a time i faced death

This piece is a short story reflecting back on the episode in which I dislocated my shoulder. I felt compelled to write it for class, as I was told to write about a time I faced death, and I never actually went to the doctor for the ligament. It's been causing me quite a bit of pain lately, so it remains a constant reminder.

setting: Missoula, Montana, 2015

The glass in front of me reflected back a red face and wet eyes. Its nose was running profusely from the cold. I could feel that my contacts were about to fall out, dry flakes that ensured my only way to see. I just wanted to see.

I tucked my chin into my chest and squeezed my eyes shut for just a moment. I can’t stay like this forever. The wind whistled into my left ear, froze my blood, then flowed ferociously out through my right. I swung my head and up and broke my snow-caked eyelashes open to reveal three things: my trembling hands gripping a cracked brick of ice, my destination five hundred feet above me, and a black figure swinging itself over the crest, a feat I had yet to accomplish.

I breathed in all of the air I could attain, and held it in for a moment to treasure the brisk oxygen. Turning my focus back downward, I shoved my left foot into a crevice in the ice. Steady. My right foot landed in the shelf next to its partner. Sturdy. I shifted my gaze up to the gloves containing hands I couldn’t feel anymore. Just five hundred more feet. Ten more swings and I’m safe. So I swung.

Cracking ice shattered beneath my weight, the greatest betrayal I could face. Shards of glittering ice pierced my corneas as gravity took me captive. One hundred feet, two hundred, three, four, five, six, SNAP.

Fire engulfed my right shoulder and spread its wicked flames across my back and down to my ass. An oxymoronic exclamation attacking both God and vulgarity left my chapped lips and all of the air in my lungs followed. Wincing, I opened my eyes and looked down. You’re never supposed to look down.

Two legs dangled helplessly a few hundred feet above a menacing black sheet of ice, a prison for the death waiting just below. In the left corner of my vision, to my horror, was my left arm. It hung dangerously in the air, being of no help to the rest of my body. My head swiveled slowly upward, revealing my awful saving grace.

The leather glove ripped down the middle and glossy blood dripping from my palm, my right hand gripped a branch of ice with all of its might. Red staining my coat sleeve, my vision switched to the two bony lumps on my shoulder that used to be in unison. The majority of the joint stuck out backwards painfully, the rest of my arm still in tact. Dangling from a frozen waterfall in the middle of Missoula, Montana, I was the closest thing to a paramedic I would be receiving.

I needed my right arm to get anywhere, up or down. Knowing this, I couldn’t maintain rational thought any longer. My left arm swung up to meet my right hand. SLAM. A crack reverberated throughout my torso and pain shot into every vein. SLAM. My legs, against their will, leapt off of the frozen wall horizontally. SLAM. SLAM. SLAM.

Another profane remark left my mouth and my right arm dropped in defeat. Bleeding and enflamed, I watched the pathetic limb twitch and seize beside me. My vision blurred with lightning bolts of pain and frustration, guttural grunts and moans carried my body slowly up the waterfall. Appearing wearily over the icy crest, I dropped my body on the frozen bank in defeat, ghosts of oxygen puffing out of my chest.

Rolling over with a grunt, I looked into the glass encasing the river. The face looking back was smeared with black and red, and it smiled in disbelief.