Crash

here was no whimper or moan when he crashed, no cry or shout. Just a thud, a short, quick thud, the kind someone makes when hit hard on the back. There was no laughing, no talking, no clapping or noise making. If there was any sound, besides that terribly loud thud, it was that of eyes turning in their sockets, or of a dozen sets of lungs quickly inhaling then remaining still. The entire gym was filled with a dense, quiet stillness.

Bright sunlight filtered loudly into the gym, strangely ironic compared to the eerie feeling floating through the air. The immense quiet existed no longer than a few seconds, but each one felt like a lifetime. Each second Ian laid on the floor--his legs pinned over his head--stretched for what seemed a million more. I stood there, as he lay unmoving, less than three feet away, and thought nothing. Time must have stopped. My thoughts certainly did.

What passed through my mind was the vision of Ian doing that trick. "Help me pull this mat in," he said, before jumping up to the bar, "I don't want to break my neck." The words meant little, a joke often spoken during practice, never taken seriously. He hopped up to the bar and started swinging. I really was not worried. The trick was difficult, no doubt, but nothing he was not prepared to try. Then he let go, flipping once and twisting one and a half times, as he should have. And when he was too far away from the bar, I still did not worry. It happens often. I have done it more than a couple times myself. And he flipped around to land on his back, just like he was supposed to do. Only he did not move.

Someone broke the silence. The team captain yelled out. After what seemed an agonizing period of quiet, his voice sounded unusually loud. "Ian," he shouted from across the gym, "Ian you alright?"

The question hung in the air for ages. The dense feeling of anxiety and fear and whatever else that filled the gym seemed to slow the question down. I heard it, but really did not listen to it. My mind was blank, except for the pictures of Ian crashing. I don't want to break my neck. He still had not moved, his knees beside his face, laying on that dark blue mat, the kind of mat you learn to trust after ten years in gymnastics, the kind of mat that saves you from many bruises and broken bones during the course of a career. It seemed so useless at that moment.

Then the words came out of Ian's mouth. I heard them fine, standing so close, but they were choked off and quiet, like someone would sound speaking out of breath. "I can't feel my legs," he said, "I can't feel my legs."

Quickly the quiet returned. Less than a few people in the gym actually realized what he had said, the rest of us simply remaining still, eyes transfixed on his rolled up form. His white T-shirt shone brightly as sunlight struck it. Melissa, our athletic trainer, she came running over, but not before our captain, Matt, reached Ian and pulled his legs down from over his head so he could breath. Was he supposed to do that? She asked Ian a series of quick questions that I cared little about, and she felt his legs for any sign of feeling. There was none.

Then things sped up rapidly. She yelled for me to go call the ambulance, and I found myself struggling to remember the number at first. After calling I ran downstairs to stand outside the front doors of the gym, to wait for the loud sirens to disturb that damned awful quiet.

It was warm that Sunday morning, warm for October anyway. I stood out on the sidewalk in a T-shirt and shorts, barefoot thinking about Ian. He was just a little off in the air, landed right, he'll be okay. Of course he'll be okay. Maybe we should have slept through our alarms that morning. I don't want to break my neck. Then for some reason I started thinking about the last month and a half, the entire length of time I had known him. We shook hands the first time we met, after all of my things were already in the dorm room and his had yet to be carried up to the floor. We became roommates, to spend our freshman year at college together, and we really almost slept in through our alarms that morning.

The sirens sounded somewhere in the distance, and grew slowly louder over a period of what seemed years, until finally reaching the gym. The overwhelming scent of brown, decaying leaves filled the air.

"What happened," one of the paramedics asked me as we climbed the stairs. They carried a stretcher with them and asked me to hold one of their bags.

"He landed on the back of his head," I told them, nearly running up the stairs.

"How far of a drop?"

"Ten or eleven feet."

"Is he conscious?"

"Yeah, well, he was, and, well, he can't breath very well and he can't feel his legs."

"Okay," one of them said, and grabbed the walkie-talkie at his side. He said something into it, and I caught the words 'possible' and 'paralyzation.'

The gym was terribly quiet. Ian still lay on the blue mat and Melissa was there talking to him. Our coach was there too, but everyone else seemed to have backed away a bit. My teammates were all together in a little group off to the side, watching from a distance and talking quietly among themselves. I saw Ian flipping through the air and tucking around and landing on his head and not moving.

The paramedics replaced Melissa at Ian's side, though she remained close by. They performed the same series of little tests as she had and came to the same results. He had no feeling in his legs.

Meanwhile, I stood a few feet away, about where I was standing when he crashed, holding the paramedic's bag. I thought about the time I came home one night to see Ian and a few other freshmen from the team drinking beer and laying on my bed in the dorm room laughing. I thought about how Ian had rollerbladed through the drive-up window at Hardee's and how we had raced on our bicycles to the gym that morning. I saw him flipping through the air and tucking around and landing on his head and not moving.

The paramedic grabbed the bag out of my hand and they began to lift Ian onto the stretcher. He screamed loud, saying his arm hurt terribly. Everything was moving so quickly. I heard the paramedic say something about a dislocated vertebrae pinching a nerve leading to his arm. But he screamed loud while they moved him. That noised pierced the quiet in the gym, and not one person there will ever forget what it sounded like.

They carried the stretcher with Ian on it to the stairwell, where they spent long minutes trying to maneuver around the corners without dropping him or hitting the stretcher against a wall. He'll be alright. He'll be fine. The words coalesced in everyone's head, yet no one spoke them.

I followed the stretcher down the stairs and to the ambulance, and I watched it drive away. He'll be alright, I thought. Then I went back into the gym, where it was still so quiet. Things began slowing down again, including my heart beat. No one really said anything. It was all too quick. Our coach told us to call it a day, though no one was getting up on the equipment anyway. Everyone gathered their things quietly, the sun shining brightly into the gym. Shock had taken control of our bodies. Shock and denial, and we all left, thinking about Ian and just wanting to be home.

So ended a day of practice, in quiet and fear and a definite realization of the dangers of gymnastics. And so ended a career, as Ian would never do gymnastics again. And so went my roommate. He'll be alright is what I kept saying, at least for the first three or four weeks. Then the chances grew smaller and smaller. Every day you practice, learning what to do when your body is in danger. No one really knows how to react when those techniques prove futile. I was left alone in a dorm room for the rest of the year, saddened with fear and denial, which was kind of bad, but Ian. . . he was left with something else, he was left without legs for the rest of his life. Guess I'm the lucky one.

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