Chapter Five: Accident

"Hopelessly drifting
Bathing in beautiful agony
I am endlessly falling
Lost in this wonderful misery
In peaceful sedation I lay half-awake
And all of the panic inside starts to fade
Hopelessly drifting
Bathing in beautiful agony."

I didn't want to go, really. It was Jared's first time in the South Island and we really would rather have stayed in Christchurch and seen the sights there. But we got roped into it... and really, once we'd left, it was very fun. Until it wasn't.
We all piled into the car: my brother Dylan, his wife Tania, her daughter Azriel, Jared and I. Off we went on a 2-hour drive up to Porter Heights, the nearest snow-covered mountain. As we went through the curiously flat Christchurch countryside, Azzy was remarking upon all the farm animals; she reminded me of me at her age. "Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep..." she'd chant. And then "cow, cow, cow, cow...". Horses deserved a special exclamation and she'd point them out to me, because I said I loved horses too. We had a lot of fun laughing at her because somehow she knew all the pop radio songs, even Lady Gaga and all those people. Nobody had a clue where she'd learned them from.
Eventually we got there, not without a few "are we there yet"s. We parked the car, kitted up in our borrowed snow gear and set off.
As Tania, Jared, Azzy and I set off up the snowy walkway, Dylan decided he'd go and see how much it was to rent a toboggan. It seemed the only place to toboggan was the walkway we were trudging up, which seemed strange, so after throwing a few snowballs at each other and slipping over a couple of times, we approached a ski instructor to ask where the best spot was. He waved us over to a rather steeper hill on our left.
It was tough going to climb up this hill. Too tough for Azzy and the pregnant Tania, in fact. So Dylan had the first go, climbing up the slope about four metres and sliding from there. Azzy got the next go, from about two meteres up the slope. In the meantime Jared and I set to climbing the near-sheer snowy incline. I got to a patch of exposed tussock grass and sat on it, my legs tired already. To my left was a cliff of about four or five feet; to my right was a gentler slope. Dylan climbed up to us with the toboggan and we surveyed the path down.
Even Jared said that he wasn't going to do it, that it looked too risky. But none of us seemed to be thinking properly. Maybe the cold air, with so much less oxygen, got to our brains. Maybe it was just spur of the moment. But I decided to go. Fearless, I laughed at Jared. "Move over, chicken boy", I teased, and crawled over to where Dylan was holding the toboggan. "Be careful", he warned. "Once you get in the thing it's going to start moving straight away."
I planned to aim for the hill to my right, so I wouldn't pick up so much speed. But Dylan was right. Once I sat in the toboggan, he let it go... and I had no control.
It took off so fast that I was whiplashed onto my back. It started sliding away to the right and went over the five-foot cliff. I landed heavily on my left side, still in the toboggan. It curved off the the right and I came out of it and kept sliding straight ahead, right into a fence. The bottom board hitting my jaw spun me around and stopped me.

All this time I wasn't afraid, I was just so bewildered. The whole way down I was just going, "what?".

Winded, I struggled between the impulse to breathe and the impulse to scream. Screaming won and I yelled, as loudly as I could for as long as I could... and then everything went black.

The thing that struck me about it was how peaceful it was. No light, no sound, nothing... just velvety warm darkness, like that moment between sleeping and waking. I could've quite happily stayed there forever. I was utterly, totally and completely convinced that in a moment I'd wake up safe and warm in my bed back at my sister's place after having a bad, bad dream. And then I heard Jared. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I heard his voice, and I thought 'oh, right. Jared', and opened my eyes.
The next few seconds were the most terrifying experience of my life.

There were people all around me. I couldn't see a single face I knew and they were all way, WAY too close. I didn't want them there, I wanted space, I wanted air, I wanted to organize my thoughts and figure out why I was on this hillside and what had happened to me before I dealt with anything else. I was horrified. The next second, pain hit me. I screamed and screamed and screamed, right into the face of a lady paramedic. In the same instant I noticed that my jaw felt wrong, that there was blood and tiny hard bits of tooth in my mouth. I wanted to ask if I had any teeth missing but I couldn't stop myself yelling long enough. I was so, so frightened. Then I noticed someone was holding my hand, and I managed to calm myself enough to listen to what that person was saying.
"Love, it's alright. It's okay, I'm here." Jared. Jared was here. I tried to process that. If Jared was there, then everything was fine. He kept up that chant the whole time, holding me in, keeping me sane.

I managed to answer the paramedic's questions between involuntary moans and sobs. One of the guys had a hat in the shape of a fox on his head and I remember being worried that I was hallucinating, and then wanting to laugh, even in the midst of my terror and pain. They checked me for paralysis and I could move my legs and arms. I remember saying "thank God". I know Tania's face popped up at one point, detailing out what had happened to me in the logical way that she has. I remember Dylan, with a strange face on that looked like he wanted to smile for me but was too worried for it.
Eventually they got me back to the first aid place on the mountain. They did more checks and said I'd chipped a tooth, but they were all still there and I hadn't broken anything. I had huge bruises on my jaw and my ribs, and a deep, deep cut on my leg, but when I was ready I could go.

At the end of the day I struggled to my feet and somehow made it down the hill to the car, leaning on Jared and Dylan. They settled me in the front seat and, with Tania driving very, very carefully, we started back home. And that would have been that, if I hadn't started bleeding out of my ear.
Dylan called dad and explained everything, saying that he'd probably take me to Christchurch hospital and to meet us there...

...a few kilometres away, my mother and sister turned to each other and said, "She didn't want to go"...

...We got there eventually and they wheeled me into A&E. I remember protesting proudly against the wheelchair, but succumbing to group pressure. Jared had to leave while we were waiting and he was away quite a while. When he came back I gave him my hand; I could see that he'd been crying and I said softly, "oh, love...". He buried his face in my hand and his and broke down. It must have been so horrible for him to watch me slip away.

Eventually, after many x-rays and examinations, they told me that my jaw was broken in three places; down the middle and on each corner. Because my ribs were just bruised, I was okay to go back to my sister's place.
I was so afraid to sleep that night. I was terrified I'd wake up back on that mountain, back in that nightmare. But I was exhausted, and there was no fighting it.


I won't dwell on the other appointments; the painful plane trip home, the annoying south african doctor who said I'd have to have my jaw wired shut, my determination that I wouldn't, my healing of myself so much so that I impressed the surgeon who came to check me out, my slow-seeming but relatively fast healing ribs, the plethora of drugs and pills I had to take for the first week and the alternate birthday celebration I had to have.
But now I have experienced being hurt that badly, and I never want to again. And it could have been so much worse. I'm lucky.

It could have been so. Much. Worse.