Freefall Summer

by Tracy Barrett

  There came a thwap and a tremendous jerk on my upper back, and then the freight-train noise stopped and the sun was warm on my face. I drew in a deep, sobbing breath. I had a canopy above me; all I had to do was steer to the airport and head into the wind and land. It was over.

  Only it wasn’t.

  The ground was still coming up awfully fast and the wind whooshed in my ears, not with the roar of freefall but with a strange whistle. I looked at my altimeter. Although I didn’t know how fast my descent rate should be, the needle seemed to be moving faster than made sense. It must be nerves, I told myself, but that couldn’t be right. Everyone said that on their first jump the canopy ride felt like the safest, most comfortable thing ever, not like something even more life-threatening than freefall. They also said that it was so slow and smooth that they felt like they were hardly moving. Instead, the ground rushed up at me.

  I looked up to check the canopy, and I didn’t understand what I was seeing. It should have been a nice, smooth rectangle, but instead, it was a shape that had never existed in any geometry book. What I was looking at, I realized with disbelief that made me want to deny my eyes, was a canopy with a tear down the middle. It had split nearly in half, and the two pieces were hanging together only by the merest strip of fabric.

  I fought down the panic that threatened to paralyze me. What should I do? All the safety instructions I had overheard while playing with my dolls in the hangar and later while doing my homework, and even later while packing, zipped through my mind. Never had anyone mentioned a canopy ripping partway down the middle. I didn’t know if there was enough of it left to land safely, or if it would be better to cut away and dump the reserve.

  My helmet didn’t have a radio. Okay. I had to figure this out for myself. I looked at the ground between my feet and tried to picture landing at that rate, to determine if I could ride the malfunction in.

  I couldn’t. Even though I had never been under canopy before, I could tell that I was dropping too fast. I would probably be killed. And I couldn’t turn to face into the wind and flare, with the canopy being essentially in two pieces—or could I? I gave one of the steering toggles an experimental tug, and that half of the canopy wrinkled and threatened to collapse.

  Holy shit. When in doubt, whip it out. I had to cut away. My rate of descent was too fast for a safe landing, but it probably wasn’t fast enough to trigger the AAD, and even if the reserve did open, it would risk entanglement with the main.

  No. Anything but that.

  I had to cut away and open my reserve myself. I tried to concentrate, but everything was too confused. The wind shrilled in my ears and everything swirled around me—the green beneath my feet, the sparkling hangar, the cars, the Cessnas parked at an angle far below, looking small but getting bigger every second. The ground started filling my field of vision.

  And then…

  It all stopped.

  First, the sound clicked off as though someone had hit a “mute” button.

  Next, color drained away, and the ground beneath me looked like a black-and-white movie.

  And then something on my right shoulder gleamed red, like a stoplight, like a Rudolph nose on a Christmas decoration.

  I heard my own voice repeating the words I had listened to my dad and Louisa and Randy and Noel and Leon and every other instructor say, over and over again like a nursery rhyme:

  “Look red.” I looked down and to my right, at the red cutaway handle that glowed and pulsed until it almost blinded me.

  “Hands red.” I watched my hands come up and clasp it. How interesting, I thought calmly. Would you look at that.

  “Look silver.” My head turned and now I saw my left shoulder, where the silver reserve handle sparkled like a diamond.

  “Pull red,” said my voice, and although I was fixated on the silver handle so hard that I couldn’t see my hands on the red cutaway handle, I felt them yank it, and then I was falling, but it felt weirdly slow and smooth, and there still was no sound of wind.

  “Pull silver.” I felt the words leave my mouth, and my hands moved across my chest and pulled the silver handle and I was flung around. I gasped, but then the earth rose up and I slammed into something hard, and then I was lying on my side on the ground and all I could hear was my own breathing, and when someone ran up and said, “I think he’s alive,” I felt a giggle bubble up. I tried to say, “I’m not a he, I’m a she,” but all that came out of my mouth was a gush of something hot and wet, and everything went fuzzy, and then black.

  * * *

  I came to in the ambulance, or anyway that’s what they told me later. I don’t remember the ambulance ride or anything else until after the second of my surgeries, when I woke up in a hospital bed sometime in the middle of the night. It was three nights later, I found out afterward. The room was bright and noisy with beeps and clatters, and I had no idea where I was or why I couldn’t move or speak. Someone came in and said something, but I didn’t understand them, and I fell asleep again.

  It turns out that coming out of a coma isn’t like in the movies, where you blink and stammer out a few words and then all of a sudden you’re back to normal. First of all, I was on a ventilator, so I couldn’t talk, and second, everything was very confusing. I wasn’t entirely sure where I was or why I was there. My dad sat by my bed and told me I was in the ICU and that I’d had an accident. I vaguely remembered getting into his car and heading out toward town. I must have crashed, I thought before I drifted away.

  The next time I woke, I was alone. I heard people moving and talking nearby, but nobody seemed to be paying attention to me. I lay there and looked around, moving just my eyes, since my head banged with pain when I tried to turn it. Some pictures were propped up on a counter past my feet: one of my mom running on a beach, and one of my parents right after they were married, and then some of the two of them with me, and one of me and Theo at a party. I wasn’t sure why I was in bed and why I didn’t want to see the picture of me laughing with Theo. I couldn’t move to look away from it, so I closed my eyes.

  Someone came in. The footsteps were unfamiliar, and the effort to open my eyes seemed overwhelming, so I didn’t try. Then I heard a second person come in, a person with familiar footsteps. It was my dad. I knew that he was going to be angry at me, that I had done something wrong, so I lay still.

  “I think she’s coming around.” It was a female voice.

  “How can you tell?” My dad sounded so tired.

  “I don’t know.” A hand stroked my cheek, straightened my sheet, did something to an apparatus above my head. “But when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you start recognizing when someone’s in there.”

  A hand took mine. It was large and warm. My dad. My cheeks tickled, and I knew that my own tears were running down them. One pooled in my ear. I felt myself drifting away.

  “Clancy?” His voice sounded like it was coming from a great distance. “C.C.?” The darkness was coming back. “Carys?”

  It gave me a little jolt to hear my real name, and the jolt opened my eyes—just for a second, but long enough to see his weary, stubbly face before the darkness swirled over me again.

  * * *

  I hung between sleeping and waking, seeing things without knowing if they were real or dreams. Over and over I felt myself drop out of the plane, and sometimes I fell up instead of down, and I swam in the air, frantically trying to feel the pull of gravity, but rising up, up, up into the screamingly bright sun until I melted. Other times my canopy opened and it was fine, a perfect rectangle, but all that lay below my feet was a wide expanse of sea, an ocean with no place to land, and I knew that I would drown. Sometimes I was in freefall and would see a figure flying near me, and it wasn’t Raymond but my dad, and I could read my death in his face.

  When I could finally tell my dreams from reality, and bits and shreds of memory came back, and when I finally got off the ventilator, my dad and I pieced together what had happened.

  When he hadn’t
seen me for a while that Sunday, he asked Cynthia if she knew where I was. Cynthia said she’d seen me heading to town in his car and thought he’d given me permission to go to the Knoxton Mart, so she didn’t say anything at the time. He called my cell. By then, we figured out, I had already arrived at the Jump Ranch and locked my purse, with my phone in it, in the car. My dad went looking for me in the hangar. Denny was sitting on the packing table with a bloody nose, waiting for me to come back from the Mart. Theo had socked him before storming off. My dad called Theo’s cell, but he didn’t answer because he was driving.

  My dad stopped being mad at me for taking his car and got really worried. Denny offered to drive him into town, and my dad took him up on it. They stopped at Adrienne’s in case I was there. Melissa was surprised to see my dad because, she told him, she’d seen his car going past, heading west. That was in the opposite direction of home, so my dad couldn’t imagine where I had gone.

  It was Denny who figured it out. He told my dad that we’d been talking about me doing a skydive at the Jump Ranch, and that maybe I’d decided to do it. My dad said there was no way I would do that, but he couldn’t think where else to look, so he and Denny headed there. On the way my dad called and called the manifest desk at the Jump Ranch, but he kept getting their voice mail while Denny drove way too fast for the little country roads. Denny didn’t slow down until he slammed on his brakes in the parking lot next to my dad’s car, and my dad was running toward bewildered, gray-bearded Frank at the manifest desk before Denny’s car even fully stopped.

  It took them a few minutes to figure out the connection with Margaret Finnegan’s logbook. When Frank described what “Margaret” looked like, my dad knew it was me, and that’s when they radioed the pilot.

  “So you saw me jump?” I asked.

  He nodded, gripping my fingers so tightly that it hurt. I didn’t mind. He lowered his face onto our clenched hands, and his shoulders shook.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly. I would have touched his head with my other hand, but that arm was in a cast from my wrist almost to my shoulder. I couldn’t imagine what that must have felt like, to see my messed-up canopy and then to watch me cut away and go into freefall again, and then see the reserve come out late. “I’m sorry it took me so long to cut away and then so long to dump the reserve.”

  He raised his head. His face was swollen and red, and his cheeks were wet. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know I hesitated a long time. It must have been scary to watch that.” I remembered my senses clicking off one by one, allowing me to see and do only what was necessary to save my life without the distraction of noise and color.

  He shook his head. “No, C.C., you did everything right. You pulled the steering toggle and when you saw that the canopy wasn’t safe, you cut away and pulled the reserve handle smooth as silk. You hit a beautiful arch, just textbook.”

  “I did?” Was he proud of me? “Then why did I get hurt?” I had broken not only my arm but also my leg, my collarbone, and a few ribs—all on the right side, where I guessed I’d landed. I’d punctured a lung and bruised a kidney, and I damaged my spleen so badly that they’d had to remove it. I’d lost a lot of blood. Plus, I must have banged my head pretty hard to be unconscious for so long.

  “Your reserve hesitated before opening. You barely had line stretch on impact.”

  “Did you see it?”

  He nodded. “And, C.C….”

  “What?”

  This time I knew what I heard was pride. “You did the best PLF I’ve ever seen.”

  They kept me drugged for the pain, and I was stuck in bed for a few days—I don’t know exactly how long. But pretty soon the nurses made me get up and walk. I couldn’t use crutches because of my collarbone and my arm, so a nurse’s aide supported me on either side, and one of them pulled along the IV pole that I was attached to. I fought through the light-headedness enough to make it as far as the bathroom. This meant one less bedpan, which made me even happier than it made the nurse’s aide who would have had to empty it. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep as soon as I was back in bed.

  When I woke up to see Angie by the side of my bed, reading a magazine, I was sure it was another dream. But she glanced around and saw me looking at her. She stood and kissed me on the cheek.

  “Is Jackson making another jump?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m here just for you, baby.”

  “Leanne doesn’t need you?”

  “Leanne will be okay. My other girl needs me more now.”

  It took me a minute to realize she meant me.

  “Besides, the nurses were threatening to go on strike if Dave didn’t go home and take a shower. He told them I was your aunt, and to prove it I rattled off your birthday and cell number. I could have told them your Social Security number too, but they believed me. They said I could hang out here and let him go home and clean up. I hope he’s also taking a nap.”

  “How is he?” I asked after a moment.

  “Better. It was pretty bad at first. You lost a lot of blood when you ruptured your spleen, and they had to give you a transfusion. Dave tried to be the blood donor and when they told him he was the wrong type, I thought he’d lose it for sure.”

  “He thinks he can fix anything,” I said, and Angie grunted in agreement.

  “The doctor told me you can be perfectly fine without a spleen,” I said after a pause.

  “I’ve never understood why we have one, then,” Angie said.

  I closed my eyes. Conversation was exhausting. “What did my dad say about my accident?”

  “Not much.” Not surprising. “But Denny said—”

  My eyes popped open. “You saw Denny?”

  “No, talked to him. He drove your dad here and called me from outside the emergency room. Your dad told the cops to give him my number from your cell.”

  “What did he say about what happened?”

  “He said Dave ran so fast to where you landed that Denny couldn’t keep up, and during the whole drive to the hospital, he would cuss for a while and say he was so mad at you he couldn’t see straight, and then he’d get all quiet and moan and—”

  “Stop it.” I covered my face with my good hand. Him cussing and being mad at me I could take; picturing him quiet and moaning was unbearable. For the first time I was glad that I’d been out of it for so long that by the time I was conscious, he had gotten over the worst of the shock.

  Angie tucked a tissue between my fingers. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. “Have you talked to Denny again, after that?” I asked.

  “Nope. You heard from him?”

  I shook my head.

  “From Theo?”

  “No phone or Wi-Fi where he is. He probably doesn’t even know.”

  “Hm.”

  It wasn’t like Angie not to say what she was thinking, so I looked at her. “What?” I asked.

  “Talk to your dad about that,” she said. “In fact, it’s time you and your dad talked about a lot of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like your mom.”

  I sat up even though the room spun around me. “He won’t talk to me about her—he never has. Never will. It’s like she’s his own special property, nothing to do with me.” I flopped back on the pillow as little lights danced around me.

  Angie grabbed the control box attached to my bed and pushed some buttons, lowering my head and raising my feet. “Want me to call the nurse?” she asked.

  I started to shake my head but the room swirled around me again, so I closed my eyes and said, “No, just some water.” I felt the straw touch my lips and took a sip. I opened my eyes. Angie was right there.

  “I shouldn’t have upset you,” she said, squeezing my hand. “To be fair, it’s not really up to you to start the conversation. Dave’s the grown-up here; he should be the one telling you things you need to know. But if he won’t, maybe you should start.”

  “What do you mean, things I need to know?
” I asked hoarsely. My eyelids felt heavy. Angie stroked my face, and my eyes closed again.

  “Ask your dad,” she said. “You two need to talk more. “You’re too tired now anyway, and I have to get back to Leanne. I’m leaving early tomorrow morning.” I felt her lips brush my forehead in a good-bye kiss.

  I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes, it was dark, Angie was gone, and my dad was reading in the chair next to my bed. I thought about what Angie had said to me, but I didn’t know what to say to him. So I didn’t say anything.

  The next day Elise came with a new nightgown that looked enough like a dress that I could wear it when I had visitors, and she had packed my makeup, my phone charger, and a few other things.

  “I know you’re tired, so I won’t stay long,” she said, still standing, as I shook out the nightgown one-handed. It was nice; she hadn’t made the mistake of buying me something pink with lace and rosebuds. “I just thought it might not have occurred to Dave that you’d need all this.” She gestured at the makeup and the tampons.

  “Thanks,” I said. I reached my good arm out to her and she leaned in and gave me a hug. Then she said she was late for work and left.

  I had a few visitors—they wouldn’t let in too many at a time—but Theo didn’t come. The day after Elise’s visit, I asked my dad if Theo knew what had happened, like Angie had said I should. If it went well, maybe I’d get brave enough to ask him about my mom.

  He nodded. “He had to go back to camp. He wanted to visit, but I was the only one allowed in the ICU, so I convinced him to wait until you were in a regular room. And then right before they moved you, he had to go back to camp to take some kids on a hike. He sent those.” He pointed at the purple and yellow flowers that were wilting on the windowsill.