Scared. Scared for his life.
Pat is back in town. Pat, my high school teammate, my college roommate, my good friend. We’ve been training for a race of sorts - and with this whole “real job” thing - training seems to occur during the darker points in the day. We’ve been doing a lot of Mt. Sanitas post sundown. Not too bad - a little chilly and a little dark. But jackets and headlamps fix that.
Tonight Pat and I jogged from his place to the base of the mountain, and then fifty or so yards up from the base. I mentioned that we ought to stretch. Yeah, he said, that sounds good. We stop. I bend forward to touch my toes. Pat squats down to tie his shoe. From the corner of my eye I see Pat’s figure fall backward freely. I thought he slipped a little. I thought he’d bounce back up. I turned to see what looked like his heading hitting a rock. He rolled over onto his stomach as if he was fine.
“Pat”, I said. No response. Pat, you ok? No response. He started making some sounds from his mouth. As if he was trying to get flem from the back of his throat. I thought he was just kidding around. Pat are you ok?! No response. I jumped over and put my hand on his back and peaked over his shoulder. Oh shit, oh shit. His eyes are wide open and staring straight ahead. His mouth was open and his tounge was out of his mouth. I grabbed his shoulder, I thought he was choking on his tounge. I looked into his eyes and they scared me to death. I’ll never forget that look. Instantly I read those eyes, and thank God I read them wrong. That deep look of fear, the symptoms that I saw, they all summed to one conclusion. His neck is broken. Oh God, his neck is broken. His whole face had frozen into a look of deep despair, of incredulous fear. A thousand thoughts ran through my head. No cell phone. Pitch black. I have to leave my friend and sprint to the nearest house to call 911. I can’t leave my friend. He’s so scared. I need to put him down. Can’t harm him more. Oh God.
Take action Ryan. I slowly began releasing his shoulder back to the ground. Still only gargling sounds from Pat. I was so scared. He moves his arm, his eyes blink. What are you doing? he said. Relief. What are you doing Ryan, I was in the middle of a dream…I was sleeping. His whole body was moving now. I helped him to kneel. Pat are you ok? Ryan, where are we? Mt. Sanitas Pat. Oh gah, oh jee, relief running through every nerve in my body. He snapped back to it. Oh yeah, oh yeah, he said. Wow, what happened? And then I told him the story that you just read. Well so much for that work out he said. I laughed, we laughed. Yeah so much for that.
We walked back to his house. My heart still beating incessantly. I was scared, still scared even though we were walking. I kept looking at Pat, he look ok. I haven’t been that scared in my life. He remembered that he was feeling light headed, we didn’t know what happened though. Did he just pass out? Seizure? What was it? I brought him back to 2343 so i could watch over him. He’s doing fine. We had spaghetti.
Filed by ryanroth at February 22nd, 2006 under Dijyano