the talk?” she said, a ghost of a smile appearing.
“What talk?”
“Breathe. Don’t close your eyes. Stay awake,” she said. “All while flying that ... flying machine.”
“Helicopter,” I corrected automatically, then stopped myself. “You remember that?”
“Yes.”
Something in my chest loosened at that.
“I brought you flowers,” I said, holding up the proteas like evidence. “I hope you like proteas. And I’m glad you’re doing better.”
“Proteas,” she said, her eyes actually brightening. “My favourite. They last forever ... well, almost.”
“I’ll ask a nurse to put them in water for you.”
“Thank you. It’s very kind of you...”
“It’s nothing. The nurse did say only a few minutes—you need rest.”
She gave me a look that had more strength in it than her body currently possessed. “Sit down, man. A few minutes in hospital time is anything from two to twenty minutes.”
I sat on the plastic bench next to the bed. It creaked in protest. Up close I could see the bruising along her collarbone, the adhesive marks from monitoring leads, the faint sunburn line on her neck that spoke of days in the field before everything went wrong.
“You probably know my name,” she said, “but I don’t know yours.”
“Adrian. Adrian Grobler.”
She held out her hand. It was cool but not cold. “Kaitlyn Fourie. Pleased to meet you, Adrian.”
The formality of it—like we were at a conference instead of a flood rescue—made the whole thing feel surreal.
Her hand relaxed back onto the blanket. Her eyelids began to droop.
“I should go,” I said quietly. “Let you rest.”
“Are you coming to visit me again?” she asked, eyes half closed.
“Only if I’m welcome.”
“You will always be welcome,” she murmured. “Please come again...”
“Okay. The bird ... ah ... the helicopter must come for her 100-hour maintenance. I’ll be around for a day or two...”
“You call your helicopter a bird and a her?”
“Yes,” I chuckled. “She is dependable and stable ... and her name is “Jessie’.” I replied and Kaitlyn tried to laugh but started to cough again.
“Then you ... are...”
She drifted off mid-sentence, breathing slow and even. I sat there longer than I probably should have, watching the monitor trace its calm green line, making sure that rhythm didn’t change.
Eventually I stood, picked up the flowers, and went to the nurses’ station.
“Please, miss, could you put these in water for Miss Fourie?”
“Of course, sir. We don’t have a vase, but I’ll find a jug.”
“Thank you.”
When I stepped back outside, the night air of Nelspruit felt warm and alive compared to the filtered chill of the ward. Traffic moved, people talked, the world carried on.
But there was a strange feeling in my chest I couldn’t file under any checklist. Not adrenaline. Not relief. Not fatigue.
Something else.
Like Kaitlyn Fourie had just crossed into my flight path—and I had no idea what that meant or where the flight plan might lead.
The next morning in Nelspruit (or Mbombela, as it is now known under the new rulers.)
A weekday morning in Mbombela starts before the sun has properly decided what it wants to do. The eastern sky goes from charcoal to that washed-out Lowveld orange, and the humidity is already sitting on your shoulders like a damp towel.
I usually pick it up from the air first.
Lifting out early, you see the N4 already alive—headlights streaming in from White River and Malelane, a steady ribbon of movement feeding into town. The traffic circles start to clog, taxis bunching together like schooling fish, each one edging forward half a metre at a time, claiming territory with their noses.
By the time you’re on the ground, it’s a different rhythm altogether.
The air smells of diesel, hot tar, and that faint sweetness from the bushveld trees warming in the sun. People move with purpose—domestic workers in neat uniforms waiting at pick-up points, security guards changing shifts, schoolkids in oversized blazers dragging heavy backpacks, and office types clutching takeaway coffee like it’s a lifeline.
Minibus taxis dominate the choreography. They stop where physics suggests they shouldn’t, indicators optional, hazard lights blinking like a declaration of intent rather than a warning. A conductor leans halfway out the sliding door, calling destinations in a rapid-fire mix of languages, the words blending into a rhythm you don’t consciously understand but always recognise.
At the big intersections near the malls—Riverside Mall and the roads feeding toward Ilanga Mall—the traffic compresses into a slow crawl. Bakkies with ladders strapped to the roof sit next to shiny SUVs still carrying weekend dust from the park. Delivery bikes slip through gaps that don’t really exist. Somewhere a truck driver leans on his air horn a second too long, and everyone ignores him because that’s just background noise here.
Pedestrians move along the verges in single file where there are no pavements, stepping aside automatically when a taxi drifts too close. Street vendors set up their morning stations—cool boxes with cold drinks, plastic tubs of vetkoek, fruit stacked in careful pyramids. The smell of frying oil and strong instant coffee drifts across the parking areas.
There’s a particular look people have at that hour—focused but not rushed in the big-city sense. Mbombela moves, but it doesn’t sprint. Even the traffic jams feel more like negotiations than battles.
From a cockpit, it all looks orderly—lanes, flows, patterns. On the ground it’s improvisation. Eye contact at four-way stops. A lifted hand to say thanks. A quick flash of headlights to let someone merge.
By nine o’clock the sun is fully up, the haze burns off the hills toward KaNyamazane, and the morning surge settles into a steady hum. Shops are open, office parking lots are full, and the taxis that ruled the roads an hour earlier thin out, waiting for the afternoon cycle to begin.
It’s not dramatic. No sirens. No urgency.
Just the Lowveld waking up, one diesel engine and one cup of coffee at a time.
Back at Skukuza.
The landing back at Skukuza was as uneventful as a sack of mielie-meal sitting in a store room. Skids down, throttles rolled off, the turbines wound down to silence, and the Bell 222 went from living creature to expensive lawn ornament in about three minutes thirty seconds – the time it takes for the rotors to wind down and slow to a stop. Dark cockpit, dead screens, no gyros whining—just the ticking of hot metal cooling in the Lowveld air.
I signed the tech log, gave Jessie’s nose a habitual pat like you do with a horse after a good ride, and wandered off toward my bungalow in search of a shower and possibly a personality.
I didn’t get either.
Gustav intercepted me at the SANParks Ranger Station sign like a crocodile ambushing a thirsty impala.
“Well, hi there, A G,” he said, lifting a hand. He’d recently decided that my initials were my new identity. I suspected it was because he couldn’t spell Grobler before coffee. “How was your evening in THE BOMB?”
“The Bomb” being Mbombela. Ever since Nelspruit got renamed, the Lowveld had responded with all the maturity of a schoolboy with a new swear word. Same energy as when Zambezi Drive became Sefako Makgatho Drive and half of Pretoria collectively refused to update their GPS.
“Fine, thanks,” I said. “The mattress didn’t try to kill me. That alone made it five-star compared to the bungalow.”
“Well, for what they charge for a guesthouse, that mattress must be filled with angel feathers and taxpayer money,” he replied.
“They should have two tariffs,” I said. “One for tourists and one for locals. And some of them charge in US dollars. The exchange rate changes daily, so your room price depends on what Wall Street had for breakfast.”
Gustav laughed. “They’ll learn. Or they won’t, and then they’ll wonder why their parking lot is empty.”
“I had their breakfast just to spite them,” I added. “Eight hundred rand farmhouse special. I ate everything that wasn’t nailed down.”
“For fifty dollars an American calls that a snack,” Gustav said. “For us that’s a small vehicle finance agreement.”
“Next time I’m staying in a backstreet guesthouse,” I said. “Or sleeping in the helicopter. At least the Bell doesn’t charge in dollars.”
He gave me a sideways look. “Next time? There’s going to be a next time?”
I made the tactical error of answering honestly. “I promised someone I’d visit again.”
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