Written for Erika Price’s Writing 150 class.
Garrett inched precariously down the cliff face in front of us, his back to the wall, and pushed himself to the other side. I was hesitant to follow. His footing was uncertain and his grip weak; he could easily have slipped into the narrow gulf below. Wasn’t it safer, surely, to jump from the top? Jacob expressed concern at this plan, but I did not listen. I took a few steps back, ran forward, and jumped.
I vividly remember the sensation of falling, the sound of wind in my ears and the sight of rock rushing toward me. I remember landing where I had aimed to land, my feet colliding with the rock onto which I had flung myself, my legs collapsing like a slinky to absorb the impact. Then I remember nothing.
* * *
Garrett: “He landed right in front of me, but as he tried to stand up he lost his balance. I screamed his name as I watched him tip, backwards, over the edge.”
* * *
That morning, I had woken up at 4:00 a.m.
At 4:30, I walked through Chad’s always-unlocked front door. Little Dude, his family’s twelve-year-old, half-blind cat, greeted me. I was unsurprised to find Chad already awake and bustling. Although I knew from years of friendship that he was unreliable in the early mornings, I also knew he would never miss a trip like this.
Chad, Blake, and I set off for Bloomington, Indiana, at 5:00. We were half an hour behind schedule because Blake, though gleefully energetic during the day, had a crippling inability to respond to alarm clocks. Once the car started moving he succumbed to sleep once again.
A few minutes before 6:00, we stopped at a sketchy BP gas station. Garrett stepped out of the driver’s side of a stereotypical red pickup truck. My knowledge of Garrett was limited to what I had heard from others; I knew only of his hometown, his excellence on the piano, and his charming personality.
At 6:45, we reached the campus of Indiana University and found that Jacob, as usual, was late to our rendezvous. He insisted that it was his sister’s fault—never heard that one before— and that he would be there soon. In the meantime, we peed in the bushes, disrespectfully close to a graveyard and too close to the road for comfort. Once he arrived, Jacob was raring to go; others were tagging along, but at its heart this trip was his and mine.
Danni came downstairs from her new apartment to see us off. Today was her first day of college, and she had made the poor decision to skip our road trip instead of skipping class. That morning was the last time we would see her for a long, long time. The two-minute conversation began and ended with Danni hugging everyone. Every conversation with her does. By 7:00, we were on our way.
* * *
David: “When you first looked at him, did you think he was alive or dead?”
Jacob: “I . . . I didn’t know.”
* * *
My cliff dive was at noon. For the following two hours, I exist only as a vague awareness, without a body and without thoughts. Someone instructs me to move my toes. Someone says we’re boarding a helicopter. Someone tells me I’m being x-rayed. Someone asks if I remember falling.
I’m suddenly aware of myself again, aware that something is wrapped around my legs, humming, breathing, contracting and expanding in a slow, mechanical pulse. A flood of relief hits me as Chad, Blake, Garrett, and Jacob enter my hospital room; their familiarity is an anchor that helps my clouded mind refocus and makes the foreign setting less formidable. The next day, my dad takes me home, a broken clavicle and a minor concussion the only consequences of a twenty-foot fall onto solid rock: nothing short of a miracle.
* * *
Chad: “The drive to the hospital was miserable. We didn’t know anything at that point, we didn’t know if he was going to be okay, nothing. The ambulance just showed up and took him away.”
* * *
In the days following the accident, I was the focus of an outpouring of love unlike anything I had experienced before. Acquaintances from high school, aunts and uncles I barely knew, even a great-grandmother I thought had died years ago wished me well.
A week later, I started college. Every conversation for a month began with “how did you break your arm?” and ended with “hope you get better!” Several people excitedly recognized me as “Garrett’s friend who fell off a cliff.” I began to see that seemingly small connections between people are not small. I told others what had happened to me, they told me about disasters that had happened to them, and we bonded. I was instantly friends with any other student in a sling; empathy created camaraderie.
I would have been content if that had been the end of it, if I had never known the exact events of the accident. The two hours of memory I lost was a welcome escape from a lot of pain and fear. I knew my actions had cost my parents thousands in medical bills, had terrified my friends, and could have cost me my life. That was sobering enough; I didn’t need to learn more. But two weeks into college, I did.
* * *
David: “How are you alive, dude?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I guess God wants me here.”
* * *
It was 1:00 a.m. when we were talking to David, whom we had just met, on the lawn outside Jacob and Garrett’s apartment. It’s not often that friendships are formed instantly and easily, but this was one of those times. After a while, the question inevitably arose: “what happened to your arm?” As I began to answer, Garrett, with one-in-the-morning-on-a-school night energy, stood up, cleared his throat, and said, “no, no, wait; let’s tell him the whole story.”
The half-hour tale that followed brought two people to tears and was so enthralling that a stranger passing by stopped and sat with us to listen. Garrett, Jacob, and Chad told the story in parts, each interrupting to add what the others had forgotten and to elaborate on the emotional state of each moment. The off-duty firefighter who immediately came to help and disappeared when the ambulance arrived was nothing short of a mythical hero, calling my dad to tell him what happened was the most stressful responsibility of Jacob’s life, and the agonizingly long drive to the hospital required a perpetual stream of jokes to stave off their fearful, hyperactive imaginations. I was overwhelmed by how close I felt to those around me that night. The collective catharsis of recounting the story unified us in a way I never imagined a catastrophe could.
* * *
Garrett: “You were praying. Do you remember that? Out loud, while you were lying in the dirt barely conscious and the EMTs were examining you, you were praying: ‘. . . I’m grateful we had such a good time today. I’m so thankful for my friends.’”
* * *
A few weeks into college, I had already grown familiar with the late-night walk home. It’s ten minutes from my best friends’ apartment to mine—a wonderful stretch of silence and darkness with nothing to do but think. For ten minutes, I remember Blake’s contagious, shrieking laughter, and I remember celebrating the recovery from sickness of Chad’s old, beloved cat. For ten minutes, I remember Garrett urging his roommate to try to make out with the girl in linear algebra, and I remember Jacob’s startling excitement about finding water chestnuts at Walmart. For ten minutes, I remember the atrocious cooking, the halfhearted attempts to do homework during a party, the explosion of cheers over Super Smash Bros, the elation of victory in intramural ultimate frisbee. For ten minutes, my thoughts are inseparable from the prayer of gratitude that accompanies them. I love the late-night walk home, but it’s what comes before that I live for.