Page 16 of Spellbound

I was screaming so loud that people said they could hear me a mile down the trail.

A rescue team finally got me out and onto a stretcher and rolled me along the trail on some kind of wheeled thing.

They gave me the strongest painkillers they said they had once they transported me to a medivac helicopter.

Finally, I came to again in another ambulance.

I’d never been in the back of an ambulance before, and I had no idea it was such a rough ride.

I was strapped down securely, and an EMT was beside me the whole time, talking to me, telling me to hang on.

I could even hear the siren, but despite all of that, somehow, I dozed off.

It must have been the drugs. After we arrived at the hospital, things moved pretty fast. I was taken to an examining room and looked over by some doctors, who seemed pretty excited and the next thing I knew I was on my way to surgery.

I was in the hospital for six weeks or a little more.

I broke my patella, my kneecap, and my tibia, right at the top where it attaches to the knee.

There was a ton of blood where the bone was sticking out.

They thought I might even lose my leg at first—it was that bad.

I heard the doctors talking to my grandmother.

I was going to surgery, and they’d have to put in screws and pins.

I guess I hit my head a few times too and I had a concussion, but no skull fracture. I was still out of it for a long time.

A long time later, after the surgery, there was a psych consult because they thought I’d tried to kill myself.

And I guess I did. But I think that someone else tried to help me do it too.

There was a voice in my head the whole time, telling me how worthless I was and why I should just go ahead and kill myself.

It said things like how I was a burden to my grandmother and my friends, and I needed to get out of everybody’s way.

That it was easier to just let go. I made the mistake of telling one of the psych doctors, and they started giving me some strong medicine, but I think it may have saved my life, because it made me sleep almost all the time, and I no longer wanted to hurt myself.

I was so drugged up between the psych meds and the pain pills that I don’t think I could have done it anyway.

****

I woke up the next morning feeling amazing. I wondered if I had dreamed what had happened with Ben, and it did seem a little too good to be true, but I was too sticky and messy to believe I hadn’t really been making love the night before.

I hardly even remembered going to bed, and I’d slept well until I decided it was too hot and I got up to open the window.

I went to lie back down and right away, something knocked at the glass.

It scared the shit out of me, and I jumped up, backing away from the window, afraid to go look and see what it was.

When the knock came a second time, I called out, “Who is it? What do you want with me?”

But predictably, nothing made any kind of reply. The only thing I could think to do was head down to find Ben. I didn’t really know him all that well, but I had a feeling of safety around him. I knew that he’d know what to do.

He did come to my room, and he knew what to do, all right. I was still shaking from some of the things he knew to do to me, with my wholehearted approval. I was nervous about seeing him today.

I slept through the rest of the night with no dreams that I could recall, which made for a refreshing change.

I got up and showered in the ensuite bathroom that had to be a modern day add-on—maybe an old dressing room that had been converted and remodeled.

It must have been expensive, because it was a really nice bathroom, with a ceramic tiled shower and granite counter tops on the vanity.

Whatever—I was just glad it was there. I didn’t want to go rambling around a house I was unfamiliar with so early in the morning looking for the bathroom.

I took a long, hot shower and then shaved, taking my time with that too, because I still didn’t hear anyone stirring around yet, and I wanted to look good for Ben when I saw him.

Afterward, I got dressed, found my cane that I’d left by the door and went downstairs.

The sun was shining through the windows after the storms of the evening before, and someone had opened the front door so the fresh morning breeze could come through the screen.

I went to stand in the doorway and look out at the beautiful morning.

Now that the sun was out, I could see features of the house I hadn’t noticed the night before in the fog and the darkness.

For example, the yard on the left side of the house stretched out about fifty feet before dropping into a small declivity, like a little ravine.

We were in the foothills of the mountains, after all, and the terrain was hilly, to say the least. I could hear running water, so I pushed open the screen door and walked over to take a look.

The grass was still damp from a heavy dew, but not too bad if I stayed in the sunny patches. And the sound of running water was getting louder, the closer I got to the edge of the lawn.

At the bottom of the hill was a babbling stream that was splashing over big rocks, running from behind the house all the way down to the road.

The night before, it must have been covered in the fog and I hadn’t even noticed it, thinking that the woods came up almost to the house on both sides, but I was wrong.

I think it normally was a pretty shallow stream, but after that near flood we’d had the day before, the water was overflowing its banks, rushing down the mountain behind the house in torrential chaos.

Across the stream was a small footbridge going over the little drop-off to the woods beyond.

The rustic bridge was maybe fifteen feet long and about six feet wide.

Normally, the water was probably six to eight feet below it, but now the water level was probably only a couple of feet or so below it.

The style of the bridge didn’t seem to fit the house, but it was picturesque and kind of charming out there near the woods like it was.

Someone had hung a large flower box over the rails and blue and yellow flowers were spilling out of it and trailing over the sides in a riot of color.

Since it was still so early, and no one seemed to be around, I decided I’d take a walk down to look at the little stream.

To get there, I’d need to cross the bridge and follow a little trail down to the water.

It was totally on a whim, but the birds were singing, and the sun was shining, and the brook was tumbling over the rocks. I thought a walk down to it would be some good exercise for my leg. I started down the grassy knoll and stepped over onto the bridge.

Midway across, I stopped to gaze down at the water and realized just how high the water was.

It was running fast and making some surprisingly deep pools in places.

I even saw some little fish around the rocks.

Like I said, it was pretty but now that I was close to it, I saw it was running much more wildly than it had looked like it was from a distance, and the path down to it was steeper than I’d thought. I decided not to risk another fall.

I turned to start back to the house, hoping someone was up by now and might have made coffee, when suddenly there came a sharp and sudden crack, and without warning, the rough-hewn, wooden boards beneath my feet gave way, and I dropped like a rock.

I felt the shock of the icy water on my feet and legs as they dipped into the water, and I acted instinctively, like I had when I fell off that waterfall.

I had stopped myself from falling any farther then too, and everyone said it was such a miracle I hadn’t fallen all the way to the bottom.

I did the same thing I did on that occasion—I reacted instinctively with the panic shooting through me, and I threw out my hand and yelled, “No! Stop!”

Suddenly I stopped falling and hung there in midair, up to my knees in the ice-cold water, but with my feet not touching the bottom of the stream.

I could feel the fast-running, icy water as I hung there, frozen.

I watched my cane, which had flown from my hand into the stream, go sailing down it, bouncing off first one big rock and then another.

I shut my eyes in disbelief and thought, “Bridge!” and I literally started floating back up to what was left of the footbridge, and I landed gently on the remaining planks.

The second I landed, my eyes flew open, and I lunged and scrambled as best I could for solid ground, but I was unsteady without my cane and wound up sprawled in the grass on my stomach, having literally flown, I thought, the last few feet.

I lay there, trying to catch my breath and heard loud shouting coming from the porch.

I looked up to see Ben sprinting toward me over the lawn.

He fell down next to me on his knees, turned me carefully over to my back and began running his hands down my leg to see if I’d reinjured it.

But I could have told him I was fine. I was perfect.

I pulled on his arm to sit up beside him in the grass, still out of breath and shaking all over from my near miss. I threw my arms around his neck.

“I-I’m okay, I think. I didn’t hurt myself again.”

“Thank God,” he said, giving me a huge hug. “I saw you flying through the air and landing on the grass, and I assumed the worst.” He glanced over at the bridge and the gaping, jagged hole in the middle. “What the hell happened here?”

“The bridge gave way under my feet, and I jumped for the grass. If I’d fallen down on those rocks…it wouldn’t have been good.” I gave a full body shudder at the idea of what that would have done to my poor leg. And other parts of me too.