I'M FALLING. HORIZONTAL IN MIDAIR, my face seeing the empty sky, my back toward the rocky ground 20 feet below and, 700 feet below that, the bottom of New Mexico's Rio Grande Gorge. Nothing comes from my mouth, but my mind is electric, hurtling faster than my body. This can't be happening.
What takes place next I don't remember, exactly—like sinking into a deep sleep while watching a violent movie, dreaming, waking, the movie still playing. I will only piece it together later from the accounts of the six friends who were climbing with me on Dead Cholla Wall that bright October day.
Midflight, I curl into a ball as if doing a gymnastics maneuver, hit the ground on my back—somehow missing the jagged rocks all around me—roll ten feet backwards into the sagebrush, bounce to my feet, and ridiculously ask my belayer if she's all right. Her face is as white as marble.
"I'm OK," I tell her. "My wrist is broken and I need to get to a hospital."
I follow her eyes and look down at myself. My left hand is facing the wrong direction, the wrist unnaturally lumped.
"I have to walk out," I say.
I don't remember how I got my climbing harness off. I remember cradling my left arm in my right hand and determinedly scrambling up a large boulder and down the other side. Five feet along the trail, I'm flooded with nausea and know I'm about to pass out. I drop onto the dirt path and try to put my rushing head between my legs, but it's already swirling away. Lightning explodes behind my closed eyes and everything is flying off inside me. If this were the first time, I would think I was dying. Instead, at the very center of the maelstrom, I recognize what is occurring: I'm going into shock. Later I will be told that my body was convulsing.
The next thing I remember, Rob is looking into my face, but I can barely see him. His face is at the end of a long, black tunnel, talking to me. I can't make out the words. They sound like glue. I study his face and can see he is worried and I try to unstick his words.
"Mark, stay with me. Mark, stay with me. Mark."
I know I have to respond, but I don't have a tongue. So I grow one, like a plant in my mouth.
"I'm OK."
"Mark, you may have a head injury."
I am burning up and shivering uncontrollably, hot cold sweat draining from my flesh. I know this is shock and that it will pass.
I have deserved every accident that's felled me. they've been good
for me, every single one. An
accident is a cryptic message.
Two things will stand out above all else. The first is Rob holding my head in his hands, talking to me, reassuring me. Rob, I'll learn later, is a certified wilderness first responder. He knows what to do, and though gravely concerned, he does it with the stoic composure of a natural leader. He feels the back of my head and neck with his fingers, dribbling water into my parched mouth. He removes the sharp rocks from under my ribs and thighs. Calls for the ropes and lays them over my legs; covers my chest and arms with fleece jackets. Tells Gordy to run to the top of the cliff with the cell phone. But I don't recall these acts. What I remember is this: Rob right there talking to me, his voice calm as a warm eddy, circling back again and again. "You're gonna be fine, just fine."
Then Janine is by my side, holding my good hand, and Ki is on the other side, stroking my head, and they both look so scared I try to tell them a funny story about a past wreck, but I can't tell if I'm doing a decent job of it.
The EMT helicopter comes into my slice of sky, and somehow a moment later the flight nurse has a morphine IV in my right forearm and an air splint compressing my left arm. I don't have a head wound after all; it's just a badly broken wrist. Do I think I can walk out? I can try. The chopper disappears over the dusky gorge without me.
Walking turns out to be difficult. The steep, switchbacking trail is loose underfoot, and I have to concentrate on each step. I have no balance. I am moving very slowly, the paramedics and a parade of climbers behind me. It is cool in the shadow below the cliff. The far rim is flaming, with ebony depths below. The sky is the color of blue you see only in dreams. I understand that everything is the way it should be.
It takes me half an hour to walk half a mile. I'm being helped into the back of an ambulance. Evening sunlight, warm and quiet as air, is cutting across the red desert. Friends encircle me. Hal shakes my good hand and says Katie is going with me, and I have to smile.
The jeep road is rutted and I groan when we hit bumps, but none of it really matters now, because we're on our way across northern New Mexico. This is the second thing that will stand out above all else: Katie knowing it is not necessary to speak, only to be at my side.
It is dark outside the ambulance windows now. The EMT is trying to get my medical history, which makes me laugh.
