This story begins at night, with a girly scream.
Trisha and I had climbed the Palace of Fine Arts to take pictures up where the spotlights are.
She looks awesome, but I can’t get the composition right.
So, I back up to the edge.
And then I walk right off:
In my defense, I was using an old pirate trick.
We were standing on a large grate above these huge lights. If I had to look at them, I kept one eye shut to preserve my dark vision.
Having eyes calibrated to bright and dark really messes with your depth perception, apparently.
There was an edge there.
I saw it — set my foot on it with confidence — all my weight expecting there to be something to stand on.
Except, I stepped backward into darkness.
There was nothing there to support me.
That’s when the yell came out.
Not Trisha’s girly scream. Mine.
You hear this yell in movies.
It's that primal scream you let out when you fall from a high place because you know you’re about to die.
Well, the yell is a real thing.
My scream, turns out, is the loudest, highest-pitched, most feminine noise a straight guy can possibly make.
Thousands of people hear it echoing off the condos in the Marina.
Like a deep, embarrassing secret about my masculinity is bouncing through the city.
I want to hide. I’m so embarrassed about the noise I forget that I'm falling.
At least, until I feel the tree.
Branches and leaves scratch at my back.
Shit. This is bad, but maybe I’m going to be saved.
I picture reaching out and grabbing a branch.
It will bend, like in a cartoon, setting me down gently on the ground, then I’ll let it go and it will snap back into place.
I tear at the darkness, only to come back with twigs.
Then I’m past it, looking up at the damage.
My body had ripped out a triangle-shape from the round tree, giving it the appearance of a Pac-Man head.
The canopy of a tree with pencil-thin branches smiles, joyously unaware.
They say your life flashes before your eyes in times like this. Mine didn’t.
But I did have time to know I’d been falling for too long.
I once jumped from a cliff as tall as a house into Russian River.
I’ve been falling for much longer than that.
It makes me anxious.
I want to hit the ground. I want to know.
Whether or not I’m going to die.
I decide I most likely will die.
And now, the gap between being alive and death is unbearable.
Anything is better than knowing you're a second away from death.
Too much anticipation.
Get on with it.
I wish for it to stop. I pray for the end. I'm terrified.
But time is a slow crawl.
I still remember that fall as if it were minutes long.
According to the free fall time equation, where gravity = 9.8m/s squared,
my entire fall of ~7 meters actually took ~1.28 seconds.
Then, to my relief, I hit the ground.
I land mostly flat on my back, in the dirt, destroying some decorative shrubs in the process.
On instinct, I throw my arms into the ground in a technique we call a “break fall” in Tae Kwon Do.
The break fall spreads the energy from a fall away from your core into your limbs, letting more of your body absorb an impact.
Wind bursts from my lungs as I do a tiny bounce. My glasses go flying.
Then I’m still again.
At first everything is adrenaline and shock. It’s all just numb terror.
Then a flood of pain burns in the middle of my back, on my spine directly behind my sternum.
My upper back is on fire, but below that spot, I feel nothing.
Nothing at all.
"Rob?" I see Trisha's silhouette on the edge, searching. She can’t see me in the darkness.
“I’m alive,” I shout.
“I’m coming down."
I don’t move. I’m so scared.
What if I try to wiggle my toes and they don’t wiggle?
I can’t feel my hips, legs, or my toes at all.
Everything is numb below a point, and above that point, my upper back is on fire.
Is this how it happens?
One minute you’re taking a photo of a pretty girl you used to date, the next minute, you’re a paraplegic?
It takes Trisha a few minutes to get down and find me in the darkness. Eventually she does, bringing my tripod with her.
As she leans over me, I decide her gothic dress for the photoshoot isn’t a good match for her rainbow-dyed hair.
“Are you okay?”
She’s as terrified as I am.
“I don’t know. I can't feel my legs. I was waiting for you to come hold my hand,” I say, trying not to cry, “before I tried to move.”
Trisha grips me with her boney fingers. “Fuck, Rob.”
I crush her tiny hand and she returns the grip.
“I’m sorry for falling on you,” I tell her.
I try to smile and make light of the situation like I always do.
"It looked like I was stepping back onto the edge, only when I put my foot down..."
My foot. The moment of truth.
I try to move my right big toe.
Wiggle wiggle.
I think I feel my shoe.
Yes, it's moving!
I try again.
All the toes are operational. On both sides.
I try a bit more and my legs are working too, even though I can't feel them.
But when I go to sit up, my back doesn't flex.
My spine bends down to that point that hurts really bad, and then just stops stiff.
"My vertebrae are dislocated maybe," I say. "Can you help? I think I can get up."
Trisha pulls me to my feet.
There's an unbroken beer bottle smashed clean into the dirt under where I hit.
At this age, I was working 3 jobs, ~70 hours a week. One full-time, and two part-time.
None provide me health insurance.
I spent almost as much as I make every month.
No savings.
There's no way I could afford even the cheapest ER bill.
We don't call an ambulance.
We don't go to a hospital.
Trisha gets a lighter from her truck and searches for my glasses in the darkness until the flame burns her thumb.
We stop at Rite Aid on the way back to my apartment to get reusable ice packs and a bottle of ibuprofen.
The next morning, I wake up throbbing and sore.
I get my shoes on by pulling my legs toward my chest with my arms. I can't bend down after all.
And I get on my bike and head to the first of two jobs for the day.
I'm an assistant for a professional photographer.
Then, at the drug store, I put on one of those weight belts our receiving department uses when unloading boxes.
I'll wear that under my apron every day at work for the next 3 months, taking 4 ibuprofen pills every 4 hours too.
Other than not being able to bend over, I seem functional enough to keep working.
But my back feels wrong all the time. Like there's a chuck in the middle where I can't feel anything. An empty spot.
I discover stretching is the greatest feeling in the world.
If I hold onto something heavy with my arms, I can bend my hips a little bit to let some blood flow into that area.
About a month later, I'm stretching, and there's a big pop. My back snaps back into place.
A warm, amazing feeling rushes in.
I lean over to test and to see if it's true. My back slips back out of place.
I stretch again. It fixes itself again.
It's a start.
I can put on my shoes again.
It takes a year before I get health insurance and go to the doctor.
By now my back only pops out of place about once a week.
Ibuprofen and back braces are still part of my life, but not a full-time part.
The Doc is surprised I survived. Tells me 50% of people die from falls not much higher.
I wonder if a Tae Kwon Do move saved my life.
He orders an x-ray, and calls me back to discuss the results a few days later.
And I've never been so happy to be called this word in my life.
My x-ray looks like a normal person's.
He can't find any evidence of the injury at all.
He says, from his perspective as a doctor, I'm "unremarkable."
“Unremarkable,” I repeat back.