Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [139]
Miserable, I watch another empty hour pass by. At least I don’t have to fight to stay warm. The cold bite of the outer atmosphere no longer sucks off my body heat as it did throughout the night. But by removing the need to reconfigure the ropes around my legs and the cloth and plastic wraps around my arms, daytime has removed the last bustle from my experience in the canyon. Without even that minimal distraction, I have nothing whatsoever to do. I have no life. Only in action does my life approximate anything more than existence. Without any other task or stimulus, I’m no longer living, no longer surviving. I’m just waiting.
Since the recoiling blows of the hammer rock tenderized my left hand, all I’ve had left to do is wait. For what, though? Rescue…or death? It doesn’t matter to me. The two endings represent the same thing—salvation and deliverance from my suffering. I can’t stand the inactivity that breeds such apathy. At this point, the waiting itself is the worst part of my entrapment. And when I’m done waiting, all there is, is more waiting. I can touch the face of infinity in these doldrums. Nothing gives even a slight hint that the stillness will break.
But I can make it break. I can ignore the pain in my left hand and resume smashing the chockstone with the handheld wrecking ball. I can continue hacking away at the rock with my knife, despite its inutility. I can do everything I’ve done in the past five days for the sake of motion. I reach for the rounded hammer rock, then realize I’m going to want my left sock for a pad. Off with the shoe, off with the sock, and I have the cushioning for my battered palm. The bruises on the meaty pad of my thumb are the most sensitive to the impact, and they scream for reprieve from the first blow through the fifth, when I pause. Adrenaline channels into anger, and I raise the hammer again, this time in retribution for what this wretched piece of geology has done to my left hand. Bonk! Again I strike the boulder, the pain in my hand flaring. Thwock! And again. Screeaatch! The rage blooms purple in my mind, amid a small mushroom cloud of pulverized grit and the burning smell of the sock that comes between the rock and the chockstone, melting with the friction heat of each strike. I bring the rock down again. Carrunch! With animalistic fury, I growl, “Unnngaaarrrrgh!” in response to the throbs pulsing in my left hand.
I force myself to stop, and can’t release my grip on the hammer rock. My fingers have been paralyzed in their clench.
Whoa, Aron. You might have taken that too far.
Gradually, my shocked nerves relax, and my digits extend until I can let go of the rock, which I set on the chockstone. I’ve created a mess once again. I want to brush the collected dirt off my arm, away from the open wound. I take my knife and begin clearing particles from my trapped hand, using the dulled blade like a brush. Sweeping the grit off my thumb, I accidentally gouge myself and rip away a thin piece of decayed flesh. It peels back like a skin of boiled milk before I catch what is going on. I already knew my hand had to be decomposing. Without circulation, it has been dying since I became entrapped. Whenever I considered amputation, it had always been under the premise that the hand was dead and would have to be amputated once I was freed. But I hadn’t known how fast the putrefaction had advanced since Saturday afternoon. Now I understand the increase in the interest of the indigenous insect population. They could already smell their next meal, their breeding ground, their larvae’s new home.
Out of curiosity, I poke my thumb with the knife blade