by Susan Stoker
The nickname came out without any thinking on his part, but it felt right. He helped her stand. Her legs were, not surprisingly, a bit wobbly, and he led them to the back of the plane. He turned her so he could hook up the four-point harness. Coach tugged on each of the attachments, showing her that they really were secure, but smiling when she tried to turn her head and look at them anyway.
Coach put one hand around her and rested it on her belly. He felt her suck in a breath at the feel of his hand, but she settled under his touch. He moved them in tandem so that she was facing the door…and the sky.
He nudged her forward until they were standing at the door. He leaned down and spoke right into Harley’s ear, the wind making it almost impossible to have a conversation this close to the door. “Hold on to your harness straps now, Harl. I’ll count down to three, just as we practiced. On three, I’ll push off and we’ll be flying. Don’t close your eyes; you’ll miss the best part.”
Coach saw Harley nod and she gripped her harness tightly with both hands. He could see her holding onto the black strap with tight fists. Taking the time to reassure her once more—he couldn’t stand to see her so scared—Coach pressed his hand against her stomach for just a moment, then moved it up to brace both of their bodies in the doorframe.
“One. Two. Three!”
On the count of three, Coach did just as he’d warned Harley he would. He pushed and they were airborne.
Harley wanted to close her eyes. So badly. But didn’t. If Coach said this was the best part of the flight, she wanted to experience it, even if she was scared. This was what she needed to make the parachute sequence in the video game more realistic.
She saw the ground, then their bodies flipped in the air and for just a moment, she saw the plane above them. It gave her the feeling that she was actually falling, but as soon as she saw it, Coach flipped them again and they were facing the ground once more.
Remembering her training, Harley spread her arms out and bent her knees. She tried to get her breath, but it was hard. Falling at over a hundred miles an hour wasn’t that conducive to breathing, that was for sure.
For twenty or so seconds—Harley couldn’t be sure how much time had passed—the jump was exhilarating and exciting, just like everything she’d read it could be. The wind was intense, but the goggles on her face allowed her to keep her eyes open and not miss anything. She felt Coach along her back, strong and secure. She saw him checking the altimeter on his hand out of the corner of her eye. The ground looked extremely far away, and it almost didn’t feel like they were moving at all.
It was loud, the wind rushing past her ears made it impossible to talk, as Coach had warned. She could feel her heart beating hard and she felt jittery, as if she’d downed several highly caffeinated drinks. It was exhilarating and scary at the same time.
Just as Harley was settling in to enjoy the experience and try to catalog it in her mind so she could program the jump correctly in the video game, something caught her eye. It was moving quickly toward her and she ducked instinctively, not even knowing why or what she was ducking from.
Everything happened so fast, Harley had no idea what had actually happened.
She felt wetness on the back of her neck and seeping down under her shirt, and Coach suddenly felt different along her back. Heavier.
Harley tried to turn her head to look at him, but because she was basically tied to him at the shoulders and hips, she couldn’t see him. But something was wrong, seriously wrong. She could tell.
Instead of seeing his hands out of her peripheral vision, she couldn’t see him at all.
She didn’t panic until she reached with one hand to the back of her head to see what the weird sensation was, and it came away covered in blood and feathers.
“Oh my God, oh my God!” she mumbled under her breath, trying more frantically to turn to see if Coach was all right. She wasn’t hurt, but if she had blood on her, it had to have come from Coach.
“Coach? Coach!” Her words disappeared into the air whooshing around her as they plummeted toward the ground.
Frantically turning, trying to see him, she overcompensated, and suddenly she wasn’t facing the ground anymore, she’d flipped them both and they were hurtling ass-first toward the ground now.
Terrified and whimpering, Harley tried to remember what to do. The last thing she wanted to do was go into a flat spin. She’d seen a video online about that, and coming out of it to safely get the parachute launched was almost impossible.
Coach was obviously knocked out. There was no way this was normal. She didn’t know the man that well, but she was pretty sure after all his “I’ll keep you safe” and “trust me” that he wouldn’t do this on purpose. This wasn’t a joke. He wasn’t playing a prank on her, trying to scare her. He wouldn’t do that. She knew he wouldn’t do that.
Hyperventilating, Harley scissored her legs as if she were in a pool, tucked her arms into her chest and threw herself as hard as she could to the right.
She felt the air move around her as they both rolled, so she was once more facing the ground. Which was looking like it was getting closer and closer every second. Immediately putting her arms out again to try to stabilize them as they fell, Harley tried to think about what to do next.
She wanted to be pissed at Coach. He’d said he’d do all the work. He’d promised he’d keep her safe. Well, big fail on both counts. But honestly, being hit in the head by a bird wasn’t something he could’ve predicted. He’d said that he’d jumped hundreds of times. It was just a fluke thing. Dammit.
Gulping air that didn’t seem to be getting to her lungs, Harley panicked for at least fifteen seconds. Her mind couldn’t seem to grasp anything but the thought that she’d soon be smashing face first into the ground. She wondered if it would hurt, but figured it’d be over so quickly that most likely she wouldn’t feel a thing.
It was finally the thought of Coach dying that made her able to think more clearly.
Coach was a soldier. A hero. There was no way he deserved to die by getting smashed in the face by a bird after jumping out of a plane. It wasn’t fair. Not at all. She wasn’t anyone special, but Coach was. The thought of disappointing him went a long way toward getting her to pull herself together and think about what she needed to do.
Harley started talking to herself. “The handle! How far are we from the ground? Is it too soon to pull the cord? Too late?”
Keeping her left arm out to balance them as they continued to fall, Harley groped for the handle Coach had pointed out under her arm. She felt it and triumphantly pulled.
But nothing happened.
She jerked on it a couple more times, but it was obvious she didn’t have the right angle, or strength, to pull it hard enough to pop out the parachute.
“Shit! Dammit, Coach, you said it’d be easy to pull,” she griped. Easy for him, probably. His arms were huge and it most likely wasn’t a big deal at all for him.
She then tried to reach up to grab his right arm. She wanted to look at the altimeter. But Coach’s arm was flopping loosely in the air above his head, and she couldn’t get a good grip on it and keep control of their descent. Every time she tried to grab it, she felt them tilting a bit too far to the right.
The sobs were coming out uncontrolled now and even though Harley was trying everything she could think of, she had a suspicion they were both going to die a horrific death.
Suddenly, with no warning, Harley and Coach were jerked to a halt in the air.
She shrieked in terror and couldn’t control her legs as they were jerked forward. Coach’s legs were right behind hers and his added dead weight made them jerk forward twice. Of course, Harley ended up hitting herself in the face with her knees, just as Coach had warned could happen if she wasn’t prepared for it. The googles on her face were knocked askew and she ripped them off impatiently, accidentally throwing off her glasses at the same time.
The automatic chute had apparently gone off, just as it was designed
to, and Harley could finally breathe again. In her panic, she’d forgotten all about it. Coach had told her it would deploy automatically if they reached a certain altitude without the main chute being pulled.
Sobbing in relief, and because her face hurt where her knee had bonked it, Harley tried to get her scattered thoughts in order. The harness was digging into her butt and it did feel like she had a wedgie from hell, but they weren’t splattered all over the ground, so she’d deal.
Of course, their ordeal still wasn’t over, but now that they weren’t hurtling to the ground at over a hundred miles an hour, maybe they still had a chance.
The ground was all fuzzy, since Harley couldn’t see much without her glasses, but she ignored that small fact for now. She had no idea where they were supposed to be landing, or even what a good landing spot looked like, but she was going to do her best to see what she could do. She and Coach hadn’t talked much about where they’d be landing, just what to do once they were there.
Looking around, Harley couldn’t see any of the other skydivers. She even tried to look up, figuring they were probably now closer to the ground than all of them, even though they’d left the plane last, but all she could see was their own parachute floating above her head.
The adrenaline in her body was at maximum level and Harley could feel herself shaking, but she was suddenly in the zone. She could do this. She could save Coach. She could turn just enough now to see him.
He was obviously unconscious. His arms were now loose by his sides, and his head hung backward. His mouth was gaping open and, seeing the blood on his face, she remembered that he’d been hurt. She had no idea if Coach was even breathing, but that position couldn’t be conducive to getting oxygen into his lungs. Reaching up and back with one hand, Harley grabbed a fistful of hair on his head and managed to awkwardly tug him forward until his head rested on her shoulder. It seemed like it’d be safer for him to be tucked into her that way, rather than splayed backward when they landed.
His face was a bloody mess, and Harley prayed he was still breathing. She knew resting his head on her shoulder would make more of his blood get on her, but that was the least of both their worries at the moment. For all she knew, the damn bird had killed him when it’d hit.
“No, Harl,” she chastised. “Don’t think that way. He’s fine. Just unconscious. Concentrate on getting down, you can deal with the other stuff after.”
Remembering Coach showing her the loops for steering, Harley craned her neck upward. She saw them, but knew she didn’t have a prayer of being able to reach them. She was tall, yes, but they were way above her arm span and flapping wildly in the wind.
Glancing down, Harley was alarmed at how quickly the ground seemed to be coming up at them. She needed to get her shit together; she didn’t have that much time to come up with a plan.
Remembering Coach telling her that the automatic parachute thing went off fairly close to the ground, she realized that figuring out how to steer was of upmost importance at the moment. More so than the blood she could see oozing down her chest from Coach’s face. More so than the wedgie from hell.
Blindly reaching up and behind her, Harley grabbed the lines that went up to the chute. They weren’t the fancy loops Coach would’ve used to steer, but she hoped they’d work, at least a little bit. She mentally thanked Coach for insisting she wear gloves, knowing the lines pulling against her palms would be giving her rope burn right now if he hadn’t.
Squinting, Harley could make out a large patch of green in front of her, but they had to get past a big-ass building first. They weren’t in Waco city limits, but it did look like there were roads and buildings around them. The last thing she needed was to land on a roof or in the middle of a road and get them both run over after surviving everything else.
“Here goes nothing.” Pulling hard on the right cord, Harley was thrilled when they turned that way a bit. She pulled harder, putting more of her weight behind it, and the wind spun them to the right. Letting go, Harley found that they’d stopped turning and were headed forward in a straight line again.
Feeling more confident, she tugged on the left cord that went up to the parachute, and smiled when they turned left.
“Awesome! It works,” Harley told no one as she once again pulled down on the left and right cords. She had to get around the building to that green spot. Hopefully they wouldn’t come face-to-face with any angry bulls, but right now, she’d take a pissed-off cow over splatting dead on the ground.
The parachute jerked above their heads as Harley tried to guide it down to where she wanted it. It was definitely harder than it looked. She had no idea if it was because of her and Coach’s combined weights, or if it was always like this, but by the time the ground neared, her arms were shaking with the effort it took to pull on the cords.
Harley thought about the landing instructions on the video and on what Coach had told her to expect and what to do if they landed wrong, Hit the top of your thigh, then hip, then side. Roll into it, but with him lying heavily on her back, she knew she was going to have to wing it.
She’d missed the building, and there was nothing but a large field under their feet now, but it was coming toward her faster than she would’ve imagined. She remembered seeing people pulling down on both steering straps when they were landing, but it might’ve been something she dreamed up. Besides, her arms were noodles and there was no way she could pull on the cords anymore.
Wishing she could close her eyes and have it all be over, Harley watched as the ground got closer and closer. Knowing she’d have to take the brunt of the landing, so as not to break Coach’s legs, she tried to gauge when they’d be hitting the prickly looking Texas grass.
The second her feet hit the ground, Harley threw her body to the right. Because Coach’s legs were dangling lower than hers they hit a split second before her own. She didn’t want his ankles to snap so she tried to take the pressure off of them as soon as she could. She hit the ground on her side and tried not to tumble head over ass. She didn’t quite make it. Harley figured they rolled at least three times before she got her arms under her and was able to stop their momentum.
She didn’t move for a second, hardly able to believe she was actually still alive. She’d never understood people’s desire to kiss the ground when they got off an airplane, but now she got it.
Coach’s weight was heavy on her back and she was having a hard time breathing. She tugged the gloves off her hands, giving herself more maneuverability. Fumbling blindly for the clip at her right shoulder, Harley tried to unhook herself from Coach.
It took several tries because her hands were shaking so badly, but she was finally able to get the first clip undone. The other one seemed to be easier, and it gave her the room she needed to push up and ease Coach’s upper body off to the side. She reached around and unclipped the two clips at her hips and took a deep breath for the first time in what seemed like forever.
She scrambled all the way out from under Coach and turned to look at him fully for the first time since he’d hooked them together in the plane.
The parachute was wrapped around his legs, but she could clearly see his bloody face.
“Oh my God, Coach,” Harley moaned, even as she reached for him. She wiped as much blood away as she could, smearing it more than anything else, to try to see where he was bleeding from. Harley sighed in relief when it looked like the blood was coming from his nose—a very much broken nose, if she had to guess—and not from a gaping hole in his head.
Ignoring the fact that his blood was all over her, Harley concentrated on seeing if she could wake him. He had a pulse and was breathing, so he wasn’t dead, thank God. At the very least, other than his broken nose, he probably had a concussion. Whatever the bird was, it had to have been large in order to do the amount of damage it did.
“Coach? Please wake up.”
Harley looked around. She had no idea where they were. There weren’t any people miraculously running to their rescue.
Her phone was back in a locker at the airport, and Coach definitely needed a doctor. She didn’t want to leave him, but she was going to have to.
“C-C-Coach?” The tears came in earnest then, rolling down her cheeks as she tried to get the man lying next to her to wake up. “Please w-wake up.”
Nothing. He didn’t even stir. Shit.
Knowing time was going by, time that Coach didn’t have, Harley pushed to her feet and staggered a step. Her legs were wobbly and not too steady. She turned away from the bloodied man at her feet and stepped toward the building in the distance. It was her best chance at finding people, and a phone.
It took her a while to gain the strength to push into a jog, but finally she did it. She wasn’t much of a runner, so soon she was huffing and puffing as she made her way toward the building. She wanted to promise herself that she’d start exercising more if Coach was all right, but she knew she wouldn’t. Sitting in a chair most of the day working on a computer was what she did. She’d never be a workout freak. She was already too skinny as it was.
Reaching a barbed-wire fence, Harley dropped down to her hands and knees and shimmied under it, feeling a barb catch on her back, but ignoring it. Hell, a little scratch was nothing after what she’d just lived through.
She ran across a parking lot, thrilled to see the building was a strip mall of sorts. There was a beauty parlor, a pawn shop, a run-down looking café, and one of those quick-loan places. At least that’s what she thought they were since she couldn’t really see that clearly.
Still sobbing, Harley ran to the closest door, slamming it open as she hit it at a dead run. She burst through the door of the beauty shop and came to a halt, holding on to the doorframe to keep herself upright.
Heart beating out of her chest, Harley blurted, “Please, call an ambulance! I was just in a skydiving accident and my friend needs help.”
“Oh lordy!” a voice said in front of her. “Are you all right? Here, sit. You’re covered in blood, honey!”