Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
I thought it was broken by the crack that I heard as I landed badly with my legs over my head. Gradually the realization began to hit that I couldn’t feel my legs. There was no pain, just a total lack of sensation. Life seemed to go on hold, everything was in slow motion. I tried to look around at everyone else. Faces filled with shock and horror, looking at me, concerned voices asking if I was okay. I lay there looking at the clouds scudding past in that impossibly blue sky. Is that it? I thought. I didn’t move because I couldn’t. I just lay there, looking up and waiting, for what I didn’t even know.
Next minute the face of my mother leaned into view. The first thing she said “What the hell were you thinking you bloody idiot?’ Then the noises came back into my ears. Kids still laughing and shouting, the typical noises of a Sunday afternoon in a sunny suburban Australian backyard. I heard the ambulance arrive. All bells and whistles, flashing lights, the siren blaring. I felt a strange surge of excitement. Hey I was the centre of attention, my favourite place to be. A sweaty face appeared above me. “Fuck’ he exhaled and looked me up and down “Don’t move love”.
It was instant. They had the board under me but I didn’t feel anything. Together they moved my body toward the ambulance. I was floating up above the trampoline with the ambo’s sweat trickling down his face. I smelt his sweaty armpits as he got me into the ambulance but I can’t even tell you what his assistant looked like, I couldn’t strain my neck to see. My mum got into the ambulance as well, her face drained of colour, anxious hands wrapping together as she tried not to take up too much room in the cramped space.
I lay there wondering what was to become of me. I so hated being a bother, but then I did like attention and drama so I was conflicted in my emotions as we headed to the hospital.
It was brilliant when we arrived. The bright lights, the hoards of people all surrounding the trolley, but those interminable questions, asked over and over, the same things, can you move your toes, can you feel this, what happened? It seemed like every doctor and nurse had come out of the woodwork to ask me the same question and none of them was able to share the answer. Hours passed and I answered these bloody questions a thousand times. I was over it. Finally it settled down and I was put into a proper bed. Not that the bed meant anything to me, everything felt the same. No feeling. I knew they had moved me on the board to prevent further damage, but there was nothing, no feeling, nothing, I was numb in my body.
What I really miss is feeling grass between my toes. Itchy, wet, even dry grass with bindies in. Sensation is so under rated in our lives. Every day I can look at the grass and the way it changes from wet to dewy in the morning to dry and crisp in the afternoon and every day I wake up knowing that is something which I will never experience again.
I couldn’t believe that it had happened to me and that now this life was my new normal. Christopher Reeve was wrong. Stem cells were not going to save me. I was never going to feel anything with my limbs again. My life was forever going to be dependent on another person. I was never going to able to walk on the grass and feel its texture on my feet again. I was going to live my whole life depending upon someone else. Maybe it would be my mother or maybe it would b a carer, but forever it would always be me and someone else. Forget solitude, but stuff that forget partnership, love, meaningful relationships, love….The only relationship that I could think about was with a black dog and that dog haunted my every moment. For one bad fall on a trampoline, here I was, stuck, alone.