Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [161]
“Less than five minutes. We’ll fly over that drop-off, and we’ll be right over town.”
A question digs at me. “How did you find my truck? I mean, I could have been anywhere.”
“Your mom called our dispatcher yesterday and had us searching all the trailheads.”
Four minutes later, the helicopter bursts over the rim rock, leaving Canyonlands behind, to reveal a lush valley, green with fields, and a forest of trees engulfing thousands of buildings. We cross the Colorado River and slow down as we approach the center of Moab, Utah, passing row upon neat row of houses and streets, ball fields, stores, schools, parking lots, and parks.
Circling around once, I see an open green lawn that we’re apparently going to use as a landing zone. As the pilot touches the bird gently down on the vibrantly green grass, I notice that the building off to the right of the lawn is a hospital.
Oh my God, you made it.
There is a man in a Park Service uniform standing on an asphalt driveway off the right side of the helicopter. Next to him are two women in white coats at opposite ends of a wheeled stretcher. On the pilot’s signal, the officer on my right swings the helicopter door open and hops out, holding the door for me to follow his lead. I undo my seat belt and carelessly let the headphones rip themselves off my head, then jump down onto the grass. Ducking my head, I take half a dozen long strides under the rotors, heading toward the asphalt. I approach the uniformed man who seems to accept my gruesome appearance with an expectant air, and without introducing myself, I announce in an urgent voice, “You need to know that I’ve lost a lot of blood, that I had to amputate my arm this morning after being trapped for six days without food or water, and that I’m wearing a tourniquet that I applied today. It’s around my arm inside this packaging.”
Seemingly impressed at my self-assessment, the man replies, “Let’s get you inside,” as he turns to the women, who present the stretcher. I sit my rump on the gurney, lie down on my back, and swing my legs up. Bliss. I haven’t been prone in six days, and I immediately begin to relax. If it weren’t for the throbbing pain of the tourniquet on my stump, I could fall into a seven-year sleep.
The nurses push me through the automated doors of the emergency entrance and into an empty hospital receiving area. Another woman shuttling supplies into an emergency room looks at me with surprise, as though I’ve caught her in a compromising situation. Recognition follows her shocked stare, and I understand why there is no one at the reception desk or in the seating area. This is not a major metropolitan hospital where critically injured patients walk in off the street every few minutes; this is a quiet rural hospital on a Thursday afternoon in the early season. These three women probably constitute a significant portion of the present hospital staff. The trauma team is most likely on call; hopefully, they aren’t far away. By current appearances, the hospital staff probably realized they had an inbound patient only a few minutes before the helicopter landed on the front lawn. One of the women tells the Park Service man to follow us into the emergency room as they cart me inside the sterile room and park the gurney next to the ER table under a large circular lamp hood in the middle of the room. The nurse at my head asks me if I can transfer myself to the table on my left side, which I manage while holding my right arm steadily off my chest.
Except for the Park Service man, the others disperse. One woman returns in a minute to tell the others who have brought in more supplies that “the anesthesiologist will be in in five minutes.” The nurses remove my shoes, sock, and hat, then cover me with a gown. Next, the man speaks to me. “Aron, I’m Ranger Steve with the Park Service. Is there anything I can do for you?”
It isn’t the question I am anticipating, but I think first of my mom. “Can you let my mom know that I’m OK?” Thinking of how she must have been involved in this and what it’s done to her,